Rich Flammer's Blog

For more than 20 years, I’ve been going to St. Louis every winter to work on a compost facility in the middle of one of its most affluent suburbs. A city called Ladue. This is where Stan the Man Musial lived, as well as August Busch III, Joe Buck, Chuck Berry, Ezekiel Elliot, Thumbelina (the world’s smallest horse in case you didn’t already know that), and a whole slew of other CEOs, sports figures and politicians. But I digress.

During each visit, I try to see one of this great city’s offerings… The Gateway Arch, Missouri Botanical Garden, Forest Park, Delmar Loop, Saint Louis Science Center, and Anheuser-Busch Brewery, among many others. I checked all of them off of my list, but one had always eluded me, as it was closed Mondays and Tuesdays, and those were the days I was in town.

Every year for more than a decade I would visit twice each winter, always flying in late on Sunday night and back out Tuesday night. Damn, missed it again. This special place is inside an old 11-story shoe factory, where kids and adults can climb the walls, touch the art, and slide down chutes. Everything’s a bit funky and weird.

Then one year, a few years ago, I was there later in the week, and I reveled in the bounty. If you’re ever in Saint Louis any day other than Monday or Tuesday, it’s a must go…

City Museum. Enjoy the experience.

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There are millions of them now, and they do, or promise to do, everything and anything under the sun sans combing your hair, shaving your face or wiping your butt. It’s fun to download a new one on your phone or iPad, but after the initial excitement is gone, the app’s icon may just sit there taking up space. I have a bunch on my iPad, and granted, some of them are super cool and fun, but most of them I just don’t use.

When I was flying a lot, it was nice to have that broad selection to kill time in the air. Skee-Ball, Angry Birds, Paper Toss, Field Goal and Soundrop are great apps to while away the hours when your brain says it’s done with work and going into flutter mode. Now that I’m mostly (and thankfully) grounded, I use very few of them. All that said and out of the way, one of my favorites is SpinArt Studio.

I remember doing spin art in Point Pleasant Beach on the boardwalk many many moons ago. There was a little kiosk-type operation and for a buck or so they’d load a fresh sheet of glossy 5×7 paper onto the wheel and hit the button to start it spinning. You had about a dozen of those plastic ketchup squirter containers you find in restaurants with the pointy spouts to choose from, each with a different color paint in them. The paper would spin, you’d squirt the paint, and when you were done they’d give you the circle of art you created in a paper frame. Anyone remember that? I’m sure lots of you do.

Lots of these apps mimic old school activities like this, but technology allows a twist. In this case, it’s inserting a photo from your digital files and spin arting around it. Fun.

I hate driving. Not just being behind the wheel, but also as a passenger in a car going anywhere on a highway. Driving’s easy, but most people suck at it and don’t understand or follow the basic rules of the road. This frustrates me every time I drive somewhere, but is it simply a pet peeve of mine? No, it’s a bona fide problem. Worldwide every year, nearly 1.3 million people die in road crashes. That’s an average of 3,287 deaths a day, 137 an hour, or more than 2 per minute. An additional 20-50 million are injured or disabled. I’ll spare you the math, but if you were some sort of cosmic being that could sit on a star, legs dangling over the edge, and look down at the earth and all of the roads crisscrossing it, you’d see a global demolition derby unfolding, with hundreds of people killed or maimed every hour. If you were looking down on the U.S., you’d see more than 37,000 people die in road crashes every year, and some 2.35 million injured or disabled.

No surprise here, as on the highway there’s no courtesy, and no common sense. Here are the basic concepts so many find difficult to grasp: If you’re doing 100 mph, be in the fast lane (that’s the far left one), not the one other drivers are using to enter or exit (that’s typically the lane all the way on the right). If I’m doing 80, and you’re passing me because my snail’s pace is just too slow for your liking, pass on the left, not the right, and don’t be looking down at your cell phone as you’re buzzing by. It’s amazing how often I see this.

If you must weave in and out in attempt to get to wherever you’re going sooner, please use your directional (aka blinkers). These aren’t necessarily for your benefit (although they will minimize your risk of crashing into someone else doing the same stupid thing as you, or the rare good driver switching lanes in an honest fashion), but rather for other drivers. As difficult as it may be, think about them sometimes too.

And by the way, that weaving and speeding and passing isn’t going to shave any time off of your trip. Look at the ETA on your GPS at your current speed of say, 65 mph sometime. Now increase your speed to 80 mph, and see how much sooner you’ll get there. Maybe it’ll take a minute or two off, until you hit the same traffic jam or red light as you’d encounter at the lower speed. Now you’re getting there at the same time, but with twice the risk of getting injured or killed while spending nearly twice as much on fuel. Go ahead, calculate it. You’ll see. It’s a losing proposition, but well beyond the comprehension of most zombies on the road.

My sincerest apologies. I honestly didn’t intend to lecture or rant… I just really hate driving.

