When She Flew, We Soared

I refer to last week as “geek week,” not only because that’s when Apple began selling their new, highly coveted iPhone 5, but also due to the spectacle of a low-altitude flyover of much of Southern California by the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Not to be outdone, my lovely and talented wife deemed last Friday – the day both events actually happened – as “nerd-vana.” (Kindly address your letters to her, not me.)

While I’m sure the world will see many more versions of the iPhone in years to come, Friday’s flyover was billed as the last ever “flight” of a space shuttle orbiter. Pretty heady stuff.

Mounted on top of a modified Boeing 747, the Endeavour’s flight plan over the Golden State included the skies above Sacramento, Santa Monica, El Segundo, the Getty Center and Griffith Park Observatory, a “money shot” flying low over the iconic Hollywood sign, a quick pass over JPL and the east end of the Crescenta Valley, then south to Disneyland and finally, back to LAX where it would land one last time, never to fly again.

As the son of an engineer/private pilot/aerospace junkie, during the heyday of the shuttle program I heard regular commentary describing the orbiters as the most complicated, over-engineered machines ever built by mankind. Dad would watch the broadcast of a shuttle launch or landing, shake his head and say that there were so many thousands of moving parts, interconnected electronic circuitry, first-of-its-kind software and critical systems in those kludges that even a hiccup in the works could cause the things to fall out of the sky.

I’ll never forget watching one orbiter do exactly that one awful January morning in 1986 when – 73 seconds after liftoff from the launch pad at Cape Canaveral – the Shuttle Challenger exploded high above the Atlantic Ocean. My soon-to-be-wife and I were among the many millions watching the tragedy as it played out on live TV.

In a coincidental quirk of fate, the shuttle that flew over the Crescenta Valley last week was the one built to replace the ill-fated Challenger orbiter. I hope that in the years to come, the sight of the Endeavour flying over JPL, then banking left and low over the San Rafael Hills will be the image I remember more often than that awful smoke plume of the Challenger’s twin solid rocket boosters corkscrewing out of control as the orbiter with seven crew members on board disintegrated in mid-air. Sometimes our reach exceeds our grasp with truly painful results.

On a much lighter note, waiting and wilting in the near-one-hundred-degree heat with the thousands of other people near JPL last Friday, I quickly realized that the real show was already happening on the ground all around me. I’ve never seen so many near-collisions between cars and trucks and motorcycles and motorhomes and cyclists and pedestrians and even strollers. As the hours passed and the temperature soared, shuttle spectators became increasingly distracted and impatient – those arriving too late to park legally simply double- and triple-parking wherever they felt like it – even on the 210 freeway. Just amazing.

Everywhere, car stereos blared the voices of KFI radio reporters calling out the current location of the shuttle over Southern California. The reporters’ breathless over-the-air updates echoed off the parched hillside above Linda Vista. And then, suddenly, there it was, gliding above the Arroyo Seco towards the waiting multitude. A scorched white, winged testament to a nation of innovators, risk takers and bold imagineers. When the space shuttles flew, our nation soared.

I hope those daring days of wonder and exploration are not behind us, and I look forward to when we once again have the visionary fortitude and economic firepower to reach for the stars. In the meantime, however, I think we already have more than enough evidence – judging by the crowd around me last Friday, at least – that space cadets and other-worldly beings are already among us.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls. I’ll get it.

As my kids will attest, I have three immitigable personal quirks (okay, at least three). One; I can’t walk past a light switch without turning it off if no one’s in the room. Two; an outside door left open during the winter while our heater is running or in the summer while the air conditioning is on pushes every penny pinching, energy conserving button in my body.

And three; I simply cannot let a phone ring without answering it.

I can’t stand to even let voicemail pick up a call because I know how many people – my own kids included – simply hang up rather than leave a message.

I’m sure there’s some deep, disturbing psychological neurosis responsible for this character flaw. Lord knows a handful of skilled therapists have been able to purchase vacation homes just from analyzing oddities of my personality that are too numerous to mention here.

