The Flaming Azaleas of Gregory Bald

After graduating from Western Carolina University in May 2000, I packed up all of my belongings into my 1995 Nissan pickup. I left my home in Sylva, NC and drove through the Great Smoky Mountains into the National Park, crossing the border between North Carolina and Tennessee, until I came to the site of my new job and home for the next six months- Cades Cove.

Hired for the season as a Park Ranger by the National Park Service (officially, my title was "Visitor Use Assistant"), the job was a challenge for me.

My duties included leasing camping spaces to visitors of the park, along with assisting the law enforcement rangers with "carry outs," when someone got hurt and stranded in the mountains.

I had trouble getting enough to eat during those six months. I was not a very good cook to begin with, and the nearest convenience store or restaurant or anything was about 10 miles away in a very small Tennessee town called Townsend. There was no grocery store in Townsend as I recall. That was in Maryville, an approximate 45 minute drive one way from Cades Cove. This may not sound far, but the road up and down the mountain was very winding and slow going, especially after I had a long day at work. I remember boiling a lot of noodles and microwaving whole potatoes for my meals, but it was not enough to keep the weight on or my energy up. To my embarrassment and the irritation of my coworkers, I completely gave out on one trip into the mountains where we had to carry out a rather heavy woman with a broken her ankle.

Truthfully, I was relieved when November came and my job ended.

The location was absolutely incredible, though.

In May, the pollen was so thick in the air at times that it looked like yellow rain in a downpour.

Until I finally learned to carry a flash light with me, night was so dark when I got off work that I had to drag my feet to know that I was still walking on the paved road from the campground office hut back to the cabin where I lived. On one of those night time walks, I got charged by a grunting deer. The buck stopped just a few feet in front of me. We stared at each other for a moment before it went galloping off into the woods.

I also came across several black bears during my bike rides and hikes through the park during those six months, and I saw a flying squirrel one night.

When the leaves changed in October, the mountains were beautiful shades of orange, red and yellow. The leaves took on a silvery tint as well that I had never seen before and which only lasted a couple of days.

In June, I remember being given a full day to go on a hike while on the clock with the Park Service. I chose to make this a 12 mile hike to Gregory Bald (called a bald because hardly any trees grew at the top of the mountain), six miles up in elevation, and six miles back down. My colleagues had told me that Gregory Bald was covered with flaming azalea bushes, which were in full bloom at that time.

The only catch was that I had to wear my Park Service uniform and carry a radio with me, which I put in a holster on my belt.

For most of the hike up into the mountains, I was alone. I came across a black bear that paid me no mind. It was eating blueberries, I think. Toward the top, I caught up to a husband and wife who I assumed to both be in their 40s. The husband was agitated that his wife could not keep up with him, and in his frustration at how quickly I was able to pass them, he mocked my walking style and said something sarcastic to me.

During the hike up to the top, I noticed increasing pain in my hip on the side where the radio was holstered. When I got to the the actual mountain top, I had to sit down and give my hip a rest (The next day it would be even more painful, and I realized that it was the weight of the radio on one side during the 12 mile hike that had caused it).

It was too bad that I was in discomfort, as I am sure that I did not represent the Park Service very well. People who were already on the mountain top saw me in my uniform and came up to have a conversation, but I really wanted to be left alone to rest my hip and enjoy the tranquility of the moment. I remember the look of disappointment on one woman's face in particular when I was probably a bit abrupt with her.

But the sights at the top were worth the trip. The azalea bushes were some of the most incredible things that I have ever seen in nature. To my surprise, in the wild these bushes grow much taller than me. The various colors also amazed me. They weren't just orange and red, but white and pink and purple as well. Each bush had its own color. To have seen these bushes from the air would also have been impressive.

Photographs that I have looked at on the internet do not do Gregory Bald justice, because they fail to give you the panoramic sweep of the scene and the many, many bushes and colors of the flowers that you can take in at the same time.

Still, here is a link to a good description of the hike:

http://www.hikinginthesmokys.com/gregory.htm

My hike up to see the flaming azaleas on Gregory Bald is one of my favorite experiences in the Great Smoky Mountains.