So now to the point. Aaaaah…. Trains. No one cutting you off, flipping you the bird, or passing you at 90 mph while looking down at their cell phone. No one doing 40 mph in the fast lane, or tailgating you so closely you’re not sure if you’ve forgotten if you had agreed to tow them somewhere or they’re trying to nick something you have in your trunk. On the train, we’re all going the same speed, shoes off, feet up, reading, writing, having a drink or snack, the steel wheels humming in blissful cadence as we ponder life through the window, watching a captivating blend of humanity and nature passing by.

A few years ago, I had to go to a meeting to explore a potential new project far north of Los Angeles. I can honestly say my absolute least favorite thing in life is driving to LA. Driving through it en route to somewhere else is even worse. It was a period in my life when I was exceptionally busy, had plenty of work, and getting this potential project seemed both superfluous and a bit of a long shot to boot, so I dreaded the four plus hour drive that much more.

I looked at the Amtrak schedule and lo and behold, taking a train would get me close enough for my colleague to agree to pick me and drive me to the meeting. Getting up there would take a few hours longer, but I didn’t care. I’d be on a train. I love riding on trains. I’d never been up the coast this far on one, and didn’t know what to expect, but was excited I didn’t have to get in a car and deal with all of the unpleasantries discussed above.

And little did I know I was about to embark on what must rank up there with some of the most beautiful train rides in the world…

Most of these pictures were taken through the window of the train moving at full speed. Snapping away, I caught some interesting images of people as well as landscapes…

About eight years or so ago I began having to fly a lot for work. No crazy oversees flights or bouncing back from coast to coast a couple of times a week like many of the people I came to meet and then run into frequently on planes and in various airports. My jaunts were mostly up and down the West Coast, to the Midwest a couple of times each winter, and over the Pacific to Hawaii. If you’ve never done it, it’s truly a grind. But as said, I always met people who flew a lot more often and covered much more distance than me, so even though I felt it was taxing, I also thought, like so many other things in life, it could have been much worse.

Anyway, when I started to fly a lot, I told myself I might as well start snapping photos out the plane window. Not so much to memorialize my travels as just to satiate the multi-tasking fidget who lives inside of me, and perhaps take the edge off of flying so much. I figured I’d have lots of photo ops up there at 30,000 feet, so I gave myself the order… point the lens against the glass, start pushing the shutter button, and see what you get. Thousands (tens of thousands?) of photos later, here are a few that came out decent. If anyone is interested, maybe next time I’ll include a few tips… things I learned about shooting through the window of a plane down at a world that seems remarkably less chaotic than it feels when on the ground.

Flying west, passing another plane flying east, dwarfed by clouds

The Grand Canyon (the only time I’ve ever seen or experienced it)

Landing in Phoenix, Arizona

Boathouses in Portland, Oregon

Rice fields in Sacramento, California

Landing at dusk in San Diego, California, buzzing uncomfortably close to the city’s skyline

Wildfire south of Sacramento, California

Harbor Island and San Diego Bay in the foreground, North Island, Coronado runway in the middle, and Mexico’s Coronado Islands on the horizon

Over Phoenix, Arizona

Kauai, Hawaii

Rocky Mountains in July

Looking west from Log Beach, California

Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco Bay

Yosemite National Park and Half Dome

Mount Hood, Oregon

Shelter Island and San Diego Bay with an aircraft carrier heading out the mouth

Crater Lake National Park, Oregon

Newark, New Jersey shipping containers with New York City skyline in background

Coronado Bridge, downtown San Diego, Balboa Park and San Diego Bay

Manmade Mission Bay, San Diego, California

Elizabeth, New Jersey

Ticky-tack neighborhood, Phoenix, Arizona

Not sure why pictures taken and brought home from other countries often pop with such resplendent color and vibrancy, but it sure appears they do. More so than those we take in our own towns it seems. Is it the pervasive character of the foreign culture seeping through? The tones of the earth and living closer to it beaming without the dilution of all the materialism and gentrification our society obliterates its own landscapes with? Like city lights blocking out the view of the stars? Chain stores boxing out the craftsman’s curves on old taverns and pubs?

Or is it just the perspective of the visitor’s eye, the freshness and freeness of a vacationer’s lens, acutely aware – and snapping candidly and unabashedly at all of the sights and sounds materializing on their 10-day foray on exotic soil?

Could a visitor from say, the south of France, capture as compelling images from your region as you from theirs? Not sure, but this isn’t a quiz. You don’t have to answer that or even think about it if you don’t want to, as it’s mostly rhetorical. But while all of these words are really just a lead in to the photos, they do stem from my genuine interest in the reasons photos from our recent trip to Mexico indicate the places we visited have 100 times more character and compelling hues than where we live. Are these places really that magical, or do we just envision them to be?

Great trip visiting Guadalajara, Tequila (yes, that’s an actual place in Mexico), Compostela (distant, earthier cousin of Elvira, but not related to Nutela), San Pancho, Conches Chinas in Puerto Vallarta, and Yelapa. So much to see, write and remember, but let’s start with the food. One more happy 50th to Ken, who I’m sure sure enjoyed the culinary treasures and libations we encountered as much as anyone in our group, except perhaps this iguana. Provecho.

Should be in bed already. Hard to sleep. After ten years of gradually becoming a tequila lover, beginning with a single bottle of “supermarket tequila” in my Point Loma apartment, to having some 200 different ones in my home in Clairemont, including aging and blending a dozen of my own batches in 3, 8.5 and 10 liter charred white oak barrels, printing labels, and even beginning a fledging business of decorating bottles already quite resplendent on their own, I’m finally heading to the birthplace and motherland… Tequila, Mexico.

Flying from Tijuana to Guadalajara in the a.m. with Carla, Kippy, and Ken, who’s turning 50 on December 2nd and is the catalyst of this journey. From Guadalajara we’ll travel east to Tequila, then keep going to some of the most spectacular coast in the world, replete with jungle, jaguars, crocodiles, black bears, jaguarundi, armadillos, land crabs, scorpions and tons of other plant, bird and sea life. Warm, blue water and good surf too.

We’ll slowly zig zag to Puerto Vallarta, and fly back from there. Puerto Vallarta is arguably the birthplace of the commercialization or “Americalization” of tequila, thanks to the movie, Night of the Iguana, a celluloid adaption of the Tennessee Williams play.

My sister Sherry turned me on to the movie, and it’s become one of my all-time favorites. Filmed in 1964 and starring Richard Burton, Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr, it’s synopsis is “A defrocked Episcopal clergyman leads a bus load of middle-aged Baptist women on a tour of the Mexican coast and comes to terms with the failure haunting his life.”

Oh, but that blurb does the plotline, intensity and story no justice at all. The acting is superb, the set puts Puerto Vallarta on the map, and perhaps the best scene is that which brings Tennessee Williams’ remarkable craftsmanship with words and feel for the frailty of humanity to light.

Deborah Kerr plays a woman traveling with her grandfather, Nonno, who she claims is the “world’s oldest living poet.” He’s working on his last poem, and just before he nods out peacefully for good one starry night on the veranda of the hotel he and his granddaughter are staying in, he dictates his final verse to her. It’s a wonderful scene. Here is the full poem. One of my all-time favorites…

Nonno’s Last Poem

How calmly does the orange branch

Observe the sky begin to blanch

Without a cry, without a prayer,

With no betrayal of despair.

Sometimes while night obscures the tree

The zenith of its life will be

Gone past forever, and from thence

A second history will commence.

A chronicle no longer gold,

A bargaining with mist and mould,

And finally the broken stem

The plummeting to earth; and then

An intercourse not well designed

For Beings of a golden kind

Whose native green must arch above

The Earth’s obscene, corrupting love.

And still the ripe fruit and the branch

Observe the sky begin to blanch

Without a cry, without a prayer,

With no betrayal of despair.

O Courage, could you not as well

Select a second place to dwell,

No only in that golden tree

But in the frightened heart of me?

Hard to say. Of course you get at least some of the genes of your parents. But which ones? And in what ratios? More of your dad’s than your mom’s? Half and half? 70/30 if you’re a boy and 90/10 if you’re a girl? Or what? Who really knows, and how can this possibly be determined? Especially considering the million dollar question of what factor does the environmental conditions you’re exposed to play a part in your health and longevity?

“My grandmother smoked two packs a day her entire life, then died in her sleep, peacefully, about a week after her 97th birthday.”

“My brother never ate meat and ran 30 miles a week and died of a heart attack when he was 34.”

So if you enjoy smoking do you go through the agonizing attempts to quit dozens of times because you’re pretty sure it’ll add another 10 years to your life? Or do you roll the dice and keep smoking, hoping the genes you inherit will block the free radicals itching to take over your system?

Do you give up all of the things that are supposedly not good for you in return for a longer life without the things you really enjoy eating, drinking and smoking?

Tough call in my estimation. Not sure what the answer is. My grandfather was 98 and living alone, playing piano in a church band and drinking Old Fashioned’s at lunch just before he passed away. My dad is 94 and still driving, golfing and traveling. Will I get those genes? Who knows?

I can only hope I do…

After many years, I finally got this book written and published about my friend B.J. McPherson’s incredible story of ascent to professional hockey player to crippling demise after a cheap shot in a championship game in Boise, Idaho. Most people who have sustained his injury are, sadly, still bedridden. B.J. had the will and good fortune to come out of it intact… moving, walking and even skating again with all odds against him. Now a color commentator providing analysis for the Anaheim Ducks’ American Hockey League affiliate, the San Diego Gulls, B.J. is a true inspiration and the consummate fighter.

http://www.amazon.com/Reality-Check-Challenges-Triumphs-MacPhersons/dp/1518756182/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1448080009&sr=1-1&keywords=b.j.+macpherson