Riding the Train

We thought we might miss it. But the traffic cooperated and we arrived at the station about 15 minutes before the train was to leave. Then we looked at the board. The estimate for arrival of the train was 3:20. The timetable said it should leave at 1:15. It was late. It would be almost 6:00 before the train finally left the station. So we went over to a corner of the station and sat down to read on the long wooden benches, now mostly empty.

A train station is seldom the busy hub of activity that an airport is. I’m not talking about commuter stations, the short-run lines that ferry people into and out of cities every day for their 9-to-5. I’m talking about old-fashioned train stations. They are usually found in the older section of cities. They’ve been there for decades, and many are not aging well.

We thought it might be fun. We were visiting relatives in the Pacific Northwest. Fly into Portland, take the train up to Seattle, visit, take the train back, visit, fly home. I'd never ridden on a train for a distance, only the commuter lines. Sounded like fun.

I read my book in the station for a while. Then I looked around. There are two kinds of people who ride trains. People who can't afford to fly and people who like to ride on trains. (OK, there's a third kind, those who are afraid of flying). I saw both kinds. There was a young woman with a well-worn backpack and her male companion. Leather jacket, non-natural colored hair, worn blue jeans - I had them pegged for students. There was the old guy with his dog. I guess maybe you can take your dog on the train, it wasn't a guide dog of any kind. This was a different class of traveller than you see in the airports. The luggage doesn't match, most of it is not on wheels. The clothes are generally more worn. The people tend to sit as far apart on the long wooden benches as possible. Some sleep.

Then there were the enthusiasts. There were two retired guys who weren't even there to ride, they just wanted to see our train come into the station. So too with the grandmother and her 5-year old grandson. But he was getting fidgety on the bench, waiting. The boy's mother discovered that the next stop was only about 30 miles away and the ticket was only a few bucks. Time became the boy's friend as they decided to get on the train and ride it up the line a stop. Much better than just looking. Mom would drive up and pick them up. (Mom would get there first, I'm thinking).

Finally the train arrived. The conductor gave us a colored scrap of paper on which he'd hand-written our seat assignment. We carried our bags onto the train, put the large ones in the storage rack at the front of the car, and climbed the stairs to the seating level. We were on the double-decker Coast Starlight train. It had started in LA several days before and the trip to Seattle was the last leg. They say the trip takes 35 hours, but that's not what I saw. There were sleeping cars and a dining car and a lounge. This was rail travel.

Being up on the second level, you can't hear the wheels. On the subway and commuter rails, sometimes all you CAN hear are the wheels. But this was different. It was like you were just gliding along. It was peaceful. You could get up, walk around, go for a snack. There was way more leg room than on an airplane. And there were no seat belt signs.

It was a very different experience. We went down to the dining car and had supper as we watched the sun set. I saw the lights of the Tacoma Narrows bridge go by. Very pretty. The trip back, being in the daylight, was much more dramatic. We got to see mountains and the coast. Ahhhh.

Right now I could use a train ride. Not to Seattle, but to next year. You may have noticed that I haven't written my blog for a few weeks. Life is racing by. The days blur into one another. Already it's Wednesday - no blog. Now, I've partly done it to myself, and I guess I can partly blame God. He's the one who wanted me to transition from high tech to vocational ministry. But since he's a loving God, I'm not sure that the way I'm going about it is what he had in mind - working full time, going to seminary, having no spare time.

During the holidays I realized that I don't necessarily have to look at the process serially - go to school, get a job. If ministry is God-empowered, and He wants me to do it, then maybe I can rely on Him more and on school less. He certainly doesn't want me to burn out before I even start. I'm still working this one out.

I just need to sit for a while. So, rather than once a week, you'll see new posts as I get to them. Keep checking, I'll put one here eventually.

You'd think that after 51 years I'd have life figured out. I certainly thought that at 15. But the hard reality is, you probably never have it completely figured out - and some of us more that others.