Port and Acka-Dacka-Ooh

I lived in Wilmington, North Carolina for the first five years of my life. From there, the family moved to Augusta, Georgia. We lived in Augusta for only six months before returning to North Carolina, this time Wake Forest- just north of Raleigh. Most people think of Wake Forest University when they hear that name, and the school was in fact founded in that town. However, in 1956 the school moved to the city of Winston-Salem, NC and the old Wake Forest campus became Southeastern Seminary.

When I was a child living in Wilmington, I can remember the first time that I became fascinated with a word.

The word was "Port." I had heard it on the TV, and the way the person said it sort of tickled my eardrums. I went running to mom in my excitement, who was in the kitchen of our apartment. I can't remember what I said to her, but it probably wasn't very coherent. I was trying to explain to her that I knew a word, but I don't think she understood.

In my head, the mental image that came to mind with the word "port" as the person on TV had said it was actually a microphone, the larger type of metal microphone, used at radio stations and which had holes in it. The tickling sensation that the sound of the word made in my ears was sort of synonymous with being able to touch the metal microphone and feel all the holes on it. I'm not sure why I made the association between "port" and a microphone. Perhaps the person on TV had said something like, "Plug the microphone into the port." But I really don't know.

This all might seem a little "out there." My memories from Wilmington are my first memories, though, when I was able to make even less sense of the world than I can now as an adult.

The more that I write about these early memories, the more that come back to me, which is what I wanted to happen when I started this blog.

The same tickling sensation in my ear drums returned when we lived in Wake Forest. Mom was a school teacher by trade, and she taught me at home for the first year or so. I never went to pre-school or kindergarten, but started my formal education in the first grade.

This was at Millbrook, a kindergarten through 12th grade school. Mom worked as a teacher's aide at the school, and it was a tough start to each day when she took me to my classroom and then had to leave me there. I remember one anxiety filled morning in particular when I was there in the classroom, waiting. Mom had to leave me there before anyone else had arrived. I sat there all alone on a bean bag with the lights turned off.

Anyway, mom always made me lunch, which I kept in my metal lunch box. She often included seedless grapes for me to snack on later in the afternoon.

One of my friends at Millbrook was an African-American boy. I can't remember his name, now, but I do recall that he spoke with a bit of a lisp.

At the end of each day, we would all be sitting at our desks, waiting for the intercom to call students to their buses. He rode the bus, but I waited for mom to come and get me.

The boy, who sat at his desk across from me while we waited, saw me eating my grapes. He said that we could play a game with them.

I was interested, so we began the game. It consisted of the boy mimicking the rhyme of "eeny, meeny, miny, moe," except he used words and phrases that I had never heard before. I can't remember them all, but one phrase he used a lot was "acka-dacka-ooh."

He would tap my desk and then his own, back and forth as he chanted the phrases. Whenever he stopped the phrase, that's how we would know who got a grape.

Of course, he ended up getting most of the grapes, but I did not mind. Listening to him speak those strange words with his lisp while he tapped our wooden desks with his fingers tickled my ear drums. It was comforting to me to listen to him, and I was disappointed when the intercom called his bus number and he ran out of the class.

There have been other times when I hear something that tickles my ear drums, but it is very rare.

I can give you a first hand example of one, though. I enjoyed watching the late painter, Bob Ross, on the Public Broadcasting System.

Here is a link to one of the episodes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPPOpWBMFx4

When he talks, that is often enough. But especially when Ross talks and at the same time knocks the knife against the palette, those are pleasing sounds.

Perhaps I am the only person who gets this. What tickles my ear drums may seem weird to everyone else, but this blog is about my experiences. I hope that reading about it is enjoyable for at least some people.

The General Lee

When I was a child in the early 1980s, one of my favorite TV shows was The Dukes of Hazzard.

In Wilmington, I can remember sitting on the carpet of the apartment, playing with a Hot Wheels car that had a Fire Bird painted on the hood. I mimicked the stunts that I saw on the show with my toy car.

As an adult, I now know that the Dukes of Hazzard was really not that great of a show. But I think back with fondness to it because of all the action and the colors of the show. I remember a promotional plastic cup that we got from either a gas station or a fast food restaurant that had pictures from the show on it. It was my favorite cup.

The Confederate flag is an offensive symbol to many people, much more taboo now than when I was a child. I venture to say that no major network today would pick up a show like the Dukes of Hazzard because of things like the prominence of the Confederate Flag.

