First Quarter Update

 

 

Dear Friends,

 

I began this update three times.  The first was about a week into the New Year.  That file vanished when my word-processing program crashed unexpectedly.  The second was three weeks after that, at the end of January, and those words vaporized when my two-month-old replacement hard disk died (a remarkably incompetent “repair service” installed the drive in early November, to replace the original, which they zapped during a routine, unrelated repair; sigh).

 

So I began typing this third file on a sunny morning five miles above snowy Ontario.  But let’s start at the beginning . . .

 

After being home since December 12, moving for the first time in 20 years, celebrating Christmas, and toasting the New Year, I took wing on January 8, a short flight (200 miles) north to Oklahoma City.  It was the end of a fine winter day, and the sun, low on the horizon, lit the land in a lovely way, revealing even small changes in elevation.  Looking down, I was reminded that it is the outermost foot or two of the planet that sustains us all.

 

We landed after 5 p.m. and I met my host, Preston Moon.  I was there to give a talk to the local “ad club” (actually a chapter of the American Advertising Federation) the next noon.  We drove across town, Preston summarizing the local economy, the clients of his family-owned ad agency, and more.  We met two other club officers for dinner, and he dropped me at a Holiday Inn, way north of town.  Remote.  Should have rented a car.  But a quick Google and click led me to schedules for the local transit agency’s #18 bus, with hourly service the next morning into downtown.

 

I was up before first light, and found the poorly-marked bus stop, on the off ramp of the freeway.  The bus was due at 7:36.  At 7:50, I gave up, walked back to my room to warm up, and re-check the schedule.  It promised another bus at 8:36.  I am a persistent soul, and wandered back.  This time it arrived.  The driver and quite a few of the passengers eyed the guy in the suit with some suspicion – I just didn’t match the profile of an OkCity bus rider.  But no matter.  We loped south toward the city, around the oversized capitol building with the decorative oil derricks in front, and soon I was in the center, and only a block from my destination: the site of the former Federal building, destroyed by homegrown terrorist Timothy McVeigh in April 1995.

 

Along the western periphery of what is now the Oklahoma City National Memorial is a cyclone fence erected soon after the blast.  Attached to the fence are plastic flowers, stuffed animals, and photos of some of the 168 who perished.  My eyes landed on what looked like the high-school-graduation photo of a pretty young woman.  And tears began to well, the first of many that morning.  I ambled up a few stairs and was in front of a reflecting pool, flanked by two large square arches.  To the south was a long field with stylized chairs, sculptures in metal and glass, one for each of the victims.  I spoke briefly with a volunteer.  It was just above freezing, and I had no coat, so I walked across the street to a temporary Federal building.

 

Did they have a cafeteria, I asked the guards.  Yes, in the basement.  After a very thorough security screening, including the surrender of my mobile phone and camera, I found my way to a bagel and yogurt.  At that moment, and several times in the hours earlier and subsequently, I was reminded of the phrase you sometimes overhear at airports: “Do I look like a terrorist?”  One is reminded in Oklahoma City that our dangerous world is not a simple place, and that monsters come in all colors.

 

Warmed and sustained, I ambled back across the street and into the memorial, past the Survivor Tree, an American elm that was in the parking lot, and that survived the blast and burning cars that were nearby.  Everything about the memorial was well and thoughtfully designed.  And very, very sad.

 

I retraced my steps, took the bus back to the edge of town, and at eleven met Preston.  We motored a few miles to the Will Rogers Theater, actually just a former cinema, the venue for the lunch and talk.  I met some nice folks, gave a short presentation, went back to the airport, and flew home.  Trip 1.

 

Trip 2 began early on Saturday, January 27, Linda and I out to the airport and north to winter in Minneapolis/St. Paul.  Rented a car and were soon at her Mom’s for a deferred holiday lunch, then across town to the home of Mike and Melissa, Linda’s brother and sister-in-law, who just had their third child in as many years.  The older two, twins Sam and Ed, were big kids, more than two, and brother Ben was three months.  The Uncle Rob role fit well that afternoon.

 

That night we connected with longtime friends Mike Davis and Sara Wahl.  Mike is a U.S. District Court judge; back in the 1970s, he and Linda worked together, providing legal defense for poor people.  We had a great time, a long dinner, lots of laughs.

 

Next morning I was to fly to Chicago and Montreal, and Linda was headed home.  Because of cancellations, I ended up on her flight to DFW, then up to Quebec.  On the way north, I watched a documentary, a Christmas gift I wanted, called “A Map for Saturday,” about backpackers traveling the world.  It reminded me of my roots. 

 

It took most of the day to get to Montreal, but I’m always happy to go there.  It, too, was part of my roots, my first international trip at age 15, to a North American city that, compared to white-bread Minneapolis, seemed really foreign to me (though traveling buddies Chris and Dave declared it to be “just like the U.S., only the ketchup labels were in French).  I hopped the bus into town, and made a bracing trek (it was cold and windy) across the northwest end of downtown to a small hotel on Rue Sherbrooke, the Chateau Versailles.

 

Unpacked, changed clothes, and walked east to dinner.  It was a hike, and for the second time I found my chosen bistro, Le Grand Comptoir, closed.  Heading west on Saint Catherine, I spotted Les 3 Brasseurs (The Three Brewers), a brewpub.  It will have to do, I thought, and in I went.  I sampled some of the made-right-there beers, and enjoyed a slow-cooked pork shank, Quebec peasant fare.  The NHL All-Star game was on the big TVs above the bar, making for a quintessentialy Canadian scene.