Those of you who know me know what the "bus principle" is. Do your job in such a way that if you get hit by a bus tomorrow, the company can carry on. There is a corollary: Live your life so you won't regret your choices. You can't live always looking to tomorrow. Today must bring some joy with it as well. It's ok to have goals, but enjoy the trip.

Anyone seen a train station around?

"The Expressway is Congested..."

Here's another from the archives.

The Astolfi Theory - April 10, 1987

"The Expressway is Congested..."

"If you can't drive it, park it and milk it!" That's what a high school buddy of mine was heard to yell out the window during a traffic tie-up. I guess that was his way of dealing with something he didn't fully understand ... traffic. But then, who of us does understand why some days the traffic flows smoothly while on others it crawls at a snail's pace. (Actually, I've seem faster snails.)

Most people interpret this mystery of life according to their pre-established view of the universe. I had a friend during my college years (yes, they actually gave me a diploma) who commuted to Boston University every day. He was convinced that everything in the universe was somehow connected to everything else, and that all things just came together the way they were destined to. A very similar concept to that of 'karma' that was big in the sixties-seventies when rock musicians bandied the word about. He figured since everything was connected, he could catch a glimpse of what the future had in store for him by observing the present. The crystal ball that he felt was best, or at least unavoidable, was stop lights. Yes, stop lights. It went like this: green lights were a good sign and red lights were bad, with yellow being neutral. If more lights were red than green, it would be a bad day, and the inverse was true for green lights over red lights. Well, It never did much for me, but the theory seemed to make him a little more well adjusted.

I have another friend who is convinced that if all the factors affecting traffic flow were figured out, then an equation could be constructed that would allow you to know how long it would take to get to work on any given day. I must say that I had my doubts about at least the practicality of this approach, if not the theory.

But, this is where fact meets fiction. At a recent gathering, I idly mentioned this concept, and much to my surprise, I was approached by several well dressed gentlemen who promptly escorted me to an empty room and seated me in a chair in the center. Beginning to fear I was in trouble, for this looked like something straight out of a grade B thriller, I asked what was going on. They proceeded to interrogate me at length, wanting to know where I had heard the aforementioned information. Well, to make a long story short, I finally convinced them of my innocence, and managed, in a brilliant (if I do say so myself) attempt to get an invitation to their headquarters. Now you understand that I can't tell you who they were or where they took me, but I can reveal to you their quest.

It seems that the federal government has invested significant amounts of money (at least it seemed that way to me) in trying to figure out just this formula. With the aid of several Cray supercomputers and hundreds of researchers, the work goes on to figure out all the variables. Once the hostilities were over I was introduced to the project director, who proceeded to give me a tour of the facilities. The first stop appeared to be, and indeed was, a weather forcasting bureau, with the additional duty of trying to correlate weather patterns to human behavior and traffic flow. After wishing them luck, I was escorted to the next department, whose job was to figure out the mechanical failures of cars and what part they played.

I won't bore you with all the departments we visited, for there were hundreds, but let me just tell you the titles of a few. There was the "Sleep Habits Group" , with committees for studying television influence, seasons, sporting events and more. There was the "Curiosity Factor Group" who looked at events not connected to roads and driving to see what influence they had on traffic flow. There were groups to study accidents, economic indicators, hours of daylight, phases of the moon, divorce rates, childbirth rates, sales of VCR's, ... In fact there were groups to study just about everything.

A little confused I turned to my gracious hostess and said "What do all these things have to do with traffic?" She replied, "When dealing with something as complex as human behavior, which is largely what traffic flow is all about, we have found that what is really needed is a mathematical model for the entire world and all life therein." "In fact," she continued, "Our sponsors hope that once we come up with a working model, they will be able to predict anything about anything else."

I was flabbergasted. These people were actually trying to predict the future mathematically. After a pause, I turned back to her and asked, "When do you think you can do it?" "Off the record, we're having some trouble. This predicting the future stuff is not as easy at it looks." "In fact," she continued, "I personally don't think we can do it. From our observations thus far, people don't always act in a totally predictable way. Every now and then they do something 'just because they felt like it' and we're having a really rough time figuring that one out."