As a child, I thought the design of the flag was fascinating, though. I can still remember the pretty blue bars with stars on the cup. As mom washed it again and again over the months, the dark blue became lighter, which I liked even better. It was probably the reason blue became my favorite color.

Luke Duke, one of the characters on the show, almost always wore a blue plaid shirt with blue jeans. Bo Duke, a yellow shirt with blue jeans. I was too young to appreciate the cut off blue jean shorts that Daisy Duke made iconic.

My favorite part of the show was the car that the Duke boys drove- "The General Lee." The General Lee was a modified orange 1969 Dodge Charger with the Confederate Naval Jack painted on the roof of the car.

It would be a few years later before I understood the significance of the car's name.

In 1982, my family moved from Wilmington, North Carolina to Augusta, Georgia.

We moved to Augusta when Dad became a pastor at a church there. The show was at the peak of its popularity. Here is a link to how the show came on each week:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBlNNlSgxxE

I remember one of the church members had a replica of the General Lee, which he drove back and forth to the services. It even had the horn which played the first line from the song, "Dixie." He gave us a ride one day for a few blocks around the church, which I thoroughly enjoyed...

Over 20 years later, in 2006, I moved to Las Vegas. The apartment complex where I resided was in a high crime area, a couple of blocks east of the Las Vegas strip.

"East of the strip is sh*t!", one of the city bus drivers told me. My car insurance more than doubled when I moved there from North Carolina. The insurance agent said that the zip code in Vegas where I had moved, 89109, was the number two zip code in the country for stolen cars.

All sorts of interesting but shady characters walked the streets around my apartment, and at all hours of the day and night. I had to always keep my blinds closed, so that they could not tell if I was home or not. Otherwise, there is no question that my apartment would have been robbed on a regular basis.

So, it surprised me one day when I came home from work from the auto dealership where I had found a job and saw The General Lee parked outside the leasing office.

I immediately walked up to the car and began inspecting it. A young guy about my age, who turned out to be the owner, came out of the leasing office and said hello to me.

I told him about watching the show as kid, and he completely understood. If he was telling me the truth, the car was not a replica. The General Lee I was looking at was actually one that had been used in the filming of the TV show. He told me he had a certificate of authenticity.

The guy said he had bought it just a few days before moving to Vegas, and he was here hunting for a place to live. I can't remember how much he said he paid for the car, but it was over $100,000.

The doors were welded shut, just like in the TV show, and you had to climb into the car through the window. I remember that the interior was a basic white leather. I asked him if the horn worked, and he demonstrated it for me. He said the car had been jumped for one of the episodes, and the certificate of authenticity identified the episode in which it appeared. The jump broke the axles. We both crawled underneath the car and he showed me the points where the axles had been welded back together.

In our conversation, I advised him that this was not a good place to have a car like that. Almost every morning, I would go outside and see a car that had been broken into overnight, or had damage done to it like slashed tires or busted mirrors.

He said the insurance company would not let him have it on the streets anywhere in Vegas for more than two days. They simply were not going to insure it if he planned to be driving it around town. He had just got into the city. He was going to drive it for the two days, and then put the car in a garage.

I'm not sure why the guy moved to Vegas, or why he was considering living east of the strip, as he had the money to spend over $100k on a car, but I never saw the car or him again while I lived there.

As a child of the 80s, The General Lee, along with K.I.T.T. from the show Knight Rider, is one of my two favorite cars of all time.

Fire Ants and Lost at Sea

When I was a small child, I had very little fear of animals and basically no fear of dogs.

I have fond memories of my childhood in the early 80s in Wilmington, NC, where I lived from my birth until I was five years old.

We stayed in a small apartment on Christa Drive.

One day in the front yard, I discovered some fire ant mounds. I remember that the ants were carrying tiny white balls, and I asked Mom what those were. "Those are eggs," she said. And she also told me to be careful, that fire ants can sting.

I had fun for a while, playing in the dirt of the mounds, being careful to not touch the ants. I would bury them in a little bit of dirt and watch how long it took for them to dig their way out.

Suddenly, I felt a burning sensation on my index finger. Somehow, an ant had managed to sting me.

I didn't cry, but I remember hopping up and down on one leg, saying, "Ow! Ow! Ow!"

"I told you," Mom said.

She took me inside to put some sort of medicine on my finger. One ant sting did not really hurt that badly. It had just surprised me.