 

Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, informed me Monday morning that our northern neighbor had become the U.S’s #1 energy supplier.  Cheers, I thought.  I was soon in front of 18 masters’ students at the Institute of Air and Space Law at McGill University.  The lecture lasted all morning, good discussion and questions.  After joining a conference call for an hour, my host, Paul Dempsey, and I repaired to the faculty club (described in the 1Q07 update) for a late lunch and discussion of the business.  From his years at the Denver University law school, he sits on the board of Frontier Airlines, and has an excellent grasp of the business.  On the way down the hill to Sherbrooke Street, he pointed to snow-covered sidewalks as an illustration of the difference between Canadian and U.S. tort law: “If you fall down in the States, you sue,” he said, “but if you fall here, the property owner prevails by explaining that it’s slippery in winter!”

 

Thus notified, I ambled carefully back to the hotel, quickly changed out of my suit, and hopped on the Metro, riding east and north to a couple of interesting inner neighborhoods I had not seen for a 15 or 20 years.  Down Blvd. St.-Denis, then west to Blvd. St.-Laurent, the axis of Montreal’s historic Jewish neighborhood, the place the novelist Mordecai Richler made famous in books (and movies) like The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.  Not much remains, save for Gerson’s headstone yard, stars of David on granite poking above drifted snow, and, across the street, Schwartz’s, which has served smoked meat (akin to corned beef) for 77 years.  I headed west to Jeanne Mance Park, on the eastern flank of Mount Royal, the city’s namesake.  It was about four p.m., and folks were walking dogs, ambling, jogging, and, mais oui, playing ice hockey.  Two pick-up games were in progress, one on ice without boards and nets (shoes served the purpose), and one with.  I focused on the latter, a vibrant contest of players in their teens and 20s, and one old guy, remarkable good.  When he skated off the ice, it was a perfect Talking to Strangers moment.  He was 48, I learned, but had only been skating since 24, a plasterer whose shift ended every day at two, when he walked to the rink for a couple of hours of exercise.  “My friends think I’m crazy,” he said, “but to me they’re just lazy bastards; this keeps me young, and strong.”  Amen, brother, I said.

 

By then I was cold.  I donned my boino, the floppy navy beret I bought in Buenos Aires six months earlier.  Even in a worldly place like Montreal, people stared at it.  No matter.  Back on St.-Denis, I found Bieres et Compagnie (no translation needed!), and ordered a pint of Blanche de Chambly, a white beer from a Quebec microbrewer.  Headed back to the hotel, worked my e-mail and stuff for a couple of hours, then headed out for dinner.  Indian was what I needed, and I found the Maison de Cari (Curry House) on the Internet, and not far from the hotel.  Had a hot (but not hot enough) meal, followed by the second good TtS of the day with the owner.  He left Goa (the former Portuguese colony south of Bombay) as a young man, and headed to Sweden, married a local, and immigrated to Canada as a schoolteacher.  He waxed enthusiastic about his road trip through the USA in the summer of 1971, and I shared a bit of my story.  It was what travel is all about.

 

Next day were three lectures, two in Mary Dellar’s undergraduate advertising class in the McGill B-school, and a noontime talk to MBAs in the school’s marketing club.  In between, Mary bought me lunch; she was not a lifer academic, but had come to her clinical job by way of ad agencies and Nortel.  At the end of the day she drove me to the airport, a pleasant ride and chat enroute.  In the airport terminal, I popped out of the travel groove.  The 5:55 nonstop to DFW was canceled, and I was to be rerouted right into a Chicago snowstorm.  Sorta minor.  At the gate, the laptop died (see above).  Deep sigh.  I did get through Chicago that night, and head hit the home pillow at 4:02 a.m.  I was discombobulated the next day.

 

But I was back in the groove the following Monday, the 4th, and back to Canada, landing in Toronto about 3.  The #192 bus, the Airport Rocket, swooped in quickly, connecting me to the subway and my hotel.  Worked a bit, rode a recumbent bike, and at 7:15 met friend-since-1993 Lorne Salzman and his wife Nancy for dinner.  We headed to a very fancy place, Splendido, and had a great meal and chat.  It was raining hard when we left, really messy.

 

Next morning it was snowing lightly.  Before meeting my Rotman School (the U of T’s business school) host Mara Lederman, I detoured, as I do every year, to Soldier Tower, the monument to the university’s fallen in World War II.  I read and re-read the wonderful quite from Thucidydes, and said silent thanks to some of the heroes whose names were inscribed on the walls.  Mara welcomed me, and we plunged into a packed MBA strategy class, full of really bright students. 

 

Another Rotman host, Joe D’Cruz, met me and we headed out to lunch.  Joe has had a long interest in our business, and we had a good yak.  I then gave another lecture, to a half-dozen undergrads, and ambled back to the Holiday Inn.  It was snowing harder. 

 

At six, Mara and Paul Seaborn, a Ph.D. student who had worked for airline consulting firm Oliver Wyman, picked me up, and at my request we headed to Toronto’s vast Chinatown along Bathurst Street.  Mara researched the array of eateries and we headed into Lee Garden, brightly lit and teeming with Chinese – always a good sign.  We had a great meal and a good long chat.

 

It was really snowing the next morning when I met a new Rotman host, David Dunne, for breakfast at the Tim Horton’s on Bloor Street.  Originally from Ireland, he had worked for Unilever and ad agencies, then earned a Ph.D. and became a prof.  A really good guy.  At nine I spoke to his huge “Managing Customer Value” class, 250 students in the building’s atrium – I think it may have been the whole MBA Class of 2009.  Went well.

