In no time I was zipping along Florida Highway 836 toward downtown. Checked in at the Hyatt downtown, and drove southwest on Brickell Avenue, past the bank skyscrapers, and into Coconut Grove. I parked for free, something that is hard to do in that town, and walked across the street to the Grand Bay Hotel for a meeting of the trustees of National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. A couple hours later, I was elected to the board.

What's NFAA? Regular readers of these updates may recall that every January Linda and I fly to Miami to attend the NFAA gala at the end of something called ARTS Week. NFAA has a singular mission: to identify and recognize 100 high-school students who excel in the arts. American plays a wonderful role: we are the wings that carry the students, judges, teachers, and others to Miami for the week, and my role as trustee was both to acknowledge that support and to recruit another marketing person onto the board (it was clear by the end of the meeting that I could in fact contribute my marketing skills to help NFAA succeed).

The meeting ended about four, and I drove back downtown, worked my e-mails, and at 5:50 walked west to an art gallery on the edge of downtown to see works from the student finalists in visual arts, photography, and film and video. As I have described in previous updates, the talent of these kids is just stunning, and it was that night in the gallery. The artists were there, some shy and asocial, but many happy to talk to an old guy. There was, for example, Darnell Jones-Bey from East Orange, New Jersey, who produced a cartoon using classic animation techniques, and Matthew Austin from Montgomery, Alabama, who drew brilliantly detailed pencil sketches that captured, without hand-wringing, the confusing and ambiguous states of adolescence. I could have stayed another hour, speaking with more of the kids, but the bus was leaving for dinner.

We headed north, through the constipated and crazing traffic that is endemic in this place, finally reaching the very fancy Indian Creek Country Club by about 7:40. The club was on a small island behind the beach spit, and it was old-money Miami, more than 50 years old, built in the favored Spanish-colonial style (two days later, on climbout from MIA, the jet sailed over the island, which was 80% golf course; on the remaining land were about 35 huge houses). Dinner was great: terrific conversations, the chance to say hello to a couple of genuinely famous people (such as the great Ramsey Lewis, whose son works for our African-American ad agency), sensational seafood, stunning desserts. Head hit pillow at midnight.

Was up at dawn on the 11th, out onto the streets for the first run in weeks, along the water, hello to the pelicans and egrets hanging out along the Miami River. Showered, worked a few more e-mails, and drove west to breakfast at Versailles, my favorite Cuban restaurant and a landmark on Calle Ocho (8th Street SW). Filled up on eggs and strong Cuban coffee with hot milk, and drove further west to Coral Gables, for the next NFAA event, readings by finalists in creative writing. Most of the fifteen works were disappointing, with more angst and darkness than usual. But there were a couple of bright spots. Joining me were Rick Dow, a former colleague from Northwest (virtually the only smart guy I can recall during my unpleasant year at that airline), who was just finishing a short stint with Burger King, and a Notre Dame classmate of his, Max Bunster, a local architect originally from Santiago, Chile, and a really nice guy.

After the readings, we motored west to the University of Miami, had a quick lunch that BK catered, and took our seats for the student concert. It was stunning, as usual (this was my third time). Highlights were two works from student composers, one played live on the piano, and a hugely ambitious work that was recorded, and songs by about ten vocal artists, mainly Sondheim works. Just terrific. Listening to a young woman playing the tuba, I was struck by how the instrument and the musician become one; those of you who have played or still do know this, of course, but it was quite a discovery for me, and henceforth I will watch for this oneness.

Said goodbye to Rick and Max, and spent the next 48 minutes traveling about five miles to the home of Teresita Zubizarreta, the founder of our Hispanic ad agency. She is recovering from colon cancer, and the day before had finished her fourth round of chemo, so she was not in top form, but she was smiling and hugging when I arrived, late. I was there to hear her story, and it was an interesting one. Born in Havana in 1935, her mother died when she was 13, and she asked her father to send her to school in the States. She learned self-reliance and English and more at a Dominican girls' school in New Orleans. She married Octavio in the late 1950s, and they arrived in Miami in October 1960, about 20 months after Castro came to power. Octavio joined the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, but did return in one piece. Teresita learned the advertising business from the ground up, and started her own agency in 1976. They've done well, and today have clients like Ford, Ex! xon Mobil, Winn-Dixie, and S.C. Johnson. She also showed me around her modest house, brimming with artwork from all over the Caribbean. For someone like me fascinated by the immigrant experience, it was a nice way to spend 90 minutes.

I left at 5:30, drove downtown, donned my tuxedo, and walked over to the gala. It was odd heading to the big party without Linda, but she was helping Robin, on crutches from December foot surgery, get settled for the USC spring term. I met Rick at 6:30, and we enjoyed the program and dinner; it was fun to catch up with him. We yakked with a couple of folks, including a director at the Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, a place Rick knows well. By eleven I was plumb wore out.