Looking back, now, I enjoy this memory because of the time and place. It was early 1980s Wilmington. My mom was young and not working at that time. I really had no cares in the world, and I remember the fun of being outside and playing in the dirt and soft, almost pure white sand in our front yard. The dirt with the fire ant hills was directly in front of out apartment. The white sand was in a vacant lot to the left as you walked out our front door. The white sand would be cool to the touch at sunset.

About four or five years ago, around 2008, that time period began to seem like a different era for me. No longer was it the recent past.

I began this blog, as I've said before, because it bothers me that my earliest memories are beginning to fade. I thought that I would always have them, but that is not true. Once they are gone from my mind, they are gone completely except for what I record here. I find that others in my family don't have the same recollection that I do. It will be very much like the events never happened, which is disturbing to me...

We moved from Wilmington to Augusta, Georgia in 1982, when Dad decided to become a pastor.

At the church where Dad preached, I remember playing on the lawn. After I had finished playing, I got into the back seat of our car.

I suppose my Mom's sister's family was visiting us, as I remember her husband, my Uncle Duke, sitting beside me in the back seat.

As we were about to drive away, I noticed that my pants were covered with fire ants.

"Ants!" I said.

Uncle Duke ignored me.

"Ants!" I said again.

"Be cool," he replied.

Finally, he looked down at me and saw the problem.

The next thing I knew, he and Dad had both snatched off my pants and were shaking them fiercely and knocking the ants off outside the car on the grassy lawn of the church.

Luckily, I did not get stung once.

Over the years, my memories of Uncle Duke have also faded. He and Aunt Martha divorced not long after this story took place, and I have probably only seen him once in the past 20 or 25 years, that being at Grandma Carter's funeral in 1995.

I remember that I was hesitant to play with him when I was a child. He was pretty rough, and I might have actually gotten bruises from the way he tossed us kids around.

Otherwise, though, I have heard people say he was a good man...

The first trip to the beach that I can recall was in Wilmington with my Mom. My brother, Adam, may have been there, too, but I don't recall him. My memory is of just Mom and me.

Wilmington is a port city (as an aside, it played a large role in the Civil War), so it was easy for Mom to take me to the beach, if the car was available.

The ocean, stretching as far as my eyes could see, was fascinatingly scary.

Mom gave me a cup to play with in the sand. It was a blue plastic drinking cup almost exactly like what students use to play beer pong now.

I remember trying to scoop up the ocean in it as waves came in. I could not have been more than three or four years old.

One wave knocked the cup out of my hands, and to my shock, it disappeared in the water. I could not find it again.

I asked Mom where it went, and she told me that it had gone out into the ocean.

I looked to the horizon of the sea and thought that she meant that the cup was now way out there.

She said that the ocean would eventually wash the cup up on the shore again in a different place. We walked down the beach for a while, looking for the cup, but we never did find it.

I suppose that was my first experience with the power of the ocean. I've never been a big fan of the water or of going out on boats, though I enjoy the beach. Perhaps if I was a stronger swimmer things would be different, but the swimming lessons I took a few years later in Lumberton never stuck.

This again, though, is a good memory because it is one of the few remaining that I have of Mom and Wilmington from the early 1980s.

Imagination, My First Baseball Game and "Noah's World"

As a kid, my imagination often got the best of me.

Video games became so real that they were all I ever thought about. I remember the gold cartridge from the Nintendo game, The Legend of Zelda. I lived and breathed that game for a while, until I came to the conclusion that it was unhealthy for me to continue playing it. Even today, many years later, I sometimes still have dreams that I am in that world. I use a sword to strike infinite numbers of square blocks of stone that have rounded corners. The stones burst and disintegrate like dense sacks of flour, one after another. It creates a sensation in my spine that is difficult to describe on paper.

This sounds a bit weird, I'm sure.

Perhaps this is somewhat strange for a young boy, too: The first crush I had on a girl was with She-Ra, the Princess of Power. Remembering back to my emotions of that time, I felt some pretty serious affection for her.

The problem is that She-Ra was a cartoon character. The series ran from 1985-86. To me, she was a real person that I had conversations with in my dreams at night.

As a kid, I also watched the cartoon, Dungeons and Dragons, which ran from 1983-1985. My parents thought the game of Dungeons and Dragons was a little too close to witchcraft, and they would not let me play it. Looking back, I'm glad they did not buy the game for me and only let me watch the cartoon, because I would have sunken into that world very deeply.