Last week I wrote about the inordinate number of unsolicited calls we’ve received for months now made by telemarketers with nearly identical pitches selling home improvements. As much as these incessantly interruptive calls drive me crazy, not answering them would be even worse. Trust me on this. To not answer a phone is to wonder if one of our kids in some far-flung territory is in dire trouble and needs rescuing. Or maybe that call was from an attorney representing an unknown relative who recently died and left us their entire collection of priceless Pokemon cards. Or it could have been a personal call from Barack Obama wanting to have a beer with me and discuss the state of race relations in our new American utopia. The problem is, you just never know.

My wife always has some sage comment like, “If it was important, they’ll call back.” To which I usually answer, “Seriously? What if they can’t? What if terrorists were about to abduct them and they only had ten seconds to make a call before murderous thugs broke in and that call we just missed was the one chance they’ll ever have to make a call for help and we never, ever, ever see or hear from them again. Huh? What if?”

See what I mean? My poor wife.

Sometimes I wonder if there isn’t some canine DNA in me. I mean, my hearing is so attuned I can hear a phone ring in the very back room of our house when I’m outside in the front yard, standing on the top rung of a ladder leaning against the roof, with the neighbor’s gas-powered leaf blower on maximum annoy, while a heavily loaded dump truck lumbers uphill past our house and multiple helicopters hover overhead covering the latest Southern California car chase. Oh, and every dog in our neighborhood is barking its head off as a pack of stray cats fight for territory in the bushes under my ladder. Is somebody gonna get that phone?!?!

As soon as I realize that nobody but me hears the ringing, I will risk life and limb to hop off the ladder, dive over the hedge and do a commando roll on the lawn, hop back up, dash through the garage and leap over various exercise equipment – coming dangerously close to altering certain body parts in the process – crash through the door into our family room, make a flying leap over the couch and in mid leap snatch the cordless phone from its charging cradle on the desk.

As I stab the “talk” button and hear the dreaded dial tone, I let out an anguished groan. Looking around, I suffer the pitiful smirks from whatever family members were present to witness my insanity (but apparently felt no compulsion to answer the phone themselves!). “They’ll call back,” my wife says. And sure enough, the phone rings again less than five minutes later.

And of course, it’s a telemarketer. I’ll see you ‘round town.

Call Me Fed Up

In the classic Buffalo Springfield song, “For What It’s Worth” the band sang, “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.” Now, I don’t know if whatever’s happening is only happening at my house or throughout the entire Crescenta Valley. It could be happening all across L.A. County and even Southern California, for all I know. But what’s exactly clear is, I’ve had enough.

For the past couple of months, we’ve been deluged with unsolicited, unwanted and unwelcome sales calls to our unlisted home phone number. Unbelievable. We’re getting at least one, if not two or three of these calls every day and they’re all very similar in nature. Why, it’s almost as if the callers are reading from the same script. Nah, ya think?

Although there are two basic versions of the calls, each one begins identically. My phone rings, I pick it up and say hello. There’s a silent pause with some static. After I say hello one or two times more and am just about to hang up, I hear background babble of other voices making outbound calls from what I assume are countless cubicles filled with soulless headset-wearing telephone marketers. Within seconds, the soulless headset-wearing telephone marketer assigned to my number wakes up, and in a fake-friendly voice says, “James?”

Okay, there are only two people in my life who have ever called me James. One was my dear departed Father, who often preceded my given name with a choice expletive or two, followed by a detailed description of how I’d screwed something up beyond all repair or redemption. The other person is a great friend who calls every so often just to catch up. Ray called me this morning as I was writing this, in fact. When I hear his voice say “Well, James …” I know I’m in for a wonderful time of fellowship and reconnection. When I hear anyone else use my proper name, however, I know a sales pitch is coming.

In pitch version number one, the caller is someone who supposedly talked to me “back in January” about possible remodeling or roofing or painting or plumbing or landscaping, or ... well, I didn’t have any work for them at the time, but I supposedly asked them to call me back at the end of summer. Right. Sure I did.

In the second version, the caller excitedly explains that their company is finishing up working on one of my neighbors’ homes and only going to be in the neighborhood another couple of days, but because I’m fortunate to be in the same neighborhood, they’d like to give me a free estimate for any possible remodeling or roofing or painting or plumbing or ... you get the idea.