 

At 11:25, I hopped on the subway, north seven or eight stops to Yorkdale station.  While waiting, the slush on the sidewalk and road outside the Yorkdale station entrance propelled me up a flight of stairs.  A short-haired young man was waiting; he looked friendly, a perfect TtS candidate.  With his guitar case, he reminded me of the lead in the 2007 Irish movie “Once” (worth watching).  Within 10 minutes, we had pretty much exchanged the outlines of our lives.  Andrew grew up in Saskatchewan, son of a college professor, always interested in music, now gets paying gigs “enough to cover the rent.”  He was headed to a R&B concert in Windsor.  We agreed that the applause – after a set for him and a lecture for me – was a powerful motivator.  It was just a wonderful exchange, ended with my expression of admiration for his Canada.  He beamed.

 

At noon, Steve Young, a sales guy from Bombardier Aerospace, makers of small passenger jets and turboprops, picked me up, and we motored through slush to lunch with a couple of his colleagues, Trung Ngo and Barry MacKinnon.  Lifetime airline guys, we had a great meal and yak.  Steve then drove me to the plant, a storied place in aviation history, for it was originally DeHavilland of Canada, makers of bush planes like the Beaver and Otter, as well as Mosquito and Lancaster bombers.  I had not been on a plant tour for about five years, and was really excited.  Another sales guy, Aldo, led the tour, and we saw the production line for their Q400 turboprop (72-80 passengers) and their $50-million Global Express executive jet, an awesome machine.  Just way cool to see the complexity of the process, the discipline, the logistics (the parts come from all over, for example, Mitsubishi makes the whole fuselage in Japan, and sends it by boat to Vancouver and by train to the plant), and some very skilled workers proud to show us their handiwork.

 

Steve recommended that I leave before the 3:30 shift change, and a cabbie ran me a couple of miles to the subway.  Worked my e-mail, rode the bike in the fitness center, and at 6:20 headed out into Real Winter.  Nine or more inches had fallen, and it was quiet and white.  But inside Bar Mercurio, next to the Holiday Inn, it was hopping.  Ivana the bartender fixed me up with a Sleeman’s Ale and we bantered a bit, me telling her how out of practice I was in coping with winter.

 

At 7:30, after a quick ride across town, I met friend-since-1974 Tony Lea and his wife Joanne at Ouzeri, a restaurant in Greektown (Toronto also has a huge Greek community).  We had not seen each other in three years, and it was good to catch up.  Tony was a visiting prof. when I was in grad school at Minnesota; he now works for a database marketing company, bringing his enormous geographical and analytical skills to bear.  It was a long meal.

 

Was up way-early Thursday morning and out the door.  There was yet more snow overnight, but it stopped.  Headed west on the subway.  I waited 30 minutes for the Airport Rocket, and when it came it was mobbed, but I got on.  We were crawling on the freeway, and I mentally prepared to miss my flight.  But we got to Terminal 3 and through formalities quickly – and the flight was an hour late.  Landed Chicago about 11, and hopped the PACE #250 bus east to Evanston.

 

You may wonder, does Rob ever start a TtS chat that he regrets?  There was a “yes” answer on that bus, in the form of an odd guy returning from four days in Vegas.  He did want to tell me all about it.  And it takes an hour to get across town.  Happily, he fell silent as the bus filled.  Got to my hotel room, dropped my stuff, and headed out to lunch and over to campus.  I had a call earlier that day that my host, Anne Coughlan, was ill, that I was in sole charge of the evening class, and that I needed to fetch some handouts.  No worries.  It was nice to be back in a college town, clean and prosperous and orderly – almost too nice.  A couple of near falls on icy sidewalks brought me back to reality.

 

Worked the afternoon, and at six walked back to Kellogg to meet the usual high-caliber students, second year folks full of promise.  The class included an AA friend, Tom Aichele, our Chicago sales VP.  Class went well.  I was feeling a little unhinged that day, but the class revived and reconnected me.  I chatted a bit after we ended, and walked back to the Hilton Garden Inn in downtown Evanston.  Chili’s is not inspired cooking, but it was right across the street, so I headed over for a quick meal.  Enjoying a glass of Blue Moon beer, I toted up the first two weeks of teaching: almost 500 students in eight presentations.  What a swell opportunity.

 

Retraced my route the next morning on PACE #250, lurching in rush hour back to O’Hare, and the Silver Bird home to a clear and warm afternoon.  It was nice to be home!  Spent the next day helping to build three wheelchair ramps – for Rosa Mitchell (a lovely black lady in her 80s who wanted us to see her curio cabinet, filled with figurines of angels and churchgoers); for Jonni, who was still in the hospital recovering from a stroke; and for Charles Irvin, 78, who sat on his front porch and bantered with us while we worked to make him mobile again.  I remembered another wonderful client from a January build, Birl Coughlin, a WWII veteran who picked up a GI bride in England and still had her.  When we met them, she declared “we’re just codgers!”  The joy of all those stories – it’s why we build them.

 

On Tuesday the 12th, the day we knew as schoolkids as Lincoln’s Birthday, I drove in the dark to DFW and flew to Lafayette, Louisiana, the heart of Cajun country.  Storms blew through the night before, and we had to detour around them.  I was seriously late when we landed, and I was still 70 miles from my destination, Lake Charles (we used to fly there with small planes).  Hertz rented me a punchy little Mazda 3, and soon I was westbound on I-10, at 78 mph, along the flat coastal plain.  I called my host from the Lake Charles Ad Club with a status update.  Should have flown down the night before, I thought, had a Cajun dinner, toured a bit – to connect the dots from my fall 2005 visit to Acadia, New Brunswick, the land these folks first occupied, before the British took over that patch of North America in 1759, burned their houses, seized their farms, and propelled them to Louisiana.