My tendency as a child to kind of lose touch with reality did not just revolve around medieval type fantasies, though it is a reason that even as an adult, I've shied away from reading the Harry Potter novels, as good as they may be. Movies are better for me. You are in and out in a couple of hours. Novels can takes weeks to read and force you to create much more of the imagery in your mind.

I remember when dad signed up my brother and me to play organized baseball for the first time. It was t-ball, actually, and the name of our team was the Falcons. We had white shirts with red lettering and red hats with white lettering.

Our arch rival, the Larks, whose colors were maroon and white, gave us our only loss in the regular season.

We met the Larks again in the championship game, though, and this time we won. The coaches got us all trophies.

I was not the best player, and I got stuck in right field for most games.

But when I learned I was going to play baseball, when dad told my brother and me that he had signed us up and I and that our first practice was soon, in my head was quite vivid imagery. I was a first baseman, wearing a uniform that resembled closely that of the New York Yankees. The stadium that we played in would be huge, the size of a pro stadium, and it would be completely packed with fans.

I remember real feelings of anxiety about the situation. But even at that young age, I also had a sort of thrill that girls would be in the stands watching me play ball.

The reality of the actual environment we played in- bleachers occupied mainly by parents at a small recreational park field- never lessened my nervousness before and during a game.

During our first practice, I drew a laugh from the crowd on a play, when I ran way outside the baseline to avoid being tagged by the third baseman.

Around that same time, I attended my first major league baseball game. My family went with a church group to watch the Atlanta Braves.

It was about a six hour drive from Lumberton to Atlanta, and I remember riding in the church van. My uncle Ken and my cousin Brian (a younger kid than me) also went with our family.

These were the days before Turner Field had been built. The team played in Fulton County Stadium, and they were not very good. The stadium was practically empty for the game against the Cincinnati Reds.

My cousin's favorite player was Dale Murphy of the Braves. Brian had a poster of him in his bedroom, and he was very excited about getting to see the game.

During the drive down to Atlanta from North Carolina, Brian crawled under one the back seat in the church van with some action figures and began playing in what he called "Noah's World."

We all thought it was pretty funny, and if I remember correctly, my brother crawled under the seat with him with his own action figures. Years later, one of my friends from the church youth group would still talk about that trip and my cousin's creation of Noah's world.

During the game, the Braves vs. the Reds, I saw my first home run.

I remember it well. Through the first innings, I had watched with fascination a number of routine fly ball outs. Each one I thought would be a home run, as I was amazed at how high and how far the ball traveled.

When Eric Davis of the Reds hit the homer, though, the crowd reacted differently as the ball came off the bat. The trajectory of the ball was more of a line shot, and it traveled more quickly than the other fly ball outs.

There was a roar as soon as Davis hit it, and a Reds fan sitting in front of me threw his fist in the air as the ball took flight. There were almost as many Reds fans at the game as Braves fans.

I remember Pete Rose, too, the manager of the Reds who at that time also played for them, running out to argue a call. The chorus of boos, even though it was a sparse crowd, startled me.

Dad also bought me some ice cream served in a miniature Braves batting helmet.

It was great trip, and a great introduction to my favorite sport.

A Great Plate of Spaghetti

Over the Christmas Holiday, I got to visit my family in North Carolina. It was a valuable time to me. However, I brought back a cold to Miami that has stuck with me for longer than usual. It has killed my appetite and kept my energy too low to exercise like I normally do or even move around that much.

Yesterday, the craving for food finally came back- but only for spaghetti.

I went out last night looking for spaghetti, but the Miami traffic was just so slow that I ended up ducking into a Winn Dixie close to my apartment to see what they had.

There was no hot spaghetti, but instead I bought some hot vegetable lasagna, a close second to spaghetti.

When I got back to my apartment, though, I discovered that it was not hot at all. I think perhaps Winn Dixie had meant to keep it cold, but it was closer to just room temperature.

I heated it up in a microwave, anyway, eagerly looking forward to the first bite.

What a disappointment. Not only did the lasagna taste badly, I suspected it had spoiled and eating more would put me at risk for getting a case of food poisoning.

So, again I went sick and a bit hungry last night.

Today, I had to go to Fort Lauderdale for work, and I made a point to stop at a Sbarro's on the way back at the Dolphin Mall.

This was the first mall that I've ever known to sell beer in the food court.

I ordered a plate of spaghetti and meatballs with marinara sauce, a Pepsi, and a roll of garlic bread.

It was one of the best meals that I've ever had in my life. The taste was exactly as satisfying as I imagined it would be.

My mom's cooking will always have a special place in my life, but outside of that, this was perhaps the best meal I've had since I enjoyed a Bootlegger Burger with a beer for supper at Three Sisters Speakeasy in Kissimmee. Part of the appeal of that meal was the company- my friends from the Public Defender's Office.

At Sbarro's, I ate alone. Today was the best meal by my lonesome since 2008, when I ate a great meal at a Greek food festival in Tallahassee. I was in law school, then. The fare was spanakopita and a can of Pepsi, and I enjoyed the clear night looking up at the stars.

The meal at Sbarro's today satisfied a hunger that had been going on for days. My body needed that. For a brief moment, I knew that enjoying the taste of the food and drink, and the sensation of the energy going not just to my stomach, but to my elbows and arms as well, is really as good as life gets.

Miami

I've been living in Miami for about six months, now. Last night was my first New Year's Eve in the city. I was looking forward to going out and having a good time, but unfortunately, I caught a cold and had to stay in.

Still, when the clock struck midnight, I stepped out onto the breezeway of my third floor apartment, and I could see some of the large fireworks to the east, which I assumed were along the waterfront.

When I moved here back in July, it was not my first time to the city. In January of 2005, I spent a month in Miami on business. I remember that I stayed in a hotel with a number of University of Oklahoma fans. Oklahoma played in the Orange Bowl that year for the National Championship of college football.

In 2005, I made a point to visit South Beach. I remember that the clubs did not close until 5 or 6 in the morning, and I saw some things that I have not seen anywhere else.

Among them was a beautiful woman in a bikini, walking down the street with an albino python draped around her. At another juncture, I saw a tiny Japanese woman in a kimono, leading a huge woman with a shaved head down the street by a dog collar and leash. In addition to the dog collar, the large woman wore black combat boots- but she was otherwise scantily clad in only black leather.

Inside the clubs themselves, some of the women were even more uninhibited, and I probably should not describe here a few of the things I witnessed.

I like the city of Miami, but my experience here over the past six months has been somewhat different than when I made the trip in 2005.

My current job in Miami provides me with a wonderful opportunity to make money and for professional growth, but it is more stressful than I anticipated. For some reason, I am lacking the confidence that I possessed in the courtroom as a trial lawyer (the job that I held just prior to this one).

Maybe the confidence is something that I can gain, and over the next six months I will do my best to reach a level where I feel like I am competent. I think part of the problem is that I hoped running a business would come more naturally to me than it has. In fact, though, knowing what the right decision is to make one dollar turn into two is something I struggle with, while I watch others in the company who instinctively know what the right business decision is. As one person in management said to me, "I know the right business decision in almost every situation, like the tip of my nose."

That is not me, not yet. I hope it can become me. I enjoy working with the students whom I come across in my job.

As I said, I like Miami and the people here. The women of this city are probably the most beautiful of any city that I've ever lived in.

Living in Miami is not like spending a month on business in Miami, though, with your hotel and food being comped. There is plenty to see and enjoy, but you need a lot of cash to do it.

It is like there are two different Miamis, the one for the super rich and celebrities, and then the one for the common people. On my trip in 2005, I got a glimpse of the former. Having to budget my expenses for living here over the past six months has exposed me to the latter.

I will try to see more of the city over the next six months and write about it. But keeping my head above water in my job has been my concern of the previous six months. I have not explored the city much outside of the Dadeland area where I live and go for jogs.

And traffic is incredible, to say the least. Highway 826, also know as the Palmetto Expressway, is the main road I use to go back and forth to my work locations. I've had to change the way I drive to not get run over here. Very often, after having driven all week, I just don't feel like battling traffic on a weekend and struggling to find parking to get to see some place new in the city. Instead, I'll just walk down the street from my apartment to the local Chili's Bar and Grill.

Miami is a beautiful city with beautiful people, though, and the weather is unbeatable this time of year. I am more fortunate than most to be where I am.