Rose at seven on Sunday morning and headed toward Coconut Grove to take a few pictures, then back to the airport. Was home by 1:30, landing in a rare snowstorm, in time to coach Jack's NoLimit basketball team. We got drubbed again, but that's not the point. Fun is - and has always been - the point with our rec-league team.

Three nights later, dead tired at 10:15, I kissed Linda and Jack goodnight, and head hit the soft pillow (that comfy bed always forms part of my daily prayers of thanksgiving). Three minutes later, just as the Zzzzz was coming on, Jack bounded into the room, and suggested a Scrabble game. We've been playing a bit in recent weeks; it's a game I've enjoyed since childhood rounds with my parents and my maternal Gram. At first I said no, needed the rest. Then the reality of his departure for college, in less than eight months, zinged right to the front of my brain, and I bounded outta bed, dashed to the top of the stairs, declared that I would kick his butt, and to set up the board. And I did, beating him by 19 points, after trailing most of the match. "Inky", with double-word score, was helpful. He's still leaving home in under eight months, but not without giving me some more happy memories.

The next morning, Thursday the 17th, I motored over to have a sandwich with Bob Crandall, who retired as American's chairman and CEO nearly five years ago. I had the good fortune of reporting to him for his last two years at the helm, when I was running our P.R. department. Well, okay, it had its moments, because Bob is one tough guy, but I learned a lot from him, appreciated his moral uprightness, and enjoyed his stories. For the record, I was never afraid of him. Bob was in good form that day, and we covered a lot of territory in an hour: his prognosis on the airline business, some stories from the 1970s and the infancy of airline reservation systems, and more. He is a friend, and supporter.

At 5:10, the lightly-loaded 777 sprang from the runway and nosed east and north to London. After a nice dinner and a five-hour sleep, we landed before dawn, at 7:15. A half-hour later, I learned that we have closed the arrivals lounge (showers), so I'd have to do the day's meeting in rumpled fashion. Jumped on the Gatwick Express to Victoria Station, then the Tube north to Warren Street, a new way to get to the office of McCann-Erickson, our international ad agency. But I had my trusty compass, and soon was ambling east. Along the way, I did a very un-male thing, and asked a woman for directions. She was headed my way, so we walked together, chatting a bit.

At McCann-Erickson, we spent from nine until two helping their AA team understand more about the business. It's a complex one, and since they took the business last spring, I sensed that they were struggling a bit, so a five-hour investment seemed sensible, especially since I was already headed to Europe. High point of the meeting happened about ten when I spotted a tiny mouse scampering across the conference room. It triggered the predictable "Eeeks" from several women. I ignored it for a little, then decided, as leader of the group, to get things under control. I grabbed a glass ash tray, flipped it, trapped the little fellow, and edged it along the carpet to the hall, where another bloke slid a notepad under, lifted the mouse, now named Boris, and put it outside. No animals were harmed . . .

A little after two, after a very full discussion and a nice lunch, one of their media people, Caroline, and I walked north to Euston Station. She caught a train back to Manchester (the agency does all its media buying from there), and I hopped the Tube to Paddington Station, then the Heathrow Express out to the other big airport. Flew on British Airways to Düsseldorf, 50 minutes away. It was clear weather in Germany, and the density of streetlights during the entire descent (there were virtually no dark patches) confirmed that we were above the Ruhrgebiet in the state of North Rhine-Westfalia, the most populous and most densely populated state.

Here, too, there's a train station right at the airport. Bought a ticket to the university town of Münster, 120 kilometers north, and waited on Track 1. As often happens, an older woman asked in German for directions to the platforms for the suburban trains. I knew the answer, and replied, in German (had she only known!).

At 7:15 on the dot, Intercity Express train 524 glided in. It was a brand-new train, nicely lit, spacious, and with the kind of firm seats one appreciates in Germany (I think most Americans would find them too hard). The fold-down table was a perfect surface for my laptop, and I spent the first half of the ride, through Duisberg, Essen, and Gelsenkirchen, bringing this journal up to date, while listening to Vivaldi's "Four Seasons", and glancing occasionally at a photograph of my great-grandmother, Ottilie Palluch, who left this land in the 1880s to find a better life in Chicago. It's nice to know where you came from.

We arrived Münster on time at 8:30. Walking out of the station, my host, Manfred Krafft, tapped me on the shoulder. I was not expecting meet-and-greet service. Outside, I caught the first glimpse of the place described as the most bicycle-friendly city in Germany. Here were rows and rows of bikes. My kind of place!

In a minute we were whizzing toward the hotel in his Audi TT. This was the same Manfred that had been teaching further south, at WHU, described in last quarter's update. He is a "hot ticket" in German academic marketing, and has moved from WHU, a private graduate business school, to the enormous public Westfälisch Wilhelms-Universität Münster (WWU). Nearly one-quarter of this town of 250,000 are students. I checked in at the hotel near the university, and walked into the old city, to the Kiepenkerl, a cozy and traditional restaurant, named for the 19th-century itinerant peddler, who carried food, newspapers, letters and more on an enormous backpack. Dinner was sensational, filets of hare and venison (Bambi and the Easter Bunny all on one plate, with apologies to my herbivore readers), homemade spätzle (noodles), Brussels sprouts, and a big mug of Iserlohner dark beer. Head hit pillow just before eleven, under a cozy! featherbed.

Up at 6:45, off for a 20-minute run along the Aasee, a lake on the southern end of the city, then shower, and breakfast with Manfred. The nine o'clock lecture on alliances to 200 MBA students went well. At the end, I told them that I hoped American would stay in business, because I still had to pay for a bunch of college tuition - and reminded them to be thankful for their education, which is essentially free in Germany. The classroom was, as Jack Britton would say, "old school": built in 1957, it had wooden benches and a real chalkboard. It was mostly utilitarian in design, but it also had stained-glass windows and mosaics. To me, it clearly reflected the Wirtschaftswunder, or economic miracle, that propelled Germany from a ruin in 1945 to a prosperous industrial state a dozen years later.

At 10:30, two of Manfred's teaching assistants walked me to the 18th-century castle that is the central building of the university; around the old city, past the Saturday market in the cathedral square; the town hall (built 1578) where the treaty ending the Thirty Years' War was signed in 1648; the pleasant row of fancy shops, all with gabled faces, at the Prinzipalmarkt; and more. "More" on that day included a demonstration in front of town hall, protesting a possible U.S. war with Iraq. There were only about 150 protesters, and lots of states police standing by, just in case. The guy holding the American flag troubled me, because I feared my restraint might wither if he did something stupid to it. The irony, of course, is that it was the United States - it was the death and injury of our people - that secured these protestors' right to free expression. And not once, but twice: in the defeat of Hitler's tyranny in 1945, and our steadfast pre! sence during the Cold War, when we kept the Russians at the East German border.

Münster is a very attractive small city, with a mix of humanity: students, their teachers, and more than a few prosperous-looking older people. My hosts explained that Münster is seen by upper-middle and upper class Germans as a nice place to live, and many do so, commuting to big jobs in the industrial Ruhrgebiet, 60 to 80 kilometers south. And it's been prosperous for a long time, way back to when it was an inland member of the Hanseatic League, the association of mercantile cities and states along the North and Baltic seas. It's the kind of place that American tourists visit too infrequently, and that's a big mistake.

On many of the plaques around town, one saw the German word wiederaufbau. My ten weeks of German helped me figure it out: wieder means "again", and bau is related to building. Yes, slap the forehead, rebuilt, after the destruction of Allied bombs. Yet another reminder that what might appear to Americans as German pacifism is really just the collective memory of blood flowing in these streets twice in the 20th century (the same applies to France, another place vilified of late).

We had a cup of coffee at noon, then walked back to Manfred's office. The students left, and we headed to lunch. I then went back out to take a bunch more pictures with my new camera (I am still getting used to the fact that there are no costs to taking another picture!). At four, I returned to Manfred's office, and worked my e-mail from a fast Internet connection. At 5:20, we drove to the railway station, and said goodbye. I walked out the front door to take pictures of one last sight, the Radstation, an enormous underground parking lot for bicycles (fahrrad is the German word for bicycle). I walked down the ramp, smiling. This was my kind of place. Beneath were rows and rows of bikes (covered parking for a month costs the equivalent of seven bucks), a repair shop, and, for $3.50, an automated bike washer. Wow.

At 6:04, I caught the Intercity express to Cologne, and stopped for an hour before continuing on. Only an hour? Faithful readers know that a zippy person like me can fit a lot into an hour, and I had two specific missions: to try to take a nighttime photo of the Dom, the huge, exponentially Gothic cathedral begun in 1248 and right outside the train station; and to have a cold beer at Früh, the most famous beer hall in the city, also within a few hundred meters of the station. I did both things early in my first visit to Cologne in 1974, and had not been back since. In fifteen minutes I had as good a photo of the cathedral as I would get without a tripod, and wandered over to Früh, a multistoried place, vast, with different rooms and restaurants. I wandered with my bags, down into the keller, where some serious Saturday-night carousing was in progress: kegs of beer moving from room to room on overhead monorails (I am not making this ! up), German drinking songs reverberating off thick walls, and waitpersons bustling from the bar carrying in each hand racks holding thirteen of the tall, skinny 0.2-liter (6.6 ounce) glasses of Kölsch, the local style of beer. These small glasses are the only size sold, so I ordered two.

At 8:30, I left the hall, and walked around the Dom. The sky had cleared, and the full moon backlit the huge church. I have seen dozens of big old churches in Europe, but this one is staggering in scale. It makes us small, which was precisely the intent. Looking up, I marveled at the gargoyles, protruding perhaps two feet or more (it was hard to judge scale). How did they build it?

At 8:53, I climbed on the express, south past Beethoven's hometown of Bonn, then into the bar car. Surprisingly, it had a non-smoking section. The barman poured a large glass of Schöfferhofer wheat beer; just before emptying the bottle, with a flourish he rolled the bottle between his palms to make froth, and deposited a beautiful two-inch head on the tall glass. You have to admire that commitment to the craft! The glass was a perfect tool, like a carpenter's level, to gauge the roadbed. Smooth as glass. We reached Koblenz on schedule at 9:46. This was my overnight venue - originally Manfred was to drive me down, for his old school and his house are only a few miles from Koblenz. I walked to the hotel, checked in, and went to sleep.

Well, sort of. Note to self: no German coffee after 3:30 p.m. As a result, I was up at 5:20, time for a run along the Rhine, north to the Deutsches Eck, the "German corner" where the Moselle meets the bigger river. The moon lit the enormous statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I on horseback at the V-shaped corner, edged with flags of the 16 German states, as well as the banners of the federal republic, the EU, and - to my great delight - the United States. I saluted; hooray for that recognition of our role here from 1945 onward. Back at the hotel I showered, checked out, and walked to the station for the 6:48 train to Frankfurt Airport. The ride along the Rhine valley, described in several previous updates, was a good time for a nap, for it did not dawn until we were almost at the airport, just before eight. Flew home, with good views of snow on the Scottish Highlands, and the Ozarks of northwest Arkansas. I was back in time to coach Jack's baske! tball game at four, and to attend a meeting of the board of the wheelchair ramp project at six. Then bed!

I slept in my own bed for ten nights, close to a record. On Wednesday the 29th, I flew again to Miami, arriving after dinner. My ad-agency and airline colleagues were in the bar, but I opted to work e-mails using a zippy Internet connection (so much faster than dial-up). Was up early the next morning, and spent the day reviewing the 2003 ad plans for Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina, Ecuador, and Chile. These are all important markets for American, and it they were interesting meetings. Listening to the first presentation, Venezuela, we were powerfully reminded of humankind's ability to exist amid chaos. That day, January 30, was the 55th day of a chaotic general strike, and we were discussing marketing plans. No sentient person could not admire the calm of our AA sales team and the agency people in Caracas.

The pattern of order within disorder continued through the day. In Colombia, 40 percent of national territory is in the hands of guerillas. We discussed the need to advertise a new departure time for our daily flight from Medellin - it now leaves mid-morning, eliminating the need for many customers to leave home in the perilous darkness, when warriors or ordinary criminals could rob and kill them. Then Argentina, a place devastated by decades of economic mismanagement. It was a fascinating day, a bit tiring given that most of the presentations were in Spanish, mightily taxing my rusty skills. After all that, how could one not close one's eyes and give thanks to God for a life in this republic?

The next night saw us transported to the first decades of the last century. In the auditorium of Pearce High School we saw a remarkably accomplished production of "Funny Girl". Jack was up on stage, as Tom Keeney, chomping on an unlit cigar, as were many of his friends since kindergarten. Moments like that were truly special: for the continuity of living in the same place for 15 years; for the commitment of people like Lynn Zednick, the theater teacher; for the support from a strong community.

I was in bed as soon as I got home, and up 6.5 hours later, out on my bike at 5:30 for a dozen miles, shower, and zipped to the airport for an 8:20 flight to San Diego. The ride west was perfectly clear, wonderful conditions for further learning about aerial photos with my new Nikon digital camera. I snapped a bunch of cool stuff - an open-pit copper mine, irrigated fields in Arizona, and more - and have figured out how to create crisp snaps from seven miles up.

As I surveyed the good earth, I was unaware that an hour earlier the Columbia had disintegrated just above me. That news hit with force as I wheeled my little rental car out of Lindbergh Field in San Diego, and turned north on I-5. You didn't need to be closely connected to the skies to mourn the loss of those brave souls, but I think those of us in the flying business took the news especially hard. May they rest in peace.

Thirty minutes later, I turned off the freeway, and in a couple of minutes was greeting Chris Mac Phail, a friend since 1960. Soon his wife Hillary and daughters Celia and Kate were on hand. It was good to see them - it had been eight years, a long time, and the girls were no longer tots. We sat on their porch, admiring the view of the nearby Pacific, the perfect California weather, and caught up on our lives. At noon, Chris fixed up "wiener winks", hot dogs with cheese melted under the broiler, a favorite at his house 35 years ago. Sublime! Chris and I took off in his new Miata roadster for a tour of the neighborhood, and at two I hugged 'em and jumped back in the car, pointing north again, bound for L.A.

A couple hours later, I was in Palos Verdes Estates, a suburb due south of the airport, and fifteen minutes later Robin pulled up in her red Honda, ready for a father-daughter sorority party. It was a big time, though not as much fun as last year's outing at the Santa Anita horse track. By 7:30 I was plumb wore out, and we left, Robin driving back to USC and me heading to LAX. Napped a bit in the terminal, caught the redeye back home, and was asleep by 6:30, catching a couple hours.

At ten I pointed the bike south and rode 15 miles down to the end of White Rock Lake, bucking a fierce wind, but enjoying a "hoist the sails" glide back north. At one I was back in the coach's seat in the gym at Forest Meadow Junior High. And in bed pretty early that night.

The following Thursday, February 6, I was up at the usual time, and by a little after nine was at Midway Airport, Chicago. You gotta love the jet airplane! Bill Miller, my counterpart at our ad agency, and I hopped on the CTA Orange Line (despite growing up in northern Indiana and visiting the Windy City many times as a kid, he had never been on the El) into the Loop. A nice yak on the plane and the train, and soon we were downtown, sitting behind mirrored glass, listening to what Chicago travelers thought of American compared to low-cost carriers. A good session.

We then headed out to O'Hare, again on the train, and at four we were in a "pre pro", the pre-production meeting that precedes the shooting of a TV commercial. That was also a good meeting, with a very talented director, James Gartner (you can view the finished product at www.iflewaa.com). Worked my e-mails for an hour, and flew home, spending some time bringing this journal up to date, Carlos Santana's and Ottorino Respighi's music flowing from my laptop. Nice!

The next Saturday, damp and windy, saw us on Cauthorn Street in South Dallas, building a ramp for Freddie Sewell. The folks at Baylor Hospital wouldn't let him come home until we built that ramp. That fact lent purpose to our work.

Six days later, on Valentine's Day, I took an enjoyable ride on public transit, this time in my own town. That Friday, Linda was at a juvenile-law conference in San

Antonio, and Robin arrived from Los Angeles at 1:00. I met her at the airport, gave her the keys, and took a bus back to work. Bill Miller from our ad agency, my sidekick Steve Schlachter, and I left work a bit early (before five, first time in well over a year), had a couple of beers at a divey little bar near our office, and at 6:05 Bill dropped me at the CentrePort railway station. At 6:14, along with a bunch of hockey fans headed to the Stars game in Dallas, I hopped on the Trinity Railway Express, the line that runs between the Big D and Fort Worth. I've written - perhaps several times now - about how great it is to have a commuter rail option at home, but every time I use it, I just smile.

A couple of stops toward downtown, two Latino kids sat next to me. To say they were excited did not quite capture it. They were, I learned, first graders, each several thousand volts, jumping and jostling, looking out the windows, yakking. Elsewhere in the car, Stars partisans were boasting.

The next morning, my ramp-building friend Greg Nichols and I built a ramp for Earnestine Hamilton, a recent amputee. Greg is a 767 captain for Delta, and we had a good chat to and from the ramp site about the state of our business. Much is said about the differences in thinking between unionized employees like Greg and a management "suit" like me, but in our case we were remarkably aligned: we will do whatever it takes to keep our jobs in a business we love.

On two consecutive days the following week, I spent part of the morning in inner-city public schools. On Wednesday, I was back in Room 216 of the Paul Dunbar Learning Center, reading to "my" fifth-grade class. I had not been there since November, but when I entered the room I noticed all the postcards I had been sending the class from my travels - from Paris, London, El Paso, Miami, and more. It was Black History Month, and I read a story about a girl in a Senegalese village. Then the class wanted to know about the places from the postcards. It was a lot of fun.

Thursday morning was even cooler. As a trustee of NFAA (described earlier), I was invited to a recognition ceremony at Dallas' arts magnet school, the Booker T. Washington High School for the Visual and Performing Arts. I arrived at eight and met NFAA president Bill Banchs and program director Chris Schramm, in from Miami. I also met more than a dozen of the most energetic, motivating teachers I've ever seen. We had a breakfast in the library and toured the school before the 10:30 ceremony to recognize the students who had entered the 2003 ARTS program. The place brimmed with talent. In every classroom and workshop one could almost feel the buzz of creativity. I left Booker T. marveling once again, as I do at Jack's Pearce High School, at the commitment of public-school educators. We are lucky that there are good people willing to excel at a job that, judging from compensation, our society wrongly undervalues.

The next night, it was my turn to teach. On a rainy Friday evening, I headed south and west to the University of Texas at Arlington, to give a presentation to a business fraternity. Despite the weather and the lure of Friday-night pastimes (Beer! Girls! Movies!), room 609 in the Business building was mostly full. I gave a relatively new and timely talk, "Why Is It So Hard to Make Money in the Airline Business?". Students were attentive, and asked great questions. I stayed for another 45 minutes, answering questions and offering views on a range of topics. I do enjoy that role.

The rain cleared. It was nice for a day and a half, then a huge front swooped in. By Monday night there were two to four inches of sleet and snow on the roads. Tuesday night brought freezing rain, making things worse. So I took the train to and from work Tuesday and Wednesday. So relaxing. Read, doze, and most of all not worry about some crazy ice-novice careening toward my little car in an enormous SUV.

On Thursday morning, February 27, after the ice melted, I flew north to Toronto. Less than a minute after takeoff, we were above the clouds, and into a stunningly beautiful sky of indigo and turquoise that, after days of the kind of winter gloom, reminds us why we no longer live in the northern latitudes! The clouds lifted over Indiana, and the rest of the ride was above snow, with some great views (recorded with my new Nikon) of rural and urban landscapes (we went right over the top of Detroit, way cool).

We landed early, and with time between then and lunch with our Canadian ad agency guy, Harvey Wise, it was time for a little exploration. The taxi to downtown Toronto runs to nearly $40. Public transit is under two bucks, and way more interesting. So I hopped the #58 bus, which ran due east on Lawrence Avenue, a transect through the western suburbs, past strip malls and the high-rise apartments that are so common in Canadian suburbs - and so rare in ours. After 40 minutes of stops and starts, we pulled into the Lawrence West subway station. Down a couple of flights of stairs, and onto the silver train. I arrived at Harvey's office right on time. We had lunch at a very stylish new restaurant. The food was great, and the company was even better. I've known Harvey for more than ten years, and he is a great fellow, another good window on Canada.

Harvey dropped me at the Rotman (business) School at the University of Toronto at three, and I met my host, Prof. Kim Bates, a fellow Minnesotan and U of M Ph.D. I yakked for 45 minutes with a new faculty member who knew a lot about airline loyalty programs, and at four we assembled for the first of eleven student presentations in Kim's business-strategy class about how to restructure American Airlines - a timely topic indeed! Three teams presented, I asked questions of each of them, then it was my turn to discuss prospects from an insider's point of view. We had a short break, then the evening class presented their eight sets of ideas. Whew, it was quite a workout - I needed to listen carefully to each of them, in order to ask questions and help Kim with her evaluations. I was plumb wore out at nine, when we walked to my hotel, happily only a couple of blocks away.

I checked in, and we grabbed a cab across town, east on Danforth to an Irish pub and restaurant. Had a pint of beer and studied an eclectic menu that had Irish standbys and, this being Toronto, some ethnic stuff. I settled on a goat curry, which was quite nice. Kim suggested live music next door, but I reckoned a pillow was a better idea, and I was back at the hotel by eleven.

I got up before 6:30, laced up my running shoes, and took off south, through the university. When I reached the archways beneath Soldiers' Tower, a memorial to U of T students killed in the World Wars, I ran in place to read and meditate on words inscribed on the east wall, words I first saw in December 2001. I was moved by them, but failed to write them down back then. Here they are, words of the ancient Greek historian Thucidydes:

I continued south and east, around the provincial parliament building, past the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first Prime Minister, then back through the campus. A good run. In my hotel room, I turned on CBC-TV, to a stereotypical Canadian story, dateline the Canada Games in New Brunswick: on camera was sixteen-year-old Sidney Crosby from Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, Canadian hockey's newest sensation, unsure of whether to finish high school or head straight to the NHL. I smiled, happy about my nearly 40-year friendship with our northern neighbors. It's quite a place.

I shaved and showered and was on the subway by 7:30, riding a few stops east, then north to Davisville Avenue. Ambled east on that street a couple of miles, occasionally trudging my wheeled suitcase through slush, zigzagged a bit, and by 8:15 was at my old friend Tony Lea's house on Sutherland Drive. Met his new wife Joanne, and his old (13 years) dog Tarr, and had a big Canadian breakfast (eggs, bacon, the works) and a nice chat. I've known Tony since he was a visiting professor at Minnesota in the mid-1970s. A good man. At 10:15 we motored north to the 401 freeway and west to the airport. As we were leaving his neighborhood, he pointed out the brick farmhouse where his father was born in 1919, when this was farmland. The neighborhood is now Leaside. Tony has deep roots in that place. I caught the noon flight home, and was at my desk by 3:30.

I was home for about a week, then it was time for spring break skiing, an annual family event since 1997. So after 20 miles on the bike, a haircut, and some packing, Linda, Jack, and I drove to the airport and flew back to Vail/Eagle. Jack's friend Keith Hickey had flown out earlier in the day, standing by (on my employee privilege) and miraculously snagging the last seat on a very full flight. We picked up Keith, piled into a rented Pontiac, and drove east to Avon and up the hill to Beaver Creek.

American's parlous condition almost caused us to cancel, and we were so glad we did not, though we did cut the trip in half. So I skied even faster and harder than usual, setting a personal best of 71,200 vertical feet on Tuesday and racking up more than 215,000 feet in three and a half days. My knees and legs were sore for days afterward, but it was worth it. As I have written before, part of the fun of skiing is meeting people on the chairlifts, and this trip was no exception. I met an Australian ski instructor who used me as a sounding board for some self-analysis; another ski instructor who alternated between Vail and the 310-foot-high Buck Hill in suburban Minneapolis, where we spent a lot of our teenage years; a six-year-old from Northern Virginia who gave, without solicitation, full details about her barfing on the flight into Vail; an 80-year-old Michigan man who was accompanying a couple of ladies in their 70s (I told him he was my hero of the day! !); and many more. Lots of folks expressed sympathy and support when I told them I worked for American; "hang in there", said the retired magnate from Houston, "we need you." More than a few times, I rode the chairlift alone, and used the time to look out on those stunning Colorado Rockies and give thanks to God for the many blessings we enjoy.

After seven spring breaks in the Vail Valley, the trip has become thoroughly formulaic, so after skiing on Monday we piled into the Grand Prix and drove east to Vail so the Linda and the boys could do some shopping. I found my familiar patio bar on Bridge Street, ordered a St. Brigid's Porter, from the Great Divide Brewing Co., Denver, and alternated between watching the skiers head home ("No Iraq War" read the button on an older, bearded skier) and thumbing through the Vail Daily. I paid special attention to the real estate ads, from $10 million all the way down to $39,000 for a mobile home in Gypsum, 35 miles down valley. On Wednesday afternoon, we flew home, with me once again in the cockpit jumpseat. A nice ride home with Captain Dunn and First Officer Poland, and a great trip.

The following Monday, I made an unexpected day trip to Washington, D.C. Two days earlier, my friend Carl Nelson, American's associate general counsel in Washington, called to tell me that the Enforcement Division of the Department of Transportation did not like our newest TV advertising, and suggested that for a variety of reasons I fly up immediately to meet with them (Carl described our recent relationship with DoT as akin to a famous quotation from the head of Stalin's secret police: "Show me the man and I'll tell you his crime").

So I flew north. It was a long run for a short slide: a day spent flying to and from a forty-minute meeting with four bureaucrats, none of whom ever worried about their employer going out of business. But the meeting provided clear direction, and demonstrated our willingness to conform to what we regard as an enormous double standard - somehow what low-cost carriers like Southwest do is okay, but when we do something virtually identical, we get whacked. In fact, almost every bit of the deep yogurt in which American now treads is directly the result of government control: from the advertising intended to counter an image of high prices resulting from the high costs that were established during fifty years of Federal economic regulation, to the failure of the Immigration and Naturalization Service to exclude the terrorist bastards that stole our planes on September 11. Aieeeeeeeeee! The two beers on the flight home helped, but only temporarily!

Well, okay, a little confession: I've always liked trips on short notice. And even a day trip is, to me, fun and interesting. This one presented a chance to yak with Carl on the flight to Washington. To look down upon the Shenandoah Valley. To walk past the White House, and to see the other grand monuments, symbols of our great nation. To read the banner on the Christian Science church on 16th Street that held that wonderful passage from Joshua 1:9: "Do not be afraid . . ." To ride the speedy Metro to National Airport, glimpsing graves in Arlington National Cemetery. Sadly, we will add some in the coming weeks.

Two days later, in late afternoon I flew to San Juan, Puerto Rico. It was only my fourth visit there. Two colleagues and I arrived about ten, took a taxi to the Condado Beach area, and went our separate ways, me walking a few hundred yards to a different hotel. There was a snafu with hotel rooms, and I ended up booking the place on the Internet two days earlier. The high-season price at the Regency was low, so my expectations were, too. The place was a bit tattered, but 35% cheaper than where my colleagues stayed, and it felt good to save more than a hundred bucks. I worked my e-mails, then climbed into bed, waking at two to sic the front desk on some spring-break drunks!

I was up at six thirty and we were at the Puerto Rico offices of our international ad agency, McCann-Erickson, by eight. We were there to listen to their proposal to take over advertising in the Caribbean region, the last place we employ a set of independent agencies. The pitch was persuasive, the people interesting and agreeable, and we'll do the deal. The meeting was over by two, and I went back to the hotel to work e-mails.

At 4:30 I laced up and took off east on Ashford Avenue, parallel to the Atlantic. I was soon reminded of the chore of running in seafront humidity, but a good breeze kept things under control. Condado, the heart of San Juan tourism, is, like my hotel, a bit worn in places. But the pavement was flat and mostly smooth, and I did 20 minutes of work, the last three keeping up with a twenty-something runner fifty feet ahead of me. Heading toward age 52, that felt good! Walking briskly back to the hotel, a parking-lot attendant looked at me, grinned, and asked in English if I'd had enough. "Bastante" (enough), I replied. Should have brought my folding bike - my ski knees had not mended.

At 5:30 I ambled over to the fancy Caribe Hilton and met our agency colleagues for a sunset beer, then headed to dinner at Ajili Mojili, a great place for Puerto Rican food (and described in the Second Quarter 2000 update). We had a swell dinner with a group that included the president of the local McCann office, an agreeable and worldly Guatemalan; Enrique Cruz, who heads American's business on the island; the agency creative director, a very funny fellow; and others. The conversation roamed across a lot of topics, some of the most interesting of which was a shared commitment to documenting family heritage. One example: the creative director mentioned a letter he recently found, from his Cuban grandfather to his grandmother, posted from a front in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. I'm badly wounded, he wrote; sell the gold, and have a good life. Happily, he survived and returned to the island.

We also had a spirited conversation about the United States, its virtues and its faults. I recalled an e-mail I read earlier in the day, from my young friend Flavius Stan, who came to New York from Timisoara, Romania, as a high-school student in 1994. Flavius wrote, "There is no doubt in my mind that nowhere else in the world I could have done as well as I have done here. Not in Europe, and not anywhere else. I gave a lot of thought to this, and I am convinced it is true". Yep, that's it. I was reminded of a bumper sticker I saw a few hours earlier while running; it had an American flag and the words Donde Estariamos sin Ella? ("Where would we be without her?").

The chatter was terrific, as was the meal. We started with a range of fried fritters and dumplings, and a plate of Morcillas, a black sausage that is very tasty. For the main course I had Asopao de Mariscos, a seafood stew made with tomato broth and rice. And we could not miss dessert (as I have written many times before, the Iberians know their sweets). Three plates arrived, with flan, a guava cheesecake, and the famous sweet cake called Tres Leches. Nice. I flossed and brushed extra thoroughly that night.

Got up the next morning and flew home, arriving before noon. That night, Friday the 21st, I met Linda and Jack at Southern Methodist University in North Dallas for a special dinner. Jack was one of 50 finalists (of nearly 400 applicants) for 19 Hunt Leadership Scholarships. Endowed by one of the branches of the Hunt (energy) family, the awards are both financially valuable and remarkable for the access they confer on the winners. The host at our table was a senior Hunt scholar, and his recitation of the past four years was truly remarkable. We initially urged Jack to apply for the program just to gain interviewing experience and to have another choice, but we left the SMU campus that night genuinely jazzed about the prospect. And Jack was fired up too, telling us how much he enjoyed staying overnight with a sophomore Hunt scholar; the interviews at the Cox School of Business, a chat with a German professor (with three years of Deutsch lernen behind ! him, we've encouraged him to become fluent in college), and more.

At noon the next day, Saturday, eight of the nine NoLimit basketball players convened at Sonny Bryan's barbecue joint near us for the third annual post-season "banquet". This was the last such gathering, and lurking underneath my smile and laughs was the sadness that comes from the passage of time. I handed out trophies - we won the Sportsmanship Award, which was sweet. The boys were surprised. I gave a little speech about their staying true to the real meaning of sport ("most Americans don't really believe the phrase 'it's only a game'", I said), concluding with my wish that they remain participants all their lives, and not become spectators on a couch. I think a couple of them actually listened, but mostly the speech was for my closure. And on my bike on the way home, tears fell on the handlebars.

SMU promised to let Jack know in a week, but the phone rang the following Wednesday, with good news. All of us were thrilled! He's a great kid, and we are hugely proud of him. Three days after that, thick and thin envelopes arrived from, respectively, the University of Southern California and Georgetown. The USC envelope said it all: "You're In!". Weeks earlier came thick envelopes from the universities of Michigan and Texas. Four great schools, and one tough choice. He's headed to SMU and Los Angeles next weekend, and the following week I will take him back to Ann Arbor. Stay tuned!

Three days later, on April 1, with good news of averted bankruptcy at American the previous night, I flew north to Montreal to give a lecture at McGill University. But that day was the start of a new quarter, and the task now is to dispatch this update. As always, I welcome your comments and feedback.

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