 

I rolled into the club venue on I-210, a restaurant called Pat’s of Henderson, as members were tucking into catfish and hushpuppies.  No time for eats, it was show time.  A good group, lively, with solid questions.  Afterward, I ate the cold fish, still tasty, packed up, and headed back to Lafayette, now in driving rain and choked traffic on the Interstate.  I still made it back in time for the scheduled departure time, but the plane was way, way late, because of the weather.  Like lots of small airports, this one had free wireless and desks in a “business center,” and I got a lot done.  Home by nine, in time to take Mac around the block, pack a bag, and hit the pillow.

 

Up the next day, half a day of work, and at 2:30 flew again into winter, to Minneapolis/St. Paul for a teaching gig at my alma mater.  Landed at 4:30, Hertz car to Chuck Wiser’s townhouse (wisely, Chuck was still in Florida).  At seven, I picked up Mr. Jensen, my 12th grade English teacher, and we motored to Al Vento, a really nice, small Italian restaurant in South Minneapolis.  We had a fine meal and a great visit (I had not seen him for a couple of years, but we e-mail each other).  As the night wore on, I got more comfortable calling him by his nickname, Bud.  Respect lasts a long time.  It was snowing hard when we left the restaurant, but my light touch on steering wheel and pedals returned quickly.

 

I was up at six the next day, and rolled through the fresh snow to the U of M.  I met one of my hosts, Wayne Mueller, for breakfast.  Gave two lectures to MBA students that morning.  After lunch with an energetic prof, Rajesh Chandy, I found a very agreeable temporary office, a comfy chair and table in a common area on the third floor of the Carlson School.  The sun had come out, and a wide window afforded a good panorama of the West Bank campus of “the U,” and a sight line across the Mississippi to the older part of the campus.  It was a good place to reflect on all the good things my college has provided me, all the way back to my first experiences on football Saturdays with my Dad.  The thoughts made me smile.  I looked to the eastern horizon and spotted an old water tower, nicknamed the “Witch’s Hat,” and remembered my late friend and fellow alumnus Jack Sheppard, who at one time lived just below the tower.  It was a good afternoon for taking stock.

 

At 2:30 I walked across the long river bridge and met a friend, Genie Smith, for a cup of coffee.  Genie works for the College of Liberal Arts, and is truly tied to “the U.”  We share a pride in the institution that did so much for both of us.  Genie recommended I take a look at the recently completed renovations to Nicholson Hall, completed in 1895 in the Romanesque style.  The re-do was awesome.  I wandered around the East Bank campus, through the School of Design, and found myself in the Mechanical Engineering building.  On the building directory I found the name Perry Blackshear, Jr., and smiled.  Prof. B., now emeritus, was on my Ph.D. committee (how that came about is a long story for another time), I walked up the stairs to Room 445B, but he was not there.  His colleague, Professor Kittelson, explained that he was expected for faculty coffee the next morning, so I wrote a note and stuck it under his door. 

 

Some machinery just down the hall caught my eye.  In a glass case was a General Electric I-16-6, America’s first production jet engine, built in 1942 under license to the English inventor, Sir Frank Whittle of Cambridge.  It produced 1600 pounds of thrust and weighed 850 pounds (when I got home I checked the power-to-weight ratio of the GE engines that carried me to and from Minnesota – at 5:1 it was way better). 

 

I continued my walk through a range of buildings, full of bright-looking youngsters, and was reminded of the importance of brainpower to American prosperity – and thus the need to amply fund research universities.  You need taxes to do that.

 

At 5:45, I started the third and last lecture.  The audio in the room wasn’t working properly, and the TV commercials that I showed were garbled; it makes me crazy when stuff like that happens, but we got through it.  Called home to wish Linda a Happy St. Valentine’s Day, and motored across town for a plate of brats and a mug of Summit Winter Ale at my favorite (since 1971) Black Forest Inn.

 

Was out the door at seven on Friday morning, temperature -7º F, stopped for a cup of coffee, and pointed the Mazda northwest on I-94.  I was headed to Pope County, to pick up the painting we bought at the 2007 State Fair art show.  Just like last year, it took five months to fetch it.  Artist Nancy Olson lives six miles southeast of Glenwood, the county seat, which is about 150 miles west of the Twin Cities.  Roadside signs caught my eye, and offered clues about the landscape: for a veterinary outlet store called WeDoCows.com; “Tuna and Seafood All Day Every Day during Lent” at the Subway (much of central Minnesota is German and deeply Catholic); “24 Hour Self-Service Bait.” 

 

I left the Interstate at Sauk Centre, home of novelist Sinclair Lewis (they’re proud of him now), and headed into town, to the original Main Street.  Sauk was down to 4300 souls, but the downtown still looked fairly vibrant, surprising in light of the Wal-Mart Supercenter out on I-94.  The old Palmer House hotel at Main and Sinclair Lewis Avenue was still open.  I was glad to see that the movie theater downtown was still running, its 1950s era marquee freshly painted and bright; that “Juno” was one of the current lineup spoke assertively about the decline of the small-town provincialism that Lewis decried.  It’s not dead, but has dropped markedly, and that’s a good thing.

 

I headed due west on Minnesota Hwy. 28, and stopped at the Gingerbread Café in Glenwood, which was a classic small-town eatery (like the mythical Chatterbox for those of you who know Garrison Keillor’s radio show about Lake Wobegon).  A young waitress greeted me with a big smile, but the regulars stared when the city guy in the bright-red sweater entered.  No matter.  I sat at the counter, got a cup of coffee and a cinnamon roll (the town bakery was right next door).  The guys next to me were rolling dice, the grandma across from me was finishing a hamburger and fries (it was 10:15 a.m.), two farmers in the far-back booth were yakking away.  The sign above the serving counter read:

 

Coffee with refill         .70

For 1 hour                 1.00

Half the morning      2.00

All morning               3.50

 

I thought of my traveling-salesman Dad, and smiled.  He often stopped for a mid-morning coffee.  Maybe he had parked in front of the Gingerbread (no doubt with a different name back then) in his ’54 Merc or his ’74 Olds.  For sure, he would have called the waitress “young lady” – regardless of her age – and would have tipped her well.  I did likewise, zipped up, and drove out to meet Nancy and Jim Olson.

 

They were happy to see me.  Their new house was atop a glacial ridge.  We immediately began a nice visit, exchanging life stories.  Jim, 75, was born on a farm less than a half-a-mile from the house, and was still on ancestral land.  His five living brothers were all in the state.  He had worked a range of jobs in his life, farming, selling insurance, mediating farm foreclosures in the ‘80s, serving 12 years as a county commissioner.  It was clear from the conversation that he had strong regard for our earth; at one point, he quoted a Blackfoot Indian chief about the perpetuity of the land.  My kind of guy.

 

Nancy, 74, grew up in northwestern Minnesota, in the Red River Valley.  She had done a lot of ancestral research, and gave me her published autobiography.  We toured the house, admiring her works and those of artists from the area, visited her studio in the walkout basement, and had some lunch.  Good people with solid values, they reminded me of my farming friends in Wisconsin, David and Katherine Kelly.  We packed the painting, a lovely pastel with lots of yellow and blue, and I said good-bye.

 

On the way back, I made a nice detour at St. John’s Abbey and University near St. Cloud.  The Benedictines founded it in 1856, and it remains a seat of learning and culture – and some notable architecture by Marcel Breuer (best known for the eponymous chair, he also did some massive concrete works somewhat akin to those of Le Corbusier).  His chapel on campus, begun in 1953 and completed 1961, was stunning, and I am not fond of the heavy concrete modernism from that era.  It was a great place for daily prayers.  This former Catholic did not forget to dip my finger in Holy Water and make the sign of the cross on entry, fingers rippling a dark, perfectly spherical bowl.

 

Then a moment of serendip: on the campus map, I saw reference to the manuscript library, so I wandered down the hill and in.  The collections were mostly closed, but open to view were cases with pages from The St. John’s Bible, an ambitious project begun in 2000 – the entire Good Book rendered the old way, on handwritten and “illuminated” (illustrations) on vellum, which is paperlike calfhide.  A woman named Linda led me to it, and told a bit about the project.  The five artists responsible for the work, which is 80 percent complete, all live in the U.K.  There was a helpful video that explained the process, essentially unchanged since monks labored a millennium ago.  I bought a couple of notecards that were reduced versions of some pages (and made note of how to order The Gospels online), thanked Linda, and drove back.  Just a wonderful discovery.

 

I carefully snaked the painting through security, stowed it gently in the forward airplane closet, and flew home.  A nice day, for sure.

 

Four days later, back to winter, this time to Detroit.  In the last hour of the flight, I cranked up tunes from “In the Shadows of Motown,” a CD of songs from a documentary video of the same name.  If you’re plus or minus my age, you grew up with that music, and the Shadows documentary is absolutely astonishing – the story of the sidemen that made the Detroit sound possible, but never earned very much from it.

 

Hertz had lined up an iconic American car, a Ford Mustang with what seemed to be an enormous engine; I learned quickly to touch the gas gently!  In no time I was zipping west on I-94 – the second time on that concrete ribbon in five days, and was in my room at the Holiday Inn in Ann Arbor before 10:30. 

 

Up the next morning, out the door, into town.  I had my bearings from several previous visits, including a house-hunting trip with Linda in 1987 (a month after Northwest posted me to Detroit as eastern regional sales director, a job that only lasted two months before a post opened back in Minnesota).  I was headed to Angelo’s.  Googling “breakfast in Ann Arbor” the day before, Angelo’s popped to the top.  Angelo, a Greek immigrant, opened the place in 1956. 

 

I ordered a cinnamon-raisin waffle and some coffee, and enjoyed the scene unfolding in the college town, outside the two picture windows at the corner of Catherine and Glen: a city bus that proclaimed in large letters that it was “Powered by Biodiesel and Hybrid Technology”; a kid walking up Glen in shorts (though he did have gloves); expansion of the nearby University of Michigan Medical Center – would it someday swallow up Angelo’s?  Inside was a mix of students (loud) and townies (quiet).

 

Fortified, I got back in the muscle car and drove around downtown, then to locate the spot where I was to meet my host.  Like many college towns, and the Michigan motor industry notwithstanding, the city planners appeared to hate autos, and thus there was no off-street public parking, a place to put the car for a couple of hours before show time.  So I headed south into student residential area and after some effort found a legal spot. 

 

I ambled north through the heart of the old campus.  Took a couple of pictures.  It was cold (though not below-zero frigid), and it was time to warm up.  Driving south on State Street 30 minutes earlier, I noticed the Michigan Union, the student center.  In I went, and into a quiet study lounge, wood paneled, comfy.  Students were reading, drinking coffee, working their computers.  There were a couple other elders, a bearded academic-looking guy, and a fellow more like me, a business type, in coat and tie.  The U of M wi-fi network was secured, so I used the time to bring this journal up to date.

 

At noon I met my U of M host, Gerald Myers, the former CEO of American Motors (yep, Javelin, Matador, Pacer).  This was a different kind of gig: I was a stand-in for our CEO, and was there to watch a small group of students who were play-acting our senior officers – an Indian kid was Gerard Arpey, our CEO, an energetic woman was our HR chief, Jeff Brundage, and so on.  They presented for 15 minutes, then a group of other student actors, playing union leaders, FAA officials, Wall Street investors, competitors (the United guy was effective – totally annoying), and others fired questions at them.  At the end of that hour, I got up to critique and answer questions for another hour-plus.  A pretty cool format.  At 3:30, I shook hands with Gerry, hopped in my Mustang, and drove back to the airport.  An interesting day.

 

A week later I was into the air bound for Newark, quickly behind schedule thanks to Air Traffic Control woes in the Northeast (why, oh why do our pilots continue to apologize,  when the blame is due an incompetent Federal government who has not spent the money our customers pay in ticket taxes to modernize and grow the infrastructure?).  We landed at 4:30, waited for a gate, and I was finally sprinting toward the little shuttle that connects the terminals with the railway station.  The NJ Transit timetable said backtrack into downtown Newark at 5:19 (I barely made that train), then on an express to Princeton, my destination.  First time there, Einstein, Woodrow Wilson, all those smart folks.  Then there’s me, presenting to students about the airline business.

 

The main line actually runs three miles from the school, and you catch a little train into town, to “Dinky Station,” (that’s the name), on the west edge of campus.  I must have misread the timetable, and we arrived about 20 minutes earlier than expected, which allowed me to get to my hotel before the lecture.  I was at the Nassau Inn, sort of the only place in town, expensive and mediocre (experienced travelers can quickly tell this sort of place, where the owners are clearly milking an old cow).  I washed my face, checked my e-mail, and set off to find Robertson Hall.  The town is old; I ambled past Bainbridge House on Nassau Street, erected 1766, and now home to the local historical society.  En route, I stopped to look at a campus map I printed from the Internet, and when I looked up, I saw my name and the American Airlines logo on a light pole; more accurately, a broadside announcing my talk, fastened to the pole.  It was a first!

 

Soon I was inside Robertson, which was also the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and saying hello to my student host, Alexandra Kennedy.  The lecture went well, a quick one, good questions.  Then something interesting happened.  As I was about to leave the lecture hall for the reception, a fellow approached me, thrust out his hand and introduced himself: “Rob, I’m Senator Bill Frist.”  Whoa.  My first thought, a “blink” reaction, was that he was kidding, and a retort “And I’m Donald Rumsfeld” came to mind.  But he really was the former senator from Tennessee, at the school to teach a seminar on health-care policy (he earned a Princeton degree in 1974 in that very subject).  He had spoken to students who attended my talk, and was effusive in his praise of our service to education, thanking me and American.  A nice moment.  At the reception I answered a few questions, and received warm praise from an English major, who said I made an unfamiliar topic accessible.  I felt good.

 

I said goodbye, and retraced my steps to the town center, to my dinner destination, the Triumph Brewing Company, a microbrewery and restaurant, a big place.  I sampled three of the fresh beers, a stout, a honey wheat, and rauchbock, aged in charred wood, surprisingly tasty.  Plus a salad and a huge bowl of vegetarian chili.  Life was good!

 

Up the next morning at 00:Dark, back across campus to Dinky Station, shuttle to Princeton Junction.  The huge parking lots, on both sides of the tracks, were already full of commuters who rose earlier than me, and headed into Manhattan.  I got a coffee and a cinnamon roll, and hopped onto Amtrak’s 7:00 train to Washington, DC.  I always enjoy a ride on the “Northeast Corridor,” past backyards, derelict industrial landscapes (“Globe Dye Works” long shuttered), auto junkyards, and some pockets of rejuvenation.  It was a very clear, very cold morning.  We rolled through Trenton, and into Philadelphia.  North Philly looked bleak: a lot of graffiti, burned-out buildings, ugh.  Crossed the Schuylkill River, past the University of Pennsylvania’s and other rowing-team boathouses, and into 30th Street Station, a huge place.  Southward, downtown Wilmington looked better, thanks, I suspect, to the fact that most of the U.S.’s large corporations are incorporated in the State of Delaware.  Crossed the broad Susquehanna River at the head of Chesapeake Bay, a nice sight.  The neighborhoods north of downtown Baltimore looked even worse, totally grim.  Perhaps my fellow riders have become immune to these scenes, but to me they are symptoms of a storm.  As a society, we are spending our money – or at least some of it – on the wrong stuff.

 

While I’m cranky, another comment: signposting along the railway in this part of the world is really poor.  Three examples: 1) no signs on the platform in Newark Penn Station about how to get to other tracks; 2) no signs for the location of the Amtrak ticket office at Princeton Junction; 3) no platform signs indicating a brand-new station south of Baltimore (maybe it was still under construction, but it was open for business, so identifying where we were would seem to be pretty fundamental).  The contrast with European railways is just so dramatic; there, the signs always tell you where to go and where you are.  Okay, enough ranting.  I feel better!

 

We arrived Washington, DC, two minutes early.  I hopped the Metro over to our Washington office.  It was good to be back – it was a place I visited about monthly for four years back in the 1990s, when I worked on our international planning team, but I had not been there in almost five years.  Spent some time yakking with long-time friend and ace Washington airline lawyer Carl Nelson, and had a good meeting with our lobbying team.  At 3:30 I walked across town to visit daughter Robin in her office.  She looked very pregnant, which fit, because this was technically her due date.  We had a nice visit, celebrated her recent promotion, and said goodbye.  Zipped out to Washington National and flew home.  A good day.

 

The following Wednesday, the 5th, I flew to London, the first trip to Europe in nearly three months – a long time to be away from the Old World.  But I need to back up, to the night before, for a story worth telling here.  Tuesday was primary election day in Texas, and under some truly goofy rules, the committed needed to also attend precinct caucuses, where a portion of the delegates would be allocated.  Having not attended a caucus for 32 years, I didn’t know what to expect.  It turned out to be a simple matter of recording some personal information and declaring for a candidate – essentially voting again. 

 

Nothing noteworthy there.  What was remarkable was how many people were there, at a Democratic Party gathering in a solidly Republican suburban county.  Hundreds.  Overhearing conversations, it was clear that my fellow caucus-goers were also committed, largely (like me) Obama supporters.  And at least two-thirds of the caucus were people of color, in a suburb that at first glance looks homogeneously white.  Yes, the nature of the contest would attract non-Anglos, but I was amazed at diversity – not just black people (almost all supporting Barack), but Latinos, and substantial numbers of South and East Asians.  E pluribus unum, I thought, and smiled.  People brought their kids, squalling infants, elderly parents wheeling walkers.  Right in front of me was one gift from all the brave men and women who fought to preserve our republic.  I always thank my Dad and his comrades on election days.

 

As I was leaving for the airport on Wednesday afternoon, Linda called with happy news that Robin had delivered her first child, a girl, Dylan Caroline, 8 pounds, 11 ounces, healthy, squalling.  It felt a little weird to be departing just as grandfatherhood had arrived, but Linda was heading up to Washington to be with Robin ‘n’ Brett ‘n’ Dylan.  As I waited for the bus across from our offices, a tear flowed, marking the speed of life on this earth: it just didn’t seem that long ago that I was in the delivery room at a hospital in Minneapolis, witnessing the miracle of life begin with Robin.  September 1982, zoom, and here we are a generation later.

 

EDITED TO HERE

 

 

 

We landed at Gatwick about 7:30; it was to be the last ride from Dallas/Fort Worth into that airport – in a few weeks we would take advantage of a new aviation agreement between the whole of the EU and the U.S., and consolidated our London operations at the bursting-at-the-seams Heathrow.  From my flight database (yes, I keep track of every takeoff and landing, date, airline, plane type – a little obsession!), I saw that I had landed there 49 times, and scrolled down, managing to remember most of those trips – a 10th anniversary trip with Linda, lots of meetings with the AA London team and with partners at British Airways, teaching sojourns to London Business School and Cambridge, and many more.  LGW was a gateway to lots of fun and interesting trips.

 

I took the train into central London, listening (as I often do on arrival) to British music, the Beatles and Edward Elgar.  Daffodils were blooming along the tracks.  The landscape quickly became denser, and soon the Swiss Re office tower, known as “the gherkin,” and the smokestack of the Tate Modern art museum popped into view.  I walked from Farringdon station to the offices of our ad agency, McCann Erickson.  Though I am no longer the ad guy, they let me in, showed me to the showers, and let me work in a basement guest area.  At 11:30 I took the Tube to lunch at St. John, a restaurant first visited in fall 2005, a place well known for fresh food from nearby, and for using unusual parts of animals.  And maybe unusual animals, at least by conventional norms – I had braised pigeon and chard as my main course, preceded by a chunky terrine.  Dessert was a U.K. classic, treacle sponge with (runny) custard.  I walked back to McCann, very full.  If you’re curious about food, do take a look at the website, www.stjohnrestaurant.co.uk; the videos are especially entertaining.

 

At three I rode the Tube one stop to Holborn, then walked south to the London School of Economics.  Had time for a coffee with former Richardson neighbor Scott Sage, a young guy making his way in London (I’ve written about him in previous updates).  I wandered over to the new main library, designed by U.K. (and world) superstar Sir Norman Foster, snapped a couple of pictures, and at 4:30 met my host, Sir Geoffrey Owen.  For the second straight year, I was at LSE to listen to a final presentation about American Airlines (launched with my lecture in November).  It went well.  Geoffrey, his colleagues David and Nick, and I then repaired to a nearby pub for a drink and debrief.  Geoffrey planned to take me to dinner, but his wife just had hip replacement, and he zipped home.  I headed to Liverpool Street Station, bought a sandwich, chips, and a beer, and headed out to Stansted Airport to a Holiday Inn, to be in position for a 6:25 flight the next morning.  It was a short night, shorter by the fact that I spent time looking at the first pictures of granddaughter Dylan.  I’m sure people in the lobby (where there was free Wi-Fi) thought I was more than a little weird, alternating tears and laughs.

 

Time was compressed – with only six hours on pillow, Thursday and Friday ran together.  Up at 4:30, grabbed a coffee, over to the terminal, and a quick, cheap flight on Ryanair to Schönefeld, the airport of the former East Berlin (I had actually landed there during the Cold War, in 1973, on a flight from neutral Finland).  There were no Ilyushin (Russian) aircraft any more, only craft of various European low-cost carriers.  It took a long time to get through immigration, and I barely made the 9:55 train into Berlin – I was really out of breath, and hot, when I climbed aboard. 

 

Rode into the center, right past the old East German TV tower (of which they were so proud back in ’73), changed trains, and headed northwest to the end of the S25 line in suburban Hennigsdorf.  Wheeled my suitcase a kilometer south, stopping to snap pictures of a park with a monument to the Russians, surrounded by a red fence with red stars.  A few hundred meters earlier, I noticed the high school was named for the writer Alexander Pushkin, and looking more closely at the map I spotted Karl-Marx Strasse – we were clearly in the former East Germany and almost two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Bloc no one seemed to be in a hurry to undo the past!

 

I was soon at the gates of Bombardier’s big factory, to meet an old friend, Michael Beckmann, who had invited me many times to tour the plant.  Waiting for Michael’s assistant, the Transport Geek smiled broadly, in anticipation of a tour of this century-old factory, a place that has seen a lot of history since the first locomotives rolled out in 1913.  Bombardier has owned it since 1996, and manufacture there a wide range of things that roll, from trams and metros to suburban trains to the high-speed ICE expresses described in the previous update.

 

We had lunch in the company canteen, then Dr. Dirk Ehlers, the plant’s safety chief, gave us a very thorough tour – without goofy OSHA restrictions or American lawsuit fear, you can see a lot of an industrial facility.  The tour was awesome, through the shop where they make motors for electric trains, shops where they assemble the cars, and more.  Although they clearly have thought through how to optimize production processes, this was not an assembly line, but a place where most of the work gets done in ones and twos, by hand, by highly skilled (and very well paid) workers.

 

Like the Bombardier aircraft-plant tour a month earlier, it was another vignette on globalization – this plant is mostly a Made in Germany place, but they are beginning to put more production in a Bombardier plant in the Czech Republic, only three hours away, where wages are two-thirds lower.  At three, I delivered a lecture to about ten members of Michael’s team and answered a few questions.  We left the plant at 6:30 and motored straight east to Michael’s apartment, stopping at a nearby railway station to pick up Jörg, one of Michael’s old friends (and best man in his recent wedding).  Frau Beckmann, Susan, was waiting for us.  Everyone was hungry, so we changed clothes and hopped back in the silver Audi, west through the forest to Zur Krummen Linde, a comfy restaurant in business since the 18th century.  Dinner was fun.  Both Susan and Jörg are physicians, so we yakked a bit about health care; remarkably, the U.S. elections did not come up until the next evening!  We headed back to the apartment, had a schnapps, and clocked out.  I needed the eight hours.  Their modern apartment was really big, and both Jörg and I had a room to ourselves. 

 

Jörg was headed back to a medical conference downtown; Michael dropped him at the train (Berlin has a huge, dense network of buses, subways, and suburban trains, the S-Bahn), and we had a nice German breakfast.  Susan stayed home, and we headed into town.  Michael is a Transport Geek, maybe even more devoted than me, so we were excited about the day.  First stop was Tempelhof Airport, Berlin’s original aerodrome.  It was in the American Sector from 1945 to 1989, and is today almost unused – something like 10 flights a day.  After the wall fell, activity moved to Tegel, and to the east’s former showpiece at Schönefeld.  The Nazis expanded a vast terminal at Tempelhof, a semi-circle more than a kilometer long, at one time the largest building in the world.  We went into the cavernous departure hall and poked around for quite awhile, admiring a mural commemorating the 1948-49 Berlin Airlift; the old neon signs, an exhibit on proposed alternative uses for the airport land, and more.  For more than 50 years, this city was an island, surrounded by hostile Soviets and their East German proxies, and the airplane played a huge role – which was why former Berlin mayor (and Federal chancellor) Willy Brandt looked so happy in the photo of him breaking a champagne bottle to celebrate the arrival of Pan Am’s first 727 jet into Tempelhof (must have been 1964 or ’65).  And why I felt so happy and proud as an American airline guy.  Our technology and our business made a huge difference to Berliners.

 

We circled the airfield, admiring an old USAF C-54 used in the Airlift, stopped for a falafel sandwich at one of the many Turkish-owned snack bars and cafes in the city (the Germans imported hundreds of thousands of Turkish “guest workers” in the 1960s and ‘70s), and headed west across the southern half of the city, past some lovely old neighborhoods.  On my previous two visits, I never really got far from the center, so it was a treat to see a range of residential areas.

 

The high point of the day was a visit to the Allied Museum, telling the story of how the Americans, British, and French worked together from 1945 to 1989.  The story had many chapters, and the museum told them well – the immediate aftermath of WW2, with much of Berlin destroyed, the people hungry, cold, and demoralized; the Airlift, when we flew coal to Berlin, along with food, soap, and hope; the tensions after the wall went up in 1961, and the “battle” to keep the Russkies on their side of the wall; and more.  The museum had a huge array of artifacts and photos, and used them to tell the whole story.  When we left, I paused to read a plaque erected by the U.S. Berlin Veterans’ Association, dedicating the museum to all who “stood tall” and preserved freedom for the city and for tens of millions of others.

 

We stayed at the museum for more than two hours, then headed north into the center.  Michael shares my zeal for packing lots into a day, and though the light was starting to fade, we needed to make two more stops.  First was the new main railway station, the hauptbahnhof, recently opened.  He offered a critique of design and layout, based on his knowledge of rail passengers.  Last stop was a part of the wall on Bernauer Strasse with a memorial and thorough interpretation.  Most striking was a photo of Versöhnungskirche, Church of the Reconciliation, which once stood a few dozen feet from us; the East Germans dynamited it in January 1985, just four years before the wall came down; I will never, ever forget the black-and-white image of the steeple collapsing.

 

I thought about the Cold War many times that day.  When I was younger, I did not fully appreciate the role that the U.S. military played back then.  In my daily prayers, I always have given thanks for freedom and nation, and for all those who sacrificed so that we might be a free people, but the thanks went to men and women who fought in the wars  that ended in 1945.  When you stand at Tempelhof, or anywhere in Berlin for that matter, you see the need to include our troops stationed in Germany for nearly 60 years.  Unlike many conservatives, I do not single out Reagan, for I believe that the old Eastern system collapsed under its own corrupt weight, but I now appreciate the deterrent role.  We were outnumbered (the troop figure I recall was 500,000 to 13,000 in Berlin), but we were there.  Indeed, we “stood tall.”

 

I also thought many times that Saturday about how we have squandered most of the goodwill we worked so hard to build in Berlin, and more broadly in West Germany, admiration that spread from places like Checkpoint Charlie across the whole world.  I felt so proud of what w