The first dozen or so of these calls I simply said “no thank you” and hung up. Then I just hung up. Eventually, I began telling my telephonic tormentors that I had already heard the exact same words dozens of times. Now they hang up on me.

This past Sunday as my wife and I were discussing an inspirational morning at church, our phone rang. You guessed it, Pitch Number One. I asked the pleasant sounding woman who interrupted our Sunday calm why she was telling me something that simply wasn’t true. Her tone instantly flipped from friendly to snarky and she actually said, “What am I supposed to say, ‘I lost my dog and want to come over and look for it in your yard?’” Then she hung up.

You’re probably thinking, why doesn’t he just let the phone ring? Yeah, why not? Well, as I’ll most likely write about another time, there’s an overwhelming, Pavlovian-like strand of my DNA that absolutely, positively must answer a ringing phone if at all possible. In other words, I’m a telemarketer’s dream. Unfortunately, it looks like they’ve found me.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

The Bear Truth

Way back when I was a kid, we used to sing a parody version of “On Top Of Old Smokey” that went something like, “On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese; I lost my poor meatball, when somebody sneezed!”

I know it’s an odd connection, but last week I couldn’t help but hear that ditty playing in my head when I read that our beloved local celebri-bear, “Meatball”, had been trapped once again. This time, however, he wasn’t simply taken deep into the Angeles National Forest (but never deep enough, apparently) and released, only to reappear in someone’s backyard refrigerator or swimming pool within weeks or even days. No, this time authorities decided it was time to give the 400-pound porker-of-a-bear a one-way ticket out of Dodge.

As had been ably reported by media outlets from the CV Weekly to national networks, last Wednesday Meatball was captured for a third and final time and taken to an animal sanctuary in Alpine (near San Diego) aptly named “Lions, Tigers and Bears.” Oh, my.

Unfortunately, once at the sanctuary the bear showed his true gastronomic standards. After his arrival, according to online reports, Meatball’s handlers became concerned that he wasn’t eating well. They quickly solved that problem with mountains of meatballs donated by local restaurants. Well, of course.

Many locals (my dear wife, included) were saddened to learn that Meatball has been permanently removed from this bowl of pasta we call the Crescenta Valley. I have to admit, it’s been kinda fun to think that our community had its own “mascot,” even if it was the kind that attracts hovering news choppers and panicky calls to 911.

But I completely understand the need to permanently remove this increasingly aggressive and emboldened bear both for his own good and ours. As cute as they may appear, bears can be dangerously wild animals. They’re powerful, unpredictable creatures who – in spite of their shuffling and snuffling demeanor – can attack with lightening quick reflexes at the slightest provocation. Just last month a photographer hiking in Alaska’s Denali Park was fatally mauled by a Grizzly. Winnie the Pooh, they ain’t.

Bears without fear of human beings, like Meatball, can be the most dangerous kind. In high altitude town of Mammoth Lakes, where I escape to as often as possible, there are just too many bears in and around the town to “relocate” them all. So residents and officials have learned how best to live with each other. In Mammoth the mantra is, “A fed bear is a dead bear.” Meaning, if you make it easy to get to food, a bear will do whatever it takes to eat that food. That’s why nearly every truck, car, bike and snowboard in town has a sticker on it that reads, Please Don’t Feed Our Bears!

Mammoth residents know fist hand that bears will keep coming back to wherever food is easiest to find, whether it’s a trash can, campsite cooler or food left in a car. Eventually, the animals will either wind up having to be shot and killed by Fish & Game officers or, as happens all too often, hit by a car while crossing the road.

Coincidentally, that’s exactly what happened to a yet another bear in La Canada only days before our latest visit from Meatball. And sadly, that bear was so gravely injured it had to be put down by Animal Control authorities.

On another note, I find it interesting (you’re probably not surprised) that this particular bear was hit on Foothill Blvd. near the McDonalds. Maybe he had a hankering for Big Macs instead of meatballs. Or maybe he should have paid attention to the warnings that fast food can kill you.

I’ll see you ‘round town.