We finally reached the lobby, and she again impressed upon me the need for secrecy, and with that I was escorted to my car. As I drove home I pondered all that I had seen...I took a different route than normal...just because I felt like it. ;)

Snow is White

It snowed here in New England last weekend, and it was one for the record books. While watching the “extreme weather team”, I saw an interview with a woman on the street just before it all started coming down. In something between a whine and a scream, she was saying something like, “I can’t believe it’s going to snow AGAIN!” (We already had about 4-6 inches on the ground.)

Excuse me. It’s January. In New England. It gets cold here. It snows here.

So I thought in this week’s blog I’d give you my wisdom on winter in New England.

First: SNOW IS WHITE. My daughter works on the program staff of a camp, and the program director has a saying, “The grass is green.” In other words, it’s not blue or red or pink. It is not what you would like it to be, it is what it is. So the first thing to understand about winter weather is that it is what it is. Snow is white. The weather gets cold. This is what we have here. If this is really too hard for you to adjust to, you’d probably be happier moving to another part of the country where the weather is more favorable to your likes. Keep in mind however, that wherever you go, you must accept that weather as well. No matter where you go, the weather is what it is.

This is an important first point to understand, we’ll call it Dave’s First Winter Law (or 1st law for short).

Ahh, there’s so much I could say. I’ll limit my comments this week to driving in winter. I don't claim to be an expert, but let me share some of what I've learned after thirty years of winter driving. I’ve found, after over 25 years of commuting to work in New England, that the worst part of winter driving is NOT the weather or the road conditions; it’s the other drivers. When the weather gets really bad, I seek out the small back roads, the ones that everyone avoids because they think the road will be terrible. It is a little snowy and slippery, but due to the lack of other cars, the travel is steady and relatively hassle-free. Meanwhile, all the others are stuck in large traffic jams on the “cleaner” highways. So here are my words of wisdom about winter driving (hey, it’s my blog.)

First Winter Driving rule: Less is More.

Sir Isaac Newton devised three laws of motion (see, I’m not the only one who likes to make up laws). Newton’s first law of motion states that things at rest will stay that way and things in motion will keep going as they are unless something acts upon them to change them. (This is called inertia.) Why is this important? Let me explain. Once a car is moving, it will want to keep moving in the same direction and speed unless you do something to change it, like apply the brakes or turn the front wheels. Note that the important part here is the wheels, or more specifically, the tires. Rubber is fairly sticky (we call this friction) so when you want to turn, the wheels “stick” to the road and the car slows down. The more dramatic the change you want to effect, the more important this stickiness is. Replace “dramatic change” with “speed” and we have the idea. The faster a car is going, the more you need to rely on the friction between the tires and the road.

OK, nerdy stuff is done. Dave’s Second Winter Law: Snow is slippery. In other words, the tires are less sticky (it’s really the road that is less sticky, but let’s not quibble.) So LESS IS MORE. When you start driving, start the car in motion, you need friction between the tires and the road. The faster you try to start or accelerate, the more friction you need. In winter, at some point, because Snow is Slippery, you will try to accelerate too fast, and the tires will start to slip. This is where this first rule comes in. If you start to accelerate, and the wheels slip, give the car LESS gas. This will decrease the stress on the tire/road friction and allow the wheels to grip. Winter, in a sense, requires backward thinking. To go faster, give it less gas. Less is More, because Snow is Slippery. (I lied about the nerdy stuff).

This applies to turning as well. Here it’s not the speed you are changing, but the direction, and remember, Newton’s first law applies here as well. A car wants to go straight. It takes friction to make it turn. In the winter, since there’s less friction, you need to go slower if you want to turn (instead of just sliding straight into the snow bank.) You see, since friction is only a big deal when you change something (direction, speed), you can go quite fast in a straight line on slippery roads. But don't be fooled. As soon as you try to change ... pow. Off the road you go. It's like the man who fell off the Empire State Building. Half way down he looked around and said, "So far, so good." (Sorry, it's an old joke.)

Same thing for stopping. Here Less is More applies as well. If you hit the brakes too hard, the wheels lock up (unless you have anti-lock brakes) and instead of stopping, you just slide. So be gentle with the brakes. Actually, be gentle with all the pedals. If you start to slide, let up on the brakes and press again, let up and press and again and again. This is known as "pumping the breaks." (If you have anti-lock brakes, you want to press firmly - check to see what your car has).

My dad taught me, when I was learning to drive in the winter, to pretend there was a full glass of water on the dashboard. Drive so that you don’t spill any. Easy starts, easy stops, slow turns.

Four-wheel drive, by the way, only helps with starting. Stopping and turning are the same, since all cars have four-wheel brakes and four tires. Maybe failure to grasp this is why you tend to see four-wheel drive vehicles off the road in the winter. Some think it makes them invincible. Apparently not. Snow is still slippery (and white). First Law, Sorry.

Second Winter Driving rule: Plan Ahead.

So if you’re going to do things more gradually, you’ll need to plan ahead a little more than you do in dry conditions. If you want to go around that big bend in the road a little more slowly, you’ll have to anticipate it a little more and slow down before you get there.

I always like to find out exactly what my friction is. So after I pull out of my driveway, I accelerate to about 5 or 10 miles per hour (no faster please) and then hit the brakes firmly. If the road is dry, the car stops quickly; if it’s slick, the car slides. In this way I can see how slippery it is. (By the way, if there is someone else in the car with you, you might want to warn them about what you are doing. Also watch for cars behind you.)

Just as the snow is white, it WILL take you longer to get where you are going. Count on it! So plan extra. Planning for twice as long is not unreasonable. Impatient people and slippery roads are a bad combination (sort of like chocolate and horseradish).


Third Winter Driving rule: You can’t avoid what you can’t see.

The three most important winter safety devices in your car are a scraper, a brush and windshield washer fluid. I can’t see through ice, or frost, or snow or thick salt deposits. Maybe you can. It is important to keep the windows clean so you can see what you want to avoid. Side note - clean off the roof also. Also the back lights - people behind you need to see the brake lights to know you are stopping. I remember driving in high school one winter. I was in my father’s Olds wagon, and I hadn’t bothered to clean off the roof. (There was about 4 inches of snow up there.) One of the nice things about New England snow is that the day after a large storm it’s usually bright and sunny. So as the car sat in the mall parking lot, the roof heated up and the snow right next to the roof melted. On the way home, the first time I came to a stop, I heard a scraping, rumbling sound and a sheet of snow flowed down over the windshield. Four inches of wet snow is no match for windshield wipers. With the embarrassment similar to laying a motorcycle down on it’s side at a stop sign (Maybe I’ll tell you about that some day), I had to get out and clear the snow while impatient drivers behind me hit their horns.

You know, as I look back on what I’ve written, these things could apply to life in general. Life is what it is. We have some control of the path we take in life, but a lot of the things that happen are outside our control. People get sick, die, lose jobs. The first thing to getting through life’s difficult times is to understand that it is, some things I can’t change, and it is up to me to deal with it. Snow is White.

Less is More: When life gets tough, slow down. We can handle more activities and “stuff” when life is going well. But just like when it snows, when life gets tough, sometimes the only thing to do is less.

Plan Ahead: Focus on where you need to go and what you need to do. Remember, like the sunny day after the storm, life’s troubles also will pass (even though it doesn’t seem like it at the time). Those who are aiming for nothing usually get there.

You can’t avoid what you can’t see: What are some of the tools we need for life? I would mention two: good friends and a firm foundation. Just like a clear windshield is necessary to see, sometimes friends help us see things more clearly. Sometimes they are just there to help, or be with us so we know we’re not alone. Life is tough enough that we shouldn’t try to do it alone. And a firm foundation. Many of you know I’m going to seminary to become a pastor, so this next part shouldn’t be a surprise. We were made to know God, and we are most human when we turn to him and rely on him for strength. We were made for relationship with God. It just works better that way.

Winter isn’t so bad when you remember that Snow is White. It just is.

The First Theory

Well, I’ve been blogging for only a week and I’ve already missed a deadline (although it was a self-imposed deadline). I guess when I say I will post on Wednesday, I meant Wednesday-ish.

Anyway, I thought I would share with you the Astolfi Theory that started it all. It turns out that I started this quite some time ago - April 1987. That’s sort of the reason I’m late. The file was in a format that I could not open using any of the modern programs. I had to go back to a very old word processor to get the file open. More about this in a later Theory.

Without further ado, here it is, out of the vaults, dusted off and decoded for your enjoyment.

The Astolfi Theory - 4-3-87

Understanding the Universe - Part 1

Entropy. Some days I wake up and curse entropy. What is it? Although scientists can give you a definition that you need an advanced degree to understand, suffice it to say that it is the tendency of all things to proceed from a state of order to a state of disorder. You know, a pile of dirt in the yard eventually gets more and more spread out, hot water and cold water mix to make warm water, the threads in my socks slowly turn into tiny fuzz-balls until my toes and heels can see daylight. In a nutshell, science has once again told us what I have suspected for years -- namely that the universe is falling apart.

Lest you poo-poo this as insignificant, just consider all the things in life attributable to this law. Yes, law. The science community considers entropy to be of such profound impact, that they have included it in the rulebook of nature as the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Why do you suppose your car needs annual tune-ups, or your clothes get dirty, or the house need painting, or .....Need I go on? In fact, with the exception of other people, nearly all of life's annoyances can be blamed on entropy.

Just when you think you've got one section of the dam shored up, another part starts to crumble. Why do we bother? I don't know. Maybe it's hopeless optimism, or maybe it's stupidity, or maybe it's our human urge to try to beat the system. Hah! I've got news for you. You may be able to win the lottery once every 10.5 million times you play, but there's just no beating entropy. Whoever made up that law didn't leave any loopholes. Except ... what about dust bunnies. Oh yes, I know this subject has been covered ad-nausiam by analysts much better qualified than myself. But, just the same, the fact that they do seem to grow, thereby going from disorder to order is a little unsettling.

Let's leave that for the moment, however, and consider a universe where in fact that was the case. Let's say that instead of entropy, things did go from disorder to order. It might be kind of nice. Instead of having to paint the house every 5-10 years, the color got richer with age. I could live with that. But is this the wonderful thing it appears to be? Consider further. What would happen to the paint on your house given 50 years or so. If indeed it is getting more organized, then the paint would grow. You know, the small atmospheric impurities of our world would settle out on the appropriate houses. But after a while, it would get too thick. So there you have it, Instead of painting your house every 5 years you'd have to scrape it to get rid of the extra paint. In fact We'd all just trade one set of chores for another. Think about it. Removing extra pieces of metal from your car, ripping up roads that just seem to grow, it boggles the mind. In fact the rift between the living and the nonliving would at least appear to shrink a little.

Well, maybe it's not so bad the way it is. At least I'm used to it. And it is entropy that allows me to cook and keep warm. So ... I guess entropy is my friend ... at least until the next thing breaks. But still, it might be nice to reach under the couch every few months and pull out a new pair of socks, courtesy of the dust bunnies.

I'm Blogging!

I feel sort of like Bob in the movie, “What About Bob?” Here I am, strapped to the World Wide Web mast, with the digital bits flying through my hair at mind-numbing speed, and I am calling out, “Look at me, I’m blogging, I’m blogging.”
Useless aside: I just did a Google search on “blogging” and came up with 511,000 hits.
2nd useless aside: The spell-checker on THE word processor (which shall remain nameless) that I am using to write this on flags “blogger” as a misspelled word.
Ok, for the uninitiated, a quick primer: Blog is short for Web Log. It is, in it’s conception, a kind of on-line journal. In reality, it is probably the easiest way to have your own website. Blogging sites provide a basic structure and all you have to do is provide the content. Journal entries, pictures, links to other websites, pretty much whatever strikes your fancy. Blogging is apparently one of the hottest things on the World Wid Web these days.
So, when my son told me that he had a blog, and I went to look at it, I decided, “This is so cool. I gotta get me one!”
I have a weakness for the latest cool new thing.
When desktop computers were in there infancy, one of the problems was trying to convince people why they needed one. The industry was in need of the “killer app” (short for killer application) which would show that every just HAD to have a desktop computer. What turned out to be the shot in the arm was the spreadsheet (remember Visicalc?) Think of a spreadsheet as a digital pad of graph paper, or more appropriately, a digital ledger book. You can fill each square with numbers or put in a formula which performs operations on the contents of other squares (like adding two columns automatically.) Anyway, I don’t want to lose anyone, so if you don’t have personal experience with a spreadsheet, accountants and technical people will tell you how wonderful this kind of program is.
A curious thing happened shortly after the spreadsheet took hold. People started doing all sorts of creative (although sometimes silly) things. For example, I remember seeing a spreadsheet file programmed to act like a word processor . Another industrious person actually created a game of solitaire using a spreadsheet. Each box or cell as it’s called, was one of the cards in a pack of cards. It was slow and cumbersome, but hey, look what you could do!
When there is a new thing, especially in the area of technology, there are some people who grab a hold of it and, “because it’s so cool” they try to use it for everything. I know, I’m one of those people. My first computer hard drive was full of silly spreadsheet files that kept track of everything I could think of. But it turned out to be easier to do things the old way (whatever that was).
Or take the PDA (personal digital assistant). I remember my first PDA. It was a small thing from Radio Shack,and fit easily into my shirt pocket. You could put in telephone numbers, appointments and notes. It wasn’t real easy to use, no touch screen or stylus, only a 12 character scrolling readout. But it was a cool new thing. I put everything in there. It would even set off an alarm when I had an appointment. It was so cool. Then the battery ran out, and I lost everything. I’m back to a paper date book. I still use paper.
I know, you’re going to tell me I need to try one of the new ones. Been there, done that. I just prefer paper.
So is blogging the same thing? Everyone is getting a blog, because it’s so cool. People are journaling, and frankly, a lot of blogs are not that interesting (Thanks, by the way, for reading this far.) Am I just being caught up in a fad? Or does having my own blog make sense?
I came across this quote in one of my notebooks. “Writing from his home in rural Maine, the great essayist E.B. White once ruminated on the news, announced in 1956 by professors at the California Institute of Technology that in the new millennium “Technology will be king.” White was struck by the assumption that technology is equivalent to progress, and is therefore something to be desired and celebrated. “Many of the commonest assumptions are arbitrary ones; that the new is better than the old, the untried superior to the tried, the complex more advantageous than the simple, the fast quicker than the slow, the big greater than the small.” (Country Journal, Nov/Dec 2000, p.45)
So why blog? In the spirit of White’s comments, let me ponder a minute whether this blogging thing is a good thing. I’m reminded of a novel I read in high school. I don’t remember the author or title, but I do recall the plot (sort of). It was a love story between a librarian and one of the patrons. But it was no ordinary library. This library accepted books and manuscripts from anyone who wanted to write one and submit it. There was no filter. The library grew larger and larger, but most of the books were never read. But that was not the point. It was not that the books needed to be read, but that they needed to be written.
This was in the early 1970s, long before the World Wide Web. This book, however, foreshadowed one of the key characteristics of the web; namely that it is an unfiltered, self-publishing domain where those who need to write can do so and hope that maybe someone will read it. It’s the writing, though, that’s important. And blogs make this easier.
About eleven years ago, I fancied myself becoming a syndicated columnist. So I started writing a weekly column and emailing it to about a dozen people (their request). It was called, “The Astolfi Theory.” I stopped after a about six columns. But now I’m back. When I mentioned my blogging intentions to one of my early “subscribers,” she looked at me and said, “This is sort of the fulfillment of a dream for you isn’t it?” Maybe. So, I guess I need to write, at least for the time being. And, thank you, dear reader, for staying with me this far.
One last “cool” thing about blogs is the reader can respond. I welcome responses, so feel free.
Blog on Dave, blog on!