Category: OpEd (Page 3 of 5)

Not So Piefect

November 26, 2021 / hkraushaar

It is Black Friday morning, and as I sit here writing this, I am reflecting on Thanksgiving, dipping a perfect piece of mandelbrot into my perfect cup of Peet’s coffee, all the while listening to Arlo mutter about Alice, Fasha and Obie.

Black Friday has been a mixed bag so far. Despite awakening in a food, drink and sleep induced fog, I had a great, though eye opening, both literally and figuratively, workout on my Tonal. I took advantage of a Black Friday sale by buying more Peet’s coffee. I bought some bagels. I ate breakfast. And now I am sitting here reflecting, dipping and sipping.

On the surface, Thanksgiving was perfect, or in the context of my thoughts last night, piefect. It marked a return to normalcy after last year’s small, muted, stunted celebration. We had 14 people for dinner, which may have been a record for us, including our kids, son in law, grandchild and many members of Pam’s family. Everything worked perfectly. Everybody contributed. Everything was done on time. All expressed our gratitude. No one yelled or argued. Portia was happily running around, talking up a storm, and eating lots of pie. Every thing was perfect. And, shockingly, nothing was amiss. Or so it seemed.

I have been taking the lead role in making Thanksgiving dinners for about 20 years. It is a role I never envisioned for myself when I was younger, but one Thanksgiving I told everyone at the table that I was doing the cooking the following year, even though I had never cooked a turkey in my life. It’s worked out pretty well, and no one wants me to stop. It has become a labor of love.

But labor it is. I refer to Thanksgiving as my version of The Longest Day. My day has evolved and my work load has lessened over the years, but it is still stressful and a lot of work. It starts Wednesday evening with pie making, something I am a relative novice at, having made fewer than ten pies in my life. But apple pie defines Thanksgiving, so that is what I make. And this one was damn near piefect, even though I felt it was going to be less than piefect as I fumbled around making the crust and getting it into the pie plate. On Thanksgiving day I make the hors d’oeuvre dish, a vintage egg paste that is an homage to my late mother, Helen, and requires a Foley Food Mill, an anachronistic device I watched my mother use over sixty years ago. Then it’s on to making the turkey, the turkey stock and giblets (wing tips, not neck or innards) to be used in the gravy, the creamed spinach and, last, and most assuredly the most difficult dish to get just right, the gravy.

Thankfully, I have lots of help. Shelby made the stuffing. Kim made the salad and a healthy version of cranberry sauce she made from scratch. Bryan made the macaroni and cheese. Pam continues to make the yams, which are the not candied in the least, the mashed potatoes and the green beans. Andrea and her family, bring a pumpkin pie. Mitch and Dale bring Dale’s pecan bars and drive down from San Francisco. Lois makes and brings the aforementioned mandelbrot and brings Sees candy.

I went to sleep last night feeling great, tired and full, but great. As I was working out this morning and doing a set of iso split stance chops, a fiendishly difficult exercise, it dawned on me that I had sinned yesterday. My sins were not sins of action, but they were sins of omission. And our Thanksgiving was not so piefect after all.

First, and less importantly, I apologize to Arlo Guthrie, as I failed to listen to Alice’s Restaurant yesterday, thereby making Thanksgiving day less piefect, which is why I was listening to it this morning. Alice’s Restaurant is a funny song, but it is also a protest song, a song which is more significant now than it has been in decades.

Second, and much more importantly, and why I am writing this with tears in my eyes, I apologize to Onesimus (smallpox), Edward Jenner (small pox), Louis Pasteur (rabies), Max Theiler (yellow fever), Thomas Francis (influenza), Jonas Salk (polio), Albert Sabin (polio), Maurice Hilleman (measles), Richard Mulligan and Paul Berg (recombinant dna technology), and Katalin Kariko (mrna technology), because I omitted to thank them for developing ground breaking vaccines or technologies which have led to the development of the covid vaccines. I apologize to Donald Trump and Mike Pence for failing to express my gratitude with respect to their efforts in initiating and managing project Warp Speed to combat covid. I apologize to all the scientists around the world, who worked on the development of the covid vaccines, for failing to thank them for their tireless efforts on our behalf. I apologize to Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who spoke the truth throughout the pandemic, for failing to thank them for their honesty, knowledge, communication skills and professionalism during extremely turbulent, stressful times. I apologize to Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsome, and Eric Garcetti, who made the distribution of the vaccines a national, state and local priority, for failing to mention their leadership in getting the infrastructure mobilized to get the vaccines distributed. Lastly, I apologize to all the doctors, nurses, support personnel and volunteers who spent inordinate amounts of time putting shots in our arms.

As I finished my set of iso split stance chops, I was stunned, not to mention somewhat disturbed. While we were waxing poetically last night about our gratitude over our return to normalcy, our collective health, our happiness to be with family, and our joy at consuming massive quantities of piefect, fat laden foods, I did not adequately thank those many who provided the foundation for our piefect evening. Sadly, I did not even note my failure. A failure I will ensure never recurs.

Happy Thanksgiving.

47

August 28, 2021 / hkraushaar

47 is an odd number, literally. It is close to 50, a nice round, even number that is worth commemorating, but 47 is not 50. So why am I writing about 47? It has nothing to do with the number of the next POTUS. It is not the number of years I have been married to Pam, my saint of a wife, which is only a paltry 41. It is not the number of years since my high school graduation, which is 48. So WTF am I writing this for? Frankly, I could have just written about the number 1, which is the real significance of 47 for me.

In the summer of 1974, 47 years ago, I began my first physical, not spiritual, rebirth. In the summer of 2020, 1 year ago, I unknowingly began the rebirth of my physical rebirth. Simply put, I changed my exercise regimen dramatically in my 47th year of exercising. That is why 47 is so significant to me. And that is why I could just as easily have written about the number 1.

I did not expect this change. I did not seek this change. I did not even understand that I needed to make this change. Nor did I understand just how important this was going to be for me. The reality was that I had been in an exercise rut for years, smugly thinking that I was fit. And to some extent in one dimension I was.

As the summer of ’74 began, I had just completed my first year at UCLA, and, frankly, I was overweight and out of shape, having skipped most forms of exercise for the prior couple of years. I don’t really remember what prompted me to step foot onto the red clay track at Beverly Hills High School, my alma mater, but I did. It was not pretty. It was not pleasant. But at least that first outing was brief, possibly only a single lap, a lap during which I probably walked more than I ran. And while my start was inauspicious, that single act was the catalyst for the commitment I have made to exercise ever since.

Running became my go to form of exercise. My raison d’etre in the exercise world. I could never explain why. I was never more than marginally good at it. But I was that guy. The one that everyone got irritated with. I ran. Not because I had to. But because I liked it. I liked to run without music in my ears, as I just loved the sound of my heart beating in my chest and of my feet slapping the ground. I felt bad if I didn’t do it. Yeah, I was that guy for 46 or so years, while covering about 25,000 miles.

Of course, running was not the only form of exercise I did, but it was my favorite. During the rest of the 70s and through all the 80s and 90s, I did other things along with running. I spent lots of time playing pickup basketball until I realized that it was too easy to get hurt and keep me from running for months. On a whim in the mid 80s, I decided to check out a Masters Swimming workout at the Jonathan Club. It turned out that if I liked running, I was actually naturally good at distance swimming, despite having never done any organized form of it. So for the next 17 or so years, I swam with a Masters team, logging somewhere over 6,000 miles in the pool and ocean. In the late 80s, I dabbled in cycling and did several international distance triathlons and, later in the 90s, bike centuries.

But since I stopped swimming in ’03, I became much more one dimensional. I ran. I sort of lifted a few weights, but there was no organized or thoughtful or consistent approach to my lifting. I didn’t realize it, but my body was changing in ways that were not positive. My running stride was shortening. My mobility and balance were waning, and most of all my core and glutes were pretty much useless. But I still smugly believed I was fit. And in a cardio sense, I was. I just assumed that my physical degradation was due to aging. I began to wonder just how much longer I could run.

Then Covid happened, and I was not lifting at all, not even sporadically. That was when my Tonal entered my life. I had no expectations for it other than replacing my disorganized, unthoughtful and sporadic approach I had towards weightlifting and for keeping me away from Equinox. It enabled me to do both of those things admirably, I was wrong in thinking that was all I would do with it.

I recently celebrated my 1 year Tonalversary. It is shocking to me just how much fitter I am today than I was a year ago. Let me be clear, I will never be the guy who focuses on building big delts, lats, pecs or biceps or getting super strong. I am not interested in those traits. On the other hand, at 66, I am totally interested in maintaining muscle mass and bone density, in training all the muscle groups in my body, in improving my balance and mobility, and in maintaining my cardio fitness levels. When I got my Tonal, I had no idea just how important all of these goals were going to be to me. Nor did I realize how effective it would be to enabling me to achieve them.

I breezed through the first program I tackled. It was a pure beginner program, and I kept my weights low to ease into using the machine. Then I started the second program, and all my illusions of fitness evaporated when I tried my first Bulgarian split squat. After lowering the weight to the bare minimum and falling out of most of the reps, I realized I needed to press reset. My mobility and balance were awful and my glutes apparently had not been used in years. That was about 11 months ago. Suddenly I was not so smug. In fact, I was pretty depressed. All I wanted to do was to avoid doing another Bulgarian split squat. I mean, who needs them, I asked myself.

Then I got mad at myself for being so lame. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I needed them. So I decided to incorporate body weight versions of them into my pre-Tonal warmup stretches. At first, I was happy doing one on each leg. Then two. Then three. Since then, I have done about 1,000 of them. They are now one of my favorite movements. They have become the poster child for the rebirth of my physical rebirth and the genesis for restoring my belief in incremental improvement, despite being on Medicare.

With the help of the Tonal Coaches and community, I have transformed myself. Over the past 11 months, I have mastered many, many movements that I would have thought impossible to do a year ago, movements that have enabled me to focus on my core and my glutes and on a lot of other muscles in my body. I have lifted over 850K pounds in that time, a low number compared to most Tonal users, but a significant number to me. I cannot even count the number of burps, burpees, mountain climbers, squat jacks and other body weight exercises I have done. Sure, I still have limitations and physically cannot do a goblet curtsey lunge consistently right, but mentally I believe that I can and will master them.

Due to a running induced metatarsal stress fracture in January, I stopped running. I began to believe that I would never run again. I could not exist without cardio and had no interest in returning to Equinox, so I bought a Peloton bike, which I have used for cardio for the past six months. But spinning is not running. I will continue to use the bike because of the ease in which I can get a great cardio workout. But returning to running has been lurking in the recesses of my mind for the past month or so. I miss it. So much so that the other day, I put on my running shoes after doing a core workout on Tonal and went for a run. My pace was slow and easy. My distance was short, under a mile. My cardio was a bit labored. But my stride was remarkable. It felt long and fluid. My glutes were firing. My core was stable. I realized I would still be doing some form of running for years. I thanked my Tonal the whole way.

Time

May 29, 2021 / hkraushaar

To quote the Chambers Brothers, “Time Has Come Today.” I have always liked that song, even if I was about 12 when it was released, and even if I could not relate to it at that time. Most likely, I would have needed a dose of Timothy Leary to “get it” anyway. Now fifty-some years later it is beginning to weigh heavily on my mind.

Time Has Come Today is a call to action. When it was released it was about social justice and ending the Vietnam War. In a broader, world wide context the song is just as, or maybe even more, appropriate today than when it was first written, but that is not why I am writing about it now.

At 66, I am staring down the gun barrel of my own mortality. Well not really, but I am reaching the age where my QTR, or quality time remaining, is rapidly diminishing, leaving me with a host of long ignored and perpetually postponed life decisions. Decisions like how do I want to spend the quality time I have remaining. Like what will make me happy. Like what will make me feel good. Like what will keep me healthy. Like… Like…. Like…. Like…. While the questions are easy to pose, the answers are elusive, or, more likely, obscure.

I am a very fortunate guy. Despite my generally grumpy, curmudgeon-like outlook on life, I am actually pretty happy. Thankfully, I do not have a host of major issues to deal with. I have a great family. I love the work I do. I enjoy pursuing healthful activities. I enjoy my friends. My body and mind are functional. I do not have financial stress. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I have very little free time to spend on anything else. Which leads me right back to the question of the day: If I had free time, what would I want to do with it? In other words, how do I want to spend my QTR. Frankly, I have no idea.

Sporadically, in life we face times like these. Times that are watersheds in retrospect. Times where big decisions are made. From birth to our late teens, we have very few such decisions to make. Then all of a sudden, we have to pick, and get accepted by, a college. That was pretty easy for me, as it was UCLA or junior college. Even worse, we have to pick a major. For me, that was a simple choice, as I hated to read and—ironically—write when I entered college. Thus, it was easy to choose a major like mathematics. A paltry four or so years later, we have to pick a career or decide to stay in school. Again, that was pretty easy for me, as I opted to get an advanced degree. But unless we are lucky enough to be born with a significant trust and gobs of family money—which I wasn’t—sooner or later we have to pick a career, go to work and earn a living. Oh, yeah, we also have to decide if we want a spouse and family. But once those big choices are made, we generally have a long time to just stay the course, with periodic mid-course corrections. Until the specter of QTR looms large. Then it is time for the biggest life decision of all.

So here I sit, writing this and mulling over my life and how I want to spend what is left of it. So far, I have really enjoyed my day. I was up at the butt-crack of dawn because I don’t really need much sleep. I worked while it was still dark. I threw balls to Jake, the dog, after it got lighter, which is why at 12 years old he is still a spry guy. I did my 45 minute Peloton Power Zone ride, getting my heart rate into zone 4 and schvitzing enough to leave a puddle under the bike. I fed and walked Jake. I ate. I worked. I did my weekly personal banking and credit card reconciliations. I helped Pam unload the groceries. And I sat down to write this. All before lunch. All in all a pretty normal Saturday for me. And that is the problem.

I have been on the treadmill, literally and figuratively, of life for quite some time. It feels normal for me to do some work almost every day of the week—at all hours. Frankly, it feels good to be mentally engaged 24/7. It gives me purpose. It fills up my time. I am never bored—unless I have nothing on which to work. Again, that is the problem.

Sometimes I wonder if I am a workaholic. I know I have compulsive personality disorder in my genes, as my mom was a compulsive gambler. No doubt I enjoy a routine and find it hard to change it. Work enables me to stay in my rut. In the past when I have pondered this, I would re-read the definition of workaholic, and I realize that I did not work to avoid pressing or emotional issues. I worked because I had too much to do. Or so I told myself then. But more and more I am coming to understand that I am so inured, and that my soul has become so psychedelicized, to working long hours that I have accepted them as being the norm, or the price I pay for loving what I do, with the result being that I have suppressed my desires to do other things. Covid only made the situation easier to ignore, as there was not much else to do anyway. But now as we are beginning to open up and do more things and as my QTR continues to diminish, the true cost of those hours has become more apparent. But is it high enough to cause me to act? I think it is.

Which brings me back to Time Has Come Today, and its call to action. I need to change my life now. I need to work less. Not because I have a pressing need immediately, but because I will never know if I have a need until it is too late if I don’t. I have to give myself time before I have any clue as to how I want to use it if I ever want to have the time to use it differently. In some respects it is like creating the space to build a field of dreams, but that is a topic for another post.

Dread Lifting

March 19, 2021 / hkraushaar

As I sit here writing this, almost every muscle in my body has been letting me know it exists. Except for my calves, each muscle was heavily used this morning. For a guy who just turned 66 it is a great feeling. Heck, for a guy at any age it would be a great feeling.

More interesting, at least to me, is how I got my muscles to speak this loudly. Louder than they used to scream in the early 00s when I was still doing Masters Swimming. I am excited that I feel this way now. The fact that I was able to generate this muscular cacophony while barefoot and in the privacy of my home during a pandemic is just icing on the cake.

I have always loved to exercise. Yeah, I’m a freak that way. Since I was 19, some 47 or so years ago, I have consistently worked out. During that timespan two themes emerged: I love cardio, and I hate weights, so much so that I avoided lifting them for most of those years. And if I did lift them, I just faked my way through a few meaningless sets.

But no amount of cardio would leave me feeling like this. It takes weights, the very things I profess to hate to lift. Huh? What about my life script? What changed?

My workout this morning consisted of exercises that require lower body pulling. Seven months ago, before I got my Tonal, I would not have understood what those words meant. Now, I do. They mean doing exercises that are centered around using the backs of my legs and my glutes to straighten my body. Exercises like deadlifts, or dreadlifts, as I used to think of them. My work out this morning was riddled with them.

For people who have worked out with private trainers this may not be a big deal. For me it was mind boggling. I mean, until I got Tonal, I had not done deadlifts since I was a High School Sophomore, and I probably did them wrong then. I would have never done them at Equinox. They represented everything I was afraid of while weight lifting. They required technique, lots of technique. They were the epitome of scary. Just the thought of doing them could cause an injury. Just trying them could leave me a twitch away from locking my back up for life. Or so I thought.

Yet I did a whole bunch of them today. My muscles are singing with fatigue, and I am brimming with excitement about it. WTF? How could I find myself in this position? The answer is simple: Tonal.

The rest of my family and most of my closest friends are pretty much sick of me Tonal talking. I do it so often that it has become ridiculous, if not downright obnoxious. No doubt about it. But that is okay, at least for me.

I just completed day 19 of a 31 day group program orchestrated by Coach Liz, one of the cadre of amazingly good coaches at Tonal. My sister, Arlene, who resides in Northern California, is doing it with me. It makes it more fun. But it is the program and support that provides the framework and the majority of the fun. I am surprised as I think to myself, “I am so happy I will have the opportunity to redo this workout one more time before the program ends.”

Shockingly, in seven short months I have re-written my exercise life script and now focus on weights over cardio. Talk about an old dog and a new trick. It’s just not supposed to happen. Yet it did.

I did not expect this when Tonal showed up and was attached to the wall in our spare bedroom. My plan was to use it to enable me to cut the cord to Equinox and do a modicum of weight lifting at home. All the while I thought I would keep faking my way through weight lifting exercises in between the days I ran. Boy, was I wrong.

The device is spectacular in form and function. I can do a practically unlimited series of movements, working out just about every muscle in my body. What’s more interesting, though, is that Tonal brings technology to weight lifting. It uses digital weights, which make free weights look like buggy whips did during the dawn of the age of the auto. It has modes that enable it to alter the resistance at various points in the movement. It also measures everything I do. It captures the weight I lift, the range of motion I use and the power I apply to each rep. It create graphs of all this in real time. It also remembers everything, letting me know, somewhat sporadically, if I have achieved a personal best in one or more of those categories. I am slowly getting into all this data as I get more into lifting.

Tonal’s capabilities are somewhat mind boggling, but more important, at least to me, was the knowledge, coaching and community that came with it That is what provided me with the support, motivation and education I needed to embrace lifting weights and to learn how to do it properly. That was the key to taking the dread out of my dreadlift, to unlocking the deadlifter that still resided within me. The deadlifter I had no idea was there.

Not The Water

February 28, 2021 / hkraushaar

I spent about an hour and a half in my totally analog 89 Carrera this morning, only once reminding myself that I do not have anti-lock brakes. I freely admit that I am spoiled by the unbelievably effective braking systems in modern cars, like in my 2015 Cayman GTS, enabling me to brake way too late without recourse or remorse. Not so in my 89.

I like early weekend drives up PCH. I have been driving on it for 50 years, and I enjoy it as much now as I did when I was sixteen. Yes, the sights have changed. Yes, the number of cars has increased. Yes, the number of motorcycles has increased. Yes, the number of bicyclists has increased. But the feeling of peace and the relaxation I get when driving by the water is still there, as long as it is daylight and especially if the sun is shining, as it was this morning.

These drives are mind clearing, but sometimes tire screeching. This morning I was driving along in my mental fugue, ruminating on a host of things, ranging from bourbon to vaccinations to the state of Covid affairs, when I noticed that the light at Temescal changed.

I was too far from the intersection to keep going and too close to stop without locking up my wheels. Sadly, I have done this enough times to know when the lockups will occur. Happily, I have done this enough times to just enjoy the feeling of skidding to a stop. Thankfully, I did not have to endure the smell of burnt rubber, though I think that had more to do with the direction the wind was blowing than to the absence of the smell itself.

After the screeching stopped, with the nose of my car only partially into the crosswalk, I began to ruminate again. We have been living with the Covid restrictions for just about a year. In some respects it feels like a lifetime. As I have written about before, my inner hermit has been ruling my life, only releasing its grip on me sporadically. But that is changing.

Pam and I are fully vaccinated, each having received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine. It is getting more and more likely that the people we come into contact with are vaccinated, too, meaning that the likelihood of getting infected or passing the infection along is getting lower all the time, which leaves me wondering when to press reset and begin to lead a more normal life. It also leaves me fighting with my inner hermit, which is quite content with the status quo.

As I passed Malibu, Paradise Cove and Zuma and pulled into the Trancas Market parking lot, my favorite Jimmy Dale Gilmore song began on my iPod. Yes, I still have an iPod. Actually, I have two, one in each of my cars, mainly because I love special purpose devices. But that is neither here nor there.

Jimmy Dale Gilmore is an alt-Country, Americana artist from Texas who is about as non-commercial as an artist can be, at least here in West Los Angeles, though Pam and I did see him and Dave Alvin perform at the Troubadour a couple of years ago.

Jimmy Dale spent most of the 70s in an ashram in Colorado, which must have provided him with the perspective to write the lyrics for Just a Wave, Not the Water, a ballad about a failed love affair in which the dumpee was reminded over and over again in the refrain that he was just a wave passing through the life of the dumper.

Entering my hermit state was easy. It was legislated and it felt right, despite the economic carnage that occurred. Now the US is opening up. The tide is leaning towards restoring our ability to act normally, even if we have to do so masked. Schools are opening. Sports are returning. We can eat outside. But the future is not clear. It is highly likely that the case count, which has been dropping over the past few weeks, will go the other way again.

So there I sat, listening to Jimmy Dale wax poetically about coming to terms with the end of a relationship. So there I sat, waiting to go into the Trancas Market to buy some tea for Kimberly, something that I could have bought at Pavilions about a mile from my house when I was there early this morning. So there I sat, wondering if it was time to treat Covid as the wave, not the water.

I think it will be very soon.

Oily Bubbles

January 29, 2021 / hkraushaar

With all due respect to Don Ho and Leon Pober:

Oily Bubbles in the saline
Make me feel happy
Will make me feel fine

For possibly the first time in my life I was full of oily bubbles. To be precise the oily bubbles in my body were really lipid nanoparticles. As these particles were wrapped around a whole bunch of messenger RNA molecules, I was happy and going to feel fine because the messenger RNA molecules are the cornerstone of the Pfizer vaccine, and I received my first injection the other day.

As I sit here writing this, my trusty oily bubbles, aka lipid nanoparticles, have randomly bumped into other cells and released a whole bunch of messenger RNA, eventually leading the other cells to build spike proteins and destroying the messenger RNA.

The spike proteins were the goal. As the cells died or if some of the spike proteins poked out of the cell walls before they died, my body realized that it was under attack and began to mount a defense. I know this because my arm hurt for about 24 hours after I received my shot.

I am no scientist and, frankly, I never took a biology class in school, so I find it more than slightly humorous that I am even typing these words. But, hey, my arm muscle, not the bone, was killing me.

The mere fact that I received a vaccine so early in the vaccination process is a testament to two things: My advanced age and my saint of a wife. As I have written about before, Pam, the saintly one, is rather adept at getting things on the internet.

The reality is that anyone can shop and buy things on the internet, but Pam has a knack for getting things that are hard to come by, like concert tickets, pretty consistently. I have no idea how she does it. Generally, it has been a good thing, but, ironically, her greatest coup with respect to getting concert tickets, snagging unbelievably good Adele seats at Staples just before the ticket website crashed, was for a show we cared about the least. I am not complaining, though, as that show gave me something to complain about for months.

Pam started scouring the internet for vaccination appointments earlier in the month when Ralphs offered appointