Bad Press

"Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do."

Stephen King

"Video shows officer killing man for a double parked car." 9News web site, 11/8/2023.

That sounds horrible, doesn't it? Traffic cops can be hard-asses, but shooting a guy because he was double parked? No reasonable officer will ever... So I clicked on the link.

It's a tragic story. According to 9News, LaSalle (CO) Police were called to a Family Dollar in the early part of the summer to investigate a suspicious incident. A car was improperly parked. The story is so poorly written that deciding if it was illegally parked is impossible. Upon arrival, the officers discover:

*The car has out of state license plates that do not "come back" - there is no record of them on file, and

*It is a Dodge Magnum that has been repainted using a method other than a professional one.

The officers - a field trainer and his third-day-on-the-job recruit - set about finding the driver of the vehicle. They encounter him in the store, but the suspect bolts, first trying the emergency exit and then fleeing out the front. This is where things get quickly out of control.

The officers have boxed the guy's car in, or so they imagine. He somehow manages to escape. That often means using the getaway vehicle as a battering ram, but the 9News story is silent on that subject. Officers are sometimes inclined to step in front of a desperate person, which sounds silly but even experienced officers with a high degree of education (me, eg.) have done that. 9News is unhelpful there, too. The recruit officer fires at the driver, who is fatally wounded.

And, that's tragic. Bad for the suspect, bad for the officer.

9News offers no explanation why the guy reacted the way he did. Was the car stolen? Was the guy wanted? Not even the admission on the part of the "journalist" that information that might illuminate why this awful situation evolved as it did was not available.

The officer was indicted by a grand jury and charged with second degree murder. It will be up to a court, and perhaps another jury, to decide if he is guilty of that charge beyond a reasonable doubt. The death is unfortunate, a horrible outcome for the person and his family. 

It is impossible for a private citizen, even one who spent decades serving in law enforcement, to begin to understand how this might have happened. Consequently, it is also impossible for a private citizen to judge whether their elected officials have handled this case prudently.

It's almost like 9News wants a person skimming the headlines of the day to utter - "You're shitting me" - and click on the story because it cannot possibly be as the headline proclaims.

UPDATE: One can only imagine the phone call. By whatever mechanism, by late afternoon 9News had amended their headline to more accurately describe what happened as "beginning" with a double parking investigation. More accurate is not clearly truthful, but at least it was better.

In the meantime, for those 9News customers who read the headline and nothing more this morning, they are still left with the mistaken impression that a LaSalle police officer shot someone in a dispute over double parking. I wonder, in the greater scheme of things, how many readers of so-called legacy media outlets like 9News wander around believing things that are not true not because they are intentionally misled, but because the quality of writing has fallen so far, so fast.

Here's To You

 "The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society. The response to the unreasoned is the rational; to the uninformed, the enlightened; to the straight-out lie, the simple truth."

Supreme Court Justice (ret) Anthony Kennedy

The First Monday in October.

"Jim," you might be asking. Or, "Sarge" if you are still uncomfortable using my first name...or, maybe you don't know it. Anyway, you might be wondering why the words are capitalized.

It's because this is a formal day of celebration. Not a national holiday - of course not. It's the opening session of the Supreme Court of the United States. The first day of the 2023 Term. Law porn season.

What, you ask, will they do beside infuriate us with their ideological games, their high-minded yet nonsensical interpretation of a document written and agreed to by people dead for nearly two hundred years? How many opinions will contain a "But, wait..." construct more fitting for poor, demised Billy May selling soap? Will we actually see fisticuffs break out (my money is on Gorsuch)?

It is almost always nail-biting, hair-raising edge of the seat stuff. They may decide a case in a manner that conflicts with your deeply-held beliefs. It's easy for me to write, "And that's okay."

Sometimes, it's not. In addition to real litigants being told that they went all the way to the Supreme Court - spent countless years and huge sums of money - only to lose, the Supreme Court routinely fields requests for stays of execution. They are granted very rarely. This is serious stuff.

But, it is our serious stuff. These nine lawyers are wrestling with many of the most important conflicts of our time. Sometimes, their decisions suit the majority of Americans, and sometimes confound them. Though we are not really spectators in a centuries-old melodrama, there is one thing I think we can all agree on.

We wish them inspiration, maybe some moments of humor, and above all that they recognize in themselves the frailties and fortitude of being human beings who have a very important job.

So, here's to you, you magnificent... Anyway, we raise a glass of "First Monday in October" to the new term.  

GC Kuss

 It's hard and cruel to be a professional cyclist. You suffer a lot in preparation, you sacrifice your life, your family, and you do everything you can to be ready. After you get here you realize that everyone is incredibly strong and its hard to follow the wheels sometimes.

Matej Mohorič, after winning Tour de France stage 19

Sepp and Jonas

Sepp Kuss, born 29 years ago in Durango, Colorado, riding for the Jumbo-Visma team, won the Vuelta a Espana's mountain top Stage 6, alone. He high-fived spectators lining the finish line, grinned that very Sepp Kuss grin and took the accolades on the winner's podium. He was within a short drive from the home he shares with his wife in Andorra, and these were his most ardent fans. He also took in a very healthy amount of the Cava (Spanish champagne) magnum the stage winner is handed. It was his moment to shine. Apparently, the last thing on his mind was the leader's jersey.

 Helping others is where Sepp Kuss makes his living as a high-mountain domestique. It is exactly as it sounds - he takes care of others so that, when the time comes, they can ride to glory. Fetches them water bottles, grabs a feed bag and shares its contents, paces someone back when they have something go wrong (or when they've had to make a nature break). As the brutal, steep and unrelenting climbs (that often decide a grand tour) appear, he is among the dwindling riders at the front. Sometimes ahead, sometimes behind, but always within striking distance of his team leader. Everyone is approaching their limit - the pain difficult to bear. Then, Sepp strikes.

 

His riding shatters the small group, leaving... Often, leaving only him and his team leader. Eventually he accedes to the reality of his role. The team leader, having been aided up the mountain, bursts forward to snatch precious second over his rivals. Sepp? Job done, he arrives at the finish spent, as often as not ignored by the cameras. Back to the bus, a shower, dinner. Prepare for the next day, which might be yet another mountaintop finish in the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Apennines. Back to the front, back to supporting the team leader. Back to riding at his limit for as long and as hard as he is able. He's done that for every Grand Tour in which he participated, and whenever one of his teammates wins the overall, it's been with Sepp's help.

A funny thing happened. Fellow Jumbo rider (2023 Tour of Italy winner) Primoz Roglic won Stage 8, but... Math and hard riding put Sepp in the red leader's jersey - first in the "General Classification." GC Kuss, get it? Yay, Sepp. A fitting reward for all of his hard work. Something for his resume, a jersey to hang in his den. In a couple of days there was an individual time trial - the "Race of Truth." Remco Evenepoel (Soudal - Quick-Step), the world time trial champion (the defending Vuelta 2022 winner) would, inevitably, surpass Sepp and that would be that. Back to riding for his team leaders Primoz, and Jonas Vingegaard. 

"That's the first time trial I've ridden where no one passed me," Sepp said later, laughing. Two reasons. He started last - there was no one left to pass him. And, he rode an excellent time trial. He "exceeded expectations." Evenepoel - talented but mercurial Remco - did not ride well enough to take the red jersey. In the world of high stakes cycle racing, barring some kind of disaster (a crash, or horrible legs) that should have been that. Sepp's Jumbo-Visma team shepherds him to the finish, there are wild celebrations, and...

One of the alluring things about cycle racing is the human drama. Not just the competition, not just watching men and women wrest the very last ounces of endurance from their bodies. No - cycle racers are crazy. Let me tell you a story.

I rode for nearly a month, day in and day out, with a guy named Glenn - Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Long climbs, frightening descents ("Hold my wheel and you'll be fine," he said) and long stretches of monotonous flats. He'd "done some racing in California" he said in passing as I gasped for breath. Bicycle racers were assholes, he observed. He showed me the proper way to secure the quick releases on my wheels so no one could flip them as they rode past. He taught me to ride close to the wheel of another cyclist without overlapping, lest that person take you out. "Back in the peloton, guys trying to get position on you will fuck with you."

We were sitting around a fire in Teton National Park - soon after, we parted ways but remained friends for years - and other cyclists asked to join us. It wasn't long, or many beers, later that one of the guys pointed at Glenn and said, "Do you know who that is? He was cycling champion of California." That, I did not know. It had never come up. I turned to my friend... "Asshole."

So, there was always going to be drama. Jumbo seemed to implode with petty jealousies and pointless bickering. Team management seemed content to "Let the riders decide" - cycle racers are assholes - and it seemed that in a sport where fans loving a team makes the sponsors happy they decided on a different course. "Hear me out," said the pointed meme. "Let's see what happens if people hate us." Of the three strongest riders - teammates Sepp, Jonas and Primoz - it was often hard to see who was odd man out. Then, Primoz rode Sepp off his wheel. Social media went nuts.

It must have been an interesting team meeting. I can imagine the phone calls from sponsors - "Get those assholes under control before no one wants to shop in our stores" - which is something to which management is particularly sensitive. Suddenly, it was smiles all around. Of course they were riding for Sepp. Don't be silly. Etcetera.

That's what they did. They protected Sepp, kept him safe. They did for him what he had done for them over thousands of kilometers, all over the world. They made sure he was right where he needed to be. They chased down attacks, they helped him avoid the argy-bargy at the end of sprint stages. Behind the scenes, they made sure he knew how to win a grand tour.

One little moment... On a high mountain late in the Vuelta Jonas led, Primoz on his wheel and Sepp tucked safely behind them. A small group of climbers raced to the top. Suddenly several strong riders attack the group, opening up a gap. Like a shot, Sepp covers it - rides not just onto their wheels but past them. Big grin, fresh legs, he's racing his bike and having the time of his life. He jumps out in front and... Jonas Vingegaard, twice winner of the Tour de France, says something into his race radio. Sepp returns to the fold and the three teammates, with nothing more to prove, ride to the finish.

It's the end of Stage 21 and the team is celebrating Sepp's victory in the small paddock among the trucks and busses of the Vuelta caravan. Sepp's mom has found Jonas, still astride his bike and taking it all in. She embraces him and says "He's learned so much from you."

Sepp Kuss, deserving Vuelta champion, on a team that found their true identity as champions.

A Pirate Looks At Good Bye

 "If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane."

Jimmy Buffett, "Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes," (1977)

Reflecting on the passing of lifestyle icon Jimmy Buffett.

Seventy-six hard charging years at the helm of sand, sail, and a business empire that the man himself said began with the realization he could sing. It has become a multi-billion dollar concern that is still growing.

It began with "Come Monday," a tune he said paid the bills for a long time as his music career took hold. He and his girlfriend - she became his wife for life - drove their old pickup to the beach so they could film a music video of that song.

Jimmy kept working at his brand, blending an ear for storytelling with a showman's gift of gab. Steeped in the Key West island sound, he played the bar scene until the breakout 1977 mammoth Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes introduced the world to the term "Margaritaville" which, Jimmy said a thousand times, was anywhere you wanted it to be.

The party atmosphere of his concerts promised not just good music and his unique island-style banter, but it stamped one's membership as a "Parrothead." You were part of the scene, no matter the venue. You could have an island lifestyle, whether you were in Fort Myers Beach, Florida, or Fort Lupton, Colorado.

Indeed, all it took was the music, a Hawaiian shirt and a superfood beverage made from distilled blue agave, limes and some kind of orange liquor. Walking into a Margaritaville restaurant in Cozumel, we were greeted by a pirate, who graciously posed for pictures with us...which, I assume, was his job. A seaside veranda table gave us a view of the Yucatan, excellent island drinks in souvenir glasses ("Pour me something tall and strong") and delicious seafood. Pictures of the man hung on the walls, along with seafaring totems - nets, sails... Below us, a swim dock with a slide, an aquatic trampoline and a dozen party-goers enjoying the water. Over the house speakers, of course, the sounds of the man himself.

 How pervasive was the man, and his trademark? He appears in the movie "Jurassic World," just another diner in an outdoor restaurant invaded by flying prehistoric carnivores. His moment in front of the camera? He is fleeing in great haste, but not before snagging a couple of frosted margs for the road.

Margaritaville, it turns out, is about sharing. Sharing an interest, sharing a place, sharing moments stolen from an otherwise hectic life. It is sipping a cold marg out on the back deck on a warm summer evening, in the company of the love of my life and the dogs that give us so much. It is sharing an unlikely island bar with a few dozen brand new Syracuse basketball fans during tournament time. It is a laptop, an array of characters and a passion for writing. It's Ubering to our favorite local restaurant on the day I retired - alive and with my dignity intact - to share a meal and a few margaritas with Pat.

It was a restaurant in downtown Denver, Mexican food and the best house marg in town in the company of an adult daughter. It was in the faces we made as we sampled an Oklahoma wine margarita, and how quickly we broke out her Margaritaville frozen drink maker. It's sitting on her back porch in Edmond on a 95 degree day watching her kids play with their dog.

Where is Margaritaville? With Mr. Jimmy Buffett to guide us, it is in the hearts of everyone who sees paradise as a state of mind, a place in your heart. Fair winds and following seas, sir.

Good Bye Claudia Jean

 “Such short little lives our pets have to spend with us, and they spend most of it waiting for us to come home each day.” – John Grogan, Marley & Me.

Saying good bye to CJ.

6 weeks old

Most dogs are complicated, once you get to know them. Oh, the basics are easy enough - feed them what they want to eat, don't leave them too many scary places when you run off to vacation spots and if it's a nice day a lap around the park will do everyone a world of good. Car trips can be a good excuse to explore, a great way to find a new place to hike and a fabulous excuse to nap in the shade by a Moab waterfall. Those are givens.

It's the individual quirks that matter, and our CJ had them. A Portuguese Water Dog, she came equipped with webbed feet. That's what the true water dogs did; swim nets, retrieve objects, take messages from one boat to another. Protect the boat and the catch. Only...

No matter how much training and encouragement CJ got, she never really liked the water. "That's got to be the slowest swimming Portuguese I ever saw," said one judge at a competition. She used her hind legs as a sort of rudder, not that she ever went fast enough for it to work. At all. Throw one of the training "bumpers" into the water and she'd look at you with utter disdain. The look as much as said "You don't expect me to get that, do you?" She did like riding in the boat, watching our other PWD get wet. She just never really took to being an actual water Water Dog.

But, she had the protective thing down cold. She was with us at a time when we both endured significant work upsets. We'd walk for miles in her company, our Papillon Radar zigging and zagging while CJ trotted along beside us. Ever wary, she didn't get very excited by other dogs, but if we betrayed the least little discomfort with other people, it was all hands on deck time. The behavior wasn't overt - which is even more ominous to anyone with a mind to mess with us. It was the stink eye, the subtle warning, the body language that said, "You're close enough." She never tired of long walks to the park, never once thought that the long conversations Mom and Dad had were repetitious, or boring.

She was going to be my other writing companion, to go along with Radar. We had a second floor balcony, perfect for sitting on wicker furniture, sipping something cold and working on a novel. Radar had seen me through a couple manuscripts and CJ...went out once, looked through the railing at the ground below and quickly returned to the sliding glass door. Never again to venture out willingly. Or, for that matter, even enticed with a treat.

She found her stride, and her favorite moments, learning K9 Nose Work. The sport, a sort of hide and seek with scent (birch, clove and anise), suited her intelligence and even temperament. The sport was relatively new - her license was in the 300s whereas our almost two year old Joy's is in the ten thousands - and many of the teething issues were worked out with her generation. She titled her first time out, won several ribbons and not once did she have to go in the water. It was so perfect a sport for her that, even weeks away from the Rainbow Bridge she still enjoyed a chance to sniff the air for a hide.

When her health started to fail her in 2021, we brought in Joy, a high-motor Havanese, so that our other PWD Jed wouldn't be an only dog when the inevitable time came. It seemed to give CJ, of all things, a new lease on life. She joined in the backyard chase games, barking and running as though years had fallen away. Instead of being a bulwark against Jed being lonely, Joy gave CJ nearly two more quality years. Go figure.

Just a few weeks past her 16th birthday, the last of her litter, it seemed that the time had come. And so we said good bye to our girl, who had seen us through half our marriage, a chaotic and emotional period of moves and medical issues and the passing of our parents, and walked with us into retirement. We assume we will see her again when our own Rainbow Bridge crossing arrives, ready to walk again with us on our next adventure.

Flea Market Memories

"My mother used to take me to flea markets in my stroller, and I would just rummage through the piles. You've got to dig through the overstuffed racks that everyone else just walks by. It's the only way to find the cool stuff."

Lily Collins

Lolo Pass (Montana-Idaho border) June, 1976

I almost always begin any blog with a quote. I want them to be topical, perhaps introductory in nature. At least germane. So I searched "Flea market quotes." There were hundreds.

What amazed me - which I admit isn't a huge ask - was how many of the quotes began, "My [parent] used to take me to the flea market, where..." I'd thought I was the only one, except it was me taking my mom. And, I thank God for that.

How could that be? My mom didn't drive, not that she didn't try to learn. I think it was the time she nearly drove through the wall of the school kitchen at which she worked (it is called, blandly, "pedal misapplication" by automotive engineers) that finally did her, and her instructor, in. The day I got my license, in 1971, my dad, in high dudgeon and with great ceremony, handed me the keys to the family car - a Ford Torino. 

"Your turn," he said.

One of our destinations, on multiple occasions, was a large flea market. We bought books, mostly - both Mom and Dad were voracious readers. On one occasion, I found a treasure that became deeply important to me. I hadn't thought about it in 40 years.

And then, I had some pictures transferred from slides to digital... If that's the correct way to phrase it. And, there it was, in all of its splendor. The orange jacket I wore, through rain and bitter cold, in the early days of Bikecentennial '76. 

It probably cost a dollar. It fit fine, did the job I asked of it (warm, light and very visible) but had one peculiar attribute that sparked a question wherever, and whenever, I wore it.

"Where is East Campbell, NY?"

The jacket had, boldly printed on the back, "East Campbell, NY Volunteer Fire Department." Having never been a volunteer firefighter, much less one in East Campbell, I really didn't know. Purchased in pre-Google days (and lost by the time the internet was a thing) I had only the vaguest of notions where East Campbell might be. Since most of the fire departments in Western NY are volunteer, that didn't help, either. It was bright and warm and that's all I knew.

In August of 1977 I moved to Denver, to start life as an adult. My relocation from Pittsford, NY coincided with a resurgence...well, since they'd never been much I guess technically it's surgence...of the Broncos. Colorado was crazy for these now wonderfully successful football players, a team that featured a defense called the "Orange Crush."

After a particularly stirring gridiron victory by our hometown boys, I put on my East Campbell jacket and went out for a run. Well, you would think I'd been on the field that day, because the driver of every car that passed honked madly and waved at me with crazed abandon. My orange jacket, having been to Oregon and back, suddenly made me one of "them," but a good them, a collegial them. It was obvious, if one didn't get too close, that I was a Bronco fan and was sporting the required regalia.

My mom would chuckle, were she around to read this. That orange jacket was just another thing that bonded us over the years that I drove her here and there, ending only when she passed in 2015. JC Penney to pay her credit card bill, Wegmans to purchase ingredients for dinner, and an orange cast-off jacket from a volunteer fire department in New York.

Page Turner

"Here I am
On the road again
There I am
Up on the stage
Ah, here I go
Playin' star again
There I go
Turn the page"

"Turn the Page," Bob Seeger and the Silver Bullet Band, Back In '72, (1973)

The risks attendant to letting someone read what you write? They are honest when you ask, "How'd you like it?" Actual answers:

"I hated one of your characters. I know you wanted me to like him, but he's an asshole."

"Real cops don't talk like that."

"It feels like two different people wrote this book."

"It was professionally written, but not for me."

Fair enough. But, I'm not sure what to do with information I received recently, a sort of metric that amounts to a review. 

Each morning, when I get up and go on line (mostly me and one of the dogs... One of the dogs and I are the only ones awake) I check my author dashboard on Amazon, to see what's cookin'. The other day... One page, zero dollars earned.

One page.

Technically... I made $.004. That is added to the monthly total, and gets paid out on the 19th of (almost) every month. But, that's really not the problem. Apparently, unlike potato chips, The Fort in the Harbor did not represent, at least to this reader, that ultimate compliment - "A real page-turner." One page?!

Because this method of author compensation relies on the Kindle version, let's look at what KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) believes is page one of Fort. It's the title page! Are they telling me someone stopped reading Fort after only the title page?!

Okay, so maybe it was someone who was in the middle of the book. Or, like a reader recently reported, they had one page left to be finished with one of my novels. But, one page?!

I do get it. Our kids are all themselves parents. They report reading the same page of a book multiple times due to kid/pet interruptions. Pet owners - I recently calculated that we've opened the back door to our house over 80 thousand times since we closed on this house in 2010. That doesn't include breaking up dog disagreements, rescuing lunch from counter-surfing Water Dogs (not always successful) and hustling geriatric pets into the backyard before they "have an accident."

But... One page? At least, before you set down the reading device, brush to the next page. Then I get $.008. And that shit adds up.

Oh, yeah. One of my books actually was written by two different writers. I wrote the rough draft in the middle 2000s, and revised the second half of the book extensively in 2020. In a sense, I was a different, and I hope better, writer when I finished the final product fifteen years after I started.

Cheers!

It's the Mileage

 "Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked."

Mary Schmich, "Wear Sunscreen" hypothetical commencement speech, Chicago Tribune, 1997

Some weeks ago - enough that they amount to "last June," I took the plunge, as it were. Not a big life decision, nothing like that. There have been plenty of those in the last three years. I mean that I ventured to "Mike's Cameras" and invested a few dollars converting into digital form about a third of the photographs - which I'd had developed as slides - taken during Bikecentennial '76.

It was the bike ride I took, from Reedsport, Oregon to Yorktown, Virginia...June through August. I was unprepared to see some of the images, having tucked them away more than forty years ago.

There is one taken in the very early days of the ride - my modest fitness level apparent in the shape of my calves. I am looking into the deep forest approaching Eugene, Oregon, in the first week of June. Everything, including me, is clean and bright. My journey had just begun and the miles, the many arduous miles, had not yet tempered us.

In another, I am somewhere near the top of a climb, looking back at the road I have traveled. I was riding a bike with (perhaps - I never really weighed it) thirty pounds of gear that represented home and hearth.

I had not arrived at that point effortlessly, but that I was there at all was a testament to naive optimism as much as skill or preparation. It wasn't long after that I reached the highest point of my journey, in Colorado.

It wasn't long after that a chance encounter led directly to a return to Colorado, mostly for good. She would enter the University of Denver that fall, in the same school year I would graduate Northeastern University in Boston. Although the relationship was short-lived, the roots I set in Colorado proved impossible to ignore. Less than two years after I moved to Denver I found the law enforcement job that I sought, and that would be the beginning of a career that provided - and continues to provide - everything I might ask.

In Missouri I met a couple from San Francisco who, like many of us who'd been on the road for nearly two months, were ready to be finished. "I just want to get to the fucking end," muttered the male half as we rode together in the late July heat and humidity. In August, I got there. The last stop, the last office of Bikecentennial '76. The trailhead that marked the official end of my journey. Good byes.

I had no idea, then, the adventures, the possibilities, that were ahead. Sitting here, happily retired in the company of the love of my life, and our companion animals, I don't look like the young, exceptionally fit rider who met an improbable challenge in one of the summers of my youth.

So many miles have disappeared under the front wheel of my bikes in the intervening 47 years. I am blessed that the front wheel is still turning.

 

Training as a Substitute for Ignorance

 State Rep. Judy Amabile said [excited delerium] is "bullsh-t." She's asking the Attorney General to drop a law enforcement training requirement surrounding it.

Chris Vanderveen, 9News (7/12/2023)

It seems like everyone is a law enforcement expert, no experience or training required.

Media, activists and now local governmental officials have leapt onto an interesting bandwagon in an effort to unfairly discredit law enforcement officers. In this case, it is to suggest that the term "excited delirium" often used to describe individuals encountered (not exclusively) by first responders in fact is a broad and imprecise diagnosis used to excuse police brutality targeting minority males. Don't believe me?

Excited delirium (ExDS), also known as agitated delirium (AgDS) or hyperactive delirium syndrome with severe agitation, is a controversial diagnosis sometimes characterized as a potentially fatal state of extreme agitation and delirium. It is typically diagnosed postmortem in young adult males, disproportionally (sic) black men, who were physically restrained at the time of death, most often by law enforcement personnel. (Wiki)

Got it?

Apparently, beginning in 2020, international medical groups began to question the vitality of EXDS as a diagnosis for cause of death when someone who is apparently healthy, strong as an ox one minute, successfully fighting off a dozen cops in the process, suddenly dies. The exact mechanism of death was imperfectly described, leading some individuals to consider that medical examiners might be papering over something sinister. Consequently, many organizations have chosen to drop EXDS from its vocabulary. Totally up to them, of course.

That doesn't exactly solve the real world problem, which astute readers need not be reminded of: No matter what you call it, what does the reasonable, rational officer/deputy/trooper do when they encounter someone who is, to put it politely, losing their shit in a manner resistant to appeals to reason? If the need arises to fight with this person, are they in some imminent danger of dying suddenly? If so, what are the cops supposed to do about it?

Before it became a thing, authoritative research recognized a phenomenon not just regarding in-custody deaths, but in people found, well, dead.

Approximately two thirds of EXD victims die at the scene or during transport by paramedics or police.²⁶ Victims who do not immediately come to police attention are often found dead in the bathroom surrounded by wet towels and/or clothing and empty ice trays, apparently succumbing during failed attempts to rapidly cool down. Excited Delirium, WestJEM, NIH National Library of Medicine (Feb 2011).

The article associates EXDS with cocaine use, and talks a lot of fancy heart ailment jargon. Suffice to say that the authors had no real axe to grind (their research related to positional asphyxia is interesting in what it doesn't conclude) and wanted to provide information to those who might have to care for these individuals in the back of an ambulance, or in an ER. It wasn't bullshit, it was the real, messy world encountered every single day by police officers, firefighters and emergency department employees dealing with violent, dangerous and potentially fatally ill people.

So, okay. Let's, for a moment, decide that our heroes at POST insist law enforcement stop teaching police recruits about EXDS. What is the purpose of such a request? What does the present training cause police officers to do if they encounter a suspected case that Colorado lawmakers would like to see changed?

Current training suggests that the officers do whatever they can to relieve the victim's respiratory distress and call for emergency medical care.

Officers do not make a diagnosis at the point of contact, any more than an arrest on probable cause is a verdict. It is simply a way to create a decision model that is relatively easy to follow, and begins the process of bringing to bear the right resources.

Some years ago I was driving around town - marked car, blue uniform, doing sergeant stuff, which meant I was near a coffee shop. A car was in the nearby intersection, people milling around it. Okay, even in my distracted supervisor state I knew this was not normal. I activated the overhead lights (on the first try) let dispatch know I had some kind of traffic incident in an intersection (correctly identifying it without a map) and walked up to talk to the driver.

It was an older woman - about my age now - who was obviously...well, out of it. She didn't know who she was, where she was, when she was. She could have been:

Drunk,

Overdosing on medication,

Diabetic,

A Stroke victim,

The list goes on and on. I had been taught - in classes mandated by the State - that disorientation, slurred speech and inappropriate driving decisions in the absence of an odor of alcohol were a medical emergency. I need not know, and didn't particularly care, exactly what was going on. I was there to do two things. Render the scene safe, and call for professional medical responders. The woman needed trained paramedics, and she needed to be evaluated for a trip to the hospital.

As it turned out, the medics gave her a little tablet to munch on and... She was diabetic. It woke her right up. After that, everything was simple.

I tell this story not because I'm a hero. It's because I had proper instruction, which allowed me to make an informed decision. The woman got the proper treatment, I got my coffee.

If an officer, properly trained, believes the person with whom they are dealing is undergoing excited delirium and they call for medical assistance - does it matter if it turns out to be something else? If the correct protocol after a fight with an EXDS victim is to turn them onto their side, facilitate proper respiration and call for the paramedics... Isn't that what you'd want them to do?

The thought, of course, is that officers are killing people (in something of the manner of George Floyd) and then are being exonerated because, you know, excited delirium. Okay, but isn't that a separate issue? The ultimate offense that led to the officers' successful prosecution in Minneapolis is that they all knew what they were supposed to do. They'd been properly trained. At least one of them expressed it during the event. They just didn't do it.

One need not imagine what might have occurred if that training had been withheld, rather than neglected.

Very few police officers are cavalier about their responsibility to look after the welfare of even those with whom they've had a violent encounter. Nearly every first responder knows that, once the scene is safe, treating the injuries of victims - including the person in custody - is paramount.

I think it's a wonderful idea to prevent officers from receiving training that might save a life, don't you? Now, that's some bullshit right there.

Isle of Man Man

 Second doesn't mean anything in cycling.

Mark Cavendish 

Perspective.

Pop quiz - what is your favorite sport, and who is its all-time biggest star?

Hold that thought. We'll get back to it.

Bicycle racer and sprinter Mark Cavendish crashed out of his (supposedly) final Tour de France on Stage 8 in a most ignominious, entirely big race way. That is, on a flat road with the peloton cruising along at nearly thirty miles per hour, someone did something stupid way ahead of him. When the Slinky© snapped unexpectedly he had nowhere to go. Over the bars, onto the pavement, into the ambulance. In professional bike racing, it happens that fast.

We sat stunned. The day before, Mark came within a bike's length of the latest reckless driver on Stage 7, a pure sprinter's stage. A younger Cav would have left the lesser (and erratic) eventual winner in his wake. It wasn't to be then, and won't be now.

Over the course of the quarter century Dr. Greer and I have watched the Tour, we have seen perhaps four generations of dominant sprinters. There was Mario Cippolini in the early 90s. Eric Zabel won the Green sprinter's jersey on into the 2000s. Robbie McEwan's blinding speed and fearlessness led the peloton in the 20-teens and then came Mark Cavendish. Each, in their own way, was a force to be reckoned with, a fierce presence among the hard, brave men who sprint their bikes.

Cav was the antithesis of the bold strutters. He wears his heart on his sleeve - cries shamelessly in interviews, drops the occasional F-bomb and, is uncharacteristically candid ("How do you know a bike racer is lying?" asks commentator Bob Roll rhetorically. "His lips are moving.") when asked about tactics or objectives. He is an old school racer in a modern game dominated by skinny climbers.

A fractured clavicle, which damaged a previous surgical repair to the same bone (an old screw is loose, which seems appropriate for a sprinter). His Tour de France career is over.

He remains tied with Eddie Merckx, a racer from a bygone era so talented that he won not just the yellow jersey (five times) signifying Tour de France victory, but in 1969 he won every jersey awarded at the time - overall, climber and combativity. His nickname is "The Cannibal." He is the greatest bicycle racer of all time, perhaps the most dominant individual professional athlete ever.

Mark Cavendish is tied with Eddie at 34 Tour de France stage wins.

But. wait! His Team - Astana - offered him a contract extension to ride in the 2024 Tour. 

The Manx Missile. See you next year, mark.

Status Quo Johhny

Force may make hypocrites, but it can never make converts.

William Penn

We are all hypocrites.

I include myself in the mix. Among my favorite books is a tome titled, Scalia Dissents: Writings of the Supreme Court's Wittiest, Most Outspoken Justice, Kevin A. Ring, editor, (2004). I don't enjoy every reading merely because the late Antonin Scalia wrote pity, often profound opinions. As often as not, I disagreed with the outcome of the case. Sometimes - okay, maybe more than sometimes - I rejected the reasoning of the majority because I thought the result was stupid. I am no better (and possibly somewhat worse) than everyone else.

So the cacophony of voices objecting to the June decisions of the 2022 Supreme Court term are, well, normal in most respects. Aghast, shocked, angry beyond words. Except...

There is the (usual?) proclamation that the Supreme Court is (wait for it) illegitimate. "MAGA-captured," explains Senator Schumer. "The Supreme Court Has Dismantled Our Rights," writes Rebecca Solnit of The Guardian. In Aljazeera, Belen Fernandez decries the decisions in an essay entitled "SCOTUS is ramping up oppression in the 'land of the free.'" The Fernandez piece is especially illustrative of how many of the arguments are crafted:

In another recent education-related stunt, the Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, which he had magnanimously put forth after having assisted in creating the student debt crisis in the first place. The ruling affects well over 40 million people in the US.

Ms. Fernandez goes on to offer an argument (Plaintiff Missouri's math is faulty) that was not in evidence before the Court and may not be true. It also ignores the obvious, which brings us to the point of this post.

Chief Justice John "Johnny Rocket" Roberts is the epitome of status quo. A review of the rulings of this term gives (me) the impression that, rather than a collection of radical MAGA adherents, the six-members commonly associated with "The Right" are less interested in changing the legal landscape than they are to refer those decisions to the appropriate one of the political branches.

Take, for example, the North Carolina redistricting case (Moore v. Harper). Petitioner suggested that the Constitution vested total and unreviewable authority in state legislatures to draw district lines for federal elections. It can't be good for the petitioner when the Court begins an analysis of judicial review by citing Marbury v. Madison from...1803. That's right. It's hard to get much more status quo than to hold that the Supreme Court has recognized judicial review as a thing for two hundred years.

Texas sued Joey B and his boys over the enforcement of immigration law, alleging that the Biden Administration had de facto opened our country's flood gates to people without regard to...well, anything. Fair enough. In a departure from nothing, the Court reminded Texas (and everyone else) of what they all learned in middle school (junior high for us Boomers) - the Executive Branch of the federal government enforces federal law, and they are granted a great deal of deference in doing it. Something about limited resources with alternative uses. In an opinion that may have disappointed some, but surprised no one the Court didn't see it Texas's way.

We've already talked about the Harvard and UNC case.

Finally, the Colorado Web Designer case. Let's start with a caveat - I would not make the same business decision that the web designer did. Anyone involved in a same-sex marriage who'd like to come on here and write something is not just invited, they are encouraged. The Supremes said that I'm free to make that decision.

They also said I am free to withhold my talents (modest as they are) if my own good-faith conscience argues against it. One can play the "what if" game all day, but what was before the court was a question of compelling (by force of law) speech by the web designer with which she did not agree.

That is not a departure for the Supreme Court. Back when I was a kiddo, one of the kids in my elementary school class was excused every morning while we did the pledge of allegiance. Why? His parents had a good-faith religious objection. While many Americans believed that to be an affront to those who came home from war with their coffin draped with that flag, West Virginia v. Barnette was decided in 1943, when WWII was far from decided. Status quo.

The list goes on and on. I'll leave you with this thought. Is it just me, or is suggesting that one or more of our institutions are illegitimate grounds to get "de-platformed?" Isn't it a threat to "Our Democracy™" when we question the outcome of a show of hands?

We are all hypocrites.

Back To Basics

 In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.

Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons   learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.

John Roberts, Chief Justice, writing the opinion for the Court, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College  (2023)

One would think - based on the pundits, the professional opinion influencers and others - that this decision, and the resulting orders of the Court, are a departure by ideologues bent on depriving people of something because...well, they are ideologues. And, okay, that's a point of view.

The majority opinion was very Roberts-esque (commentary by partisan opinion writers notwithstanding) - state the facts, then the question, then the resolution. It is fair to write that ideological shading is possible in every case. The case presents as follows:

*The process used by Harvard and University of North Carolina employs race as a factor in making admissions decisions, which benefits some races to the disadvantage of others;

*Federal law and the Constitution forbid discrimination based on race;

*To overcome the strong presumption of invalidity, any such process must "serve a compelling governmental interest," and be "narrowly tailored" to address only that compelling interest (called Strict Scrutiny);

*None of the interests advanced in pleadings by either educational establishment are well defined, measurable or clear enough to state a compelling governmental interest. Nor are they narrowly tailored. See, Opinion of the Court, Roberts, CJ, Part A, beginning on page 22.

This is a classic structure taught to first year law students, one that CJ Roberts has predominantly used when he writes a published opinion. There is nothing Earth shattering, or pioneering, or especially departs from mainstream legal analysis. The details matter, of course. That's where differences - reasonable people disagreeing is how the CJ put it - are found.

The problem to some, reading Justice Thomas's concurrence and Justice Jackson's dissent (and then half a dozen or so mostly breathless commentaries in the media) is the outcome - that Harvard's and UNC's (and many others') admissions criteria are unlawful. Justice Thomas is pointed in both his own opinion and in his assessment of the faults of the dissents. Justice Jackson, who writes well and expresses her points clearly, comes at the case quite differently than Justice Thomas. It is a worthy exercise, to read both in full and try to understand what the justices are conveying. One need not be a lawyer to decide which one is more persuasive, and why.

Outside commentators (including the one you are reading) offer zero insights in a neutral manner. Most find their own predispositions either reinforced, or dashed by this opinion, depending on who they work for or what their media personae dictates. Suffice to say that most - if not all - can easily be avoided.

I'll finish with an observation. In April 1986, following the guidance of  a "Getting Into Law School" guide, I called the admissions office at Syracuse University. "Is my admissions package complete?" I asked. "Yes," the woman on the phone said. "You'll be offered admission. We reserve a few seats late in the process for those candidates we think have unique personal histories."

My personal history - married, early thirties, a Colorado police officer for seven years, children. Okay undergrad grades, above average LSAT.

I was, in the lexicon of 21st Century academia, a diversity admission. But, to quote Chief Justice Roberts, it was based on my experience as an individual. I believed then, as now, that that is an admirable criteria for a university to consider.

America, The Imperfect (Part Two)

"This exclusion of "all persons of Japanese ancestry, both alien and non-alien," from the Pacific Coast area on a plea of military necessity in the absence of martial law ought not to be approved. Such exclusion goes over "the very brink of constitutional power," and falls into the ugly abyss of racism."

Justice Frank Murphy, dissenting,  Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944)

Turning onto County Road 24.5 from Highway 50 in the remote Southeastern Colorado town of Granada, one enters the information area of the Amache National Historic Site. It was formerly called, by the US Government that created and built it, the Granada War Relocation Center. Its residents called it Camp Amache.

There are informational plaques and displays, and a short walking tour. For the dogs, a chance to stretch their legs and have some water. For us, an on-the-ground introduction to the business end of what fear, the force of law (with the threat of actual force) tinged with inescapable overtones of racism once led our country to think - erroneously, and not just in hindsight - was necessary, and just.

The audio guide for the driving exploration, available for free download, is chilling in that former detainees - prisoners - tell the stories of their lives at the camp. Listening to the voices, slowly maneuvering along the dirt paths among the dozens of foundations now overgrown with gnarled trees, eastern plains scrub... Here, rows of living quarters once stood, of five families to each flimsy building. There, the high school; its construction caused howls of outrage at how the pampered detainees were being coddled. A store.

A cemetery. Over a hundred people passed away while the camp existed.

We pass a guard tower, the only one left of the five that once stood around the camp's perimeter. They are small, cramped, appearing flimsy and treacherous even when new. Fencing follows the path of the barbed wire that once hemmed the residents in. Our downloaded guide tells the story of children at play breaching the fencing, rounded up by soldiers and herded back into the compound.

At each stop, another tale. How the residents tried to make the best of their circumstances, maintain something of a normal life. How they contributed to the war effort - war bond and recruiting posters conceived and printed in the workshops; food grown in difficult conditions not just feeding the camp but the surrounding community; of men who volunteered to serve a country that imprisoned them, some making the ultimate sacrifice. One of these men was awarded a Medal of Honor.

"There are no great men," Admiral William Halsey is famous for saying. "There are only great challenges that ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet." Ordinary men, and women, faced with the challenges of  global aggression and barbarism, met them in a largely successful way. Standing at what was the front gate of Camp Amache on a beautiful June day in 2023 it is hard to be judgmental, but easy to draw a lesson.

So much of what we call the United States is built on trust. We trust our elected officials to follow the rules to which we as citizens have given our consent. We trust that our institutions will accomplish their tasks within the law (and be competent doing them). We trust that our media will report facts as fact, opinions as opinion, and be honest in their assessments. We trust the process that preserves the right of every American to vote, so that our collective wishes are honored whenever we head to the polls.

No human endeavor is perfect. Some elected officials are corrupt, both personally and in how they conduct their governmental affairs. There are institutions that bend to the will of the powerful, in service of the few. It is often difficult to distinguish fact from fiction (let alone from opinion) when major news organizations decide to sway the public in the direction chosen by our "betters."

Human imperfections seem especially evident when facing something announced as an existential threat. Americans in late 1941 and early 1942 believed - in some cases due more to fiction than fact - that the invasion of the West Coast was imminent. In February 1942 a Japanese submarine surfaced off of the coast near Santa Barbara, CA and lobbed between 15-25 poorly-aimed shells at an oil tank farm. They mostly missed their intended targets (the employees there called the cops on them). The reaction of America's "thought leaders?" Apoplexy.

Fiction also played a role in framing American's point of view in those years. The popular 1943 film Air Force followed the fictitious crew of a fictitious B-17 bomber as it lands in Hawaii during the attack on December 7, 1941. After the crew is told of several instances of Japanese residents conducting "fifth column" (clandestine and subversive) acts of sabotage and taking American forces under small arms fire, the aircraft is ordered to Wake Island to preserve it from attack.

None of that happened. There were no instances of "fifth column" activities. None.

We looked at the vista, of the physical remnants of Americans imprisoning other Americans not because of individual unlawful acts, but because of what can only be described as racism. Americans in 1942 were wrong to do this - to build this place, to force their fellow citizens from their homes and fence them in. Everything that was supposed to prevent such a shameful decision failed - betrayed the trust of not just our country, but the trust of the people who were compelled to submit to this outrage.

Mark Twain is purported to have said, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes." We should remember that every time a pundit, a politician or a supposed leader utters the words existential threat and proposes something shameful. Our country has succumbed to temptation too many times.  The place we visited, or one like it, Americans should experience for themselves, and remember, the next time we are invited to take unreasonable counsel of our fears and prejudices.

SMH

 "I can’t understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars."

Fred Allen

In the middle of yet another doctor's visit, it came up (I swear not my intention); how was I enjoying retirement? In a room with three young women - an MD, a physician's assistant and the...help me out, here. She is the chart slinger, the one who asks how life has been treating you since the last visit. Technician?

How else would I answer? I love being retired. Love it. It's eighty degrees, not a cloud in the sky. I'm sitting in my summer writing office - my back porch - with my beloved Havanese at my feet and thinking I might do some day drinking. I've gotten in a bike ride, twice visited the kids down the street at their lemonade stand (get the chocolate chip cookies).

How do I keep busy, they ask. Well, I write. Books. About cops. Who are women. Yes, under my own name. Yes, they are on Amazon. A book title? The Fort in the Harbor is newest. One of them actually writes it down.

I used to carry cards, but they were so quickly out of date and it seemed, I dunno, presumptuous. As I've said before, I suck at marketing. I'm a horrible self-promoter. That's okay. As Dirty Harry said, a man has got to know his limitations. But, these folks seemed sincere and if one of them buys a book, I'm ahead.

Curious, I sign onto the Kindle Direct Publishing dashboard that tells me how I'm doing. Usually, it's not bad - a few books purchased, some pages read. It'll tell me if one of these medical folks actually followed through. And... What the hell?

My next check from Amazon will be in the hundreds of dollars. In the hundreds?! Someone, or a collection of someones, has read nearly ten thousand pages of my novels in the last 30 days on Kindle Unlimited. And, I've sold... No way.

In fact, way.

My dear wife found something on line, a marketing company that, for a reasonable fee, puts something on their web site for a day or so. I did it, just for the hell of it - reserved a day in late May. And, holy cow!

Not only that. Posting my blog in my bio led to ten thousand hits this month. Crazy!

And, it seems that one of the folks yesterday bought the Kindle version of Fort.

So, thanks! I hope you like the books, find them interesting, entertaining, informative. Leave a comment on Amazon if you've enjoyed the reading experience.

And, if you couldn't dig it? That, you can keep to yourself.

America, The Imperfect (Part One)

 

As if through a glass, and darkly
The age-old strife I see —
Where I fought in many guises, many names —
but always me.

George S. Patton

Riding the Bikecentennial Trail on a ten speed during the summer of 1976, I left my overnight camp in Eads, Colorado and headed east into the freshening breeze (that would soon be a steady 15 mile an hour prairie wind). Several miles out of town I happened past the abandoned shell of the tumbled-down remains of a building with "Chivington School" written on its face. I stopped, to drink some water and have a handful of trail mix, and take the above picture.

That night, in my tent somewhere near the Kansas-Colorado border, I read about Chivington in the tiny guidebook issued by the Missoula company that had pioneered the route. It was not a happy story.

In 1864, fresh from an heroic [ed. note - some contemporaneous accounts suggest incompetent and overblown] performance in the 1862 Civil War Battle of Glorieta Pass near Sante Fe, New Mexico, Major John Chivington led 700 members of the Third Colorado Calvary in an attack on tribes of Cheyenne and Arapaho camped along Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado Territory. Described variously as a Union Army or, a territorial militia, they perpetrated an early morning raid that the guidebook suggested was an "alleged" response to the theft of a number of head of cattle. The tribes had gained the permission of the US federal government to be exactly where they were - "It was reported" my little guidebook said, genteelly, "that an American Flag and a white truce flag flew in the camp."

Upwards of a hundred and fifty - mostly women and children - were murdered by Chivington and his men. The text daintily mentions the nine Colorado soldiers killed [one immediately assumes by friendly fire] and then enters into a discussion about slaughtered buffalo herds.

Fast forward to early summer, 2023. We are set up in the Hasty Campground of the John Martin State Park near Lamar. Intent on revisiting one of the memorable and haunting moments of my cycling journey we travel not just to the exceptionally defunct town of Chivington (est. 1887) but journey over miles of dirt roads to the battlefield itself. It is an emotional experience that is hard to describe.

An American flag flies over the "Visitor Center" at the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site which is, more precisely, a prefab building that was probably transported there on a truck. The banner is oddly configured - there are not fifty stars yet here it is at an official US facility. A nearby plaque explains. It represents the flag that leaders of the tribes camping peacefully by Sand Creek were instructed to fly - that they were in fact flying the day of the assault - to signify that they were there with permission of the federal government. They were, in fact, involved in negotiations to reach a long-term agreement. There's more.

Two officers commanding companies of the 1st Colorado - Captain Silas Soule (son of Maine abolitionists) and Lieutenant Joseph Cramer, a New Yorker - refused to fight and ordered their men not to fire on the inhabitants. Both wrote letters that, astonishingly, resurfaced only in the year 2000 detailing the attack, the presence of white traders who were also fired upon and of atrocities perpetrated on the living and the dead by Colorado soldiers. 

Captain Soule's letter is particularly disturbing, as he spares no one's sensitivities in reporting about women and children, on their knees pleading for their lives, hacked to death in the frenzy of indiscriminate killing. Captain Soule had accompanied Major Edward Wynkoop and was personally aware of the peace talks, and assurances of safety that had been extended by the US government. He later testified against Chivington, and was himself murdered on a street in Denver by assailants who were never brought to justice.

What is to be made of this? Aside from the obvious indignities - it took into the 21st Century for the facts of this horror to be accessible and acknowledged, for example - it is left to the individual to ponder what their heart says. All I know is that a visit to the battlefield did not settle the unease I have felt since taking the picture in July, 1976 during the celebration of America's Bicentennial, and Colorado's Centennial. Indeed, it only guaranteed further study, and a longer exploration of the battlefield itself.

As for the small collection of abandoned buildings called Chivington... It should keep it's name.

The decaying buildings (the two story school house is but a few rows of bricks on a crumbling foundation) should be allowed their ultimate ends. This forgotten place stands as a reminder that America is a great country, Colorado a magnificent place to live, to work and to raise a family, and they are greater still when all of our history is available to be understood, lest it be repeated.

One Job

 

“Congratulations to our hometown heroes, the Vegas Golden Knights, on conquering the Championship.”

Allegiant Airlines Facebook post, June 13, 2023.

 

Can’t you see it. The young marketing department person, feet precariously on the first rung of the company advancement ladder, in charge of non-critical Facebook posts (“Wanna get away?” Oops, wrong airline) gets a late evening text message:

Hey, the Golden…whatevers just won their match and they are carrying around a trophy. Put something out, huh?”

Roger that, boss. And, so they do.

I have fond memories of Allegiant, from a very very AM 2003 charter flight (Apple Vacations) from Denver to Cancun. It was an aged DC-9, probably wearing the livery of its third or fourth owner. It boarded at 4:15 AM – we’d really not slept in the limo that picked us up at 2:30. The captain was standing in the cockpit doorway greeting us:

Me: I hope you’re more awake than I am, Captain.

Him: Not especially. But, the plane knows the way.

It was a pleasant flight, a nice breakfast served. This was “Back in the day” when immigration forms were passed out and the flight crew helpfully conducted a tutorial on how to fill in the blanks. Like Mexican Customs did anything but stamp them a hundred and twenty-seven times. Nevertheless…

The lead flight attendant was affable enough, tall and stout, wearing a pastel green Boston cabbie-style scally. He had a thick Eastern European accent, which didn’t much hinder the easy stuff. When it came time to fill in the state of our destination, he said, “Quintana Roo.”

Fully three quarters of the passengers looked at someone else and half-whispered, “Huh?” If you’ve ever given directions to a group, or taught class and said something indecipherable, you know the looks and how they jump out at you. So, he said it again. And, again.

And then he shouted it into the microphone, totally over modulated and now completely unintelligible. Red-faced, tight-jawed… Finally, he spelled it out.

“Oh,” we all said in instant recognition. Two hours later I was having my second margarita on the beach, beside my lovely wife, at a wonderful resort alongside the Caribbean in Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico.

This person last night was given one job. It should have been fairly simple. The Vegas Golden Knights, playing excellent hockey in front of a goaltender pulling crucial saves out of…thin air…crushed an exceptional opponent on the way to:

Winning The Cup.

If Allegiant is hiring social media part-timers during hockey season, I’m ready to go. I’ve written about this particular sport (Denver Post, June 2001, A Place Where Dreams Come True). All I ask is the occasional flight to Quintana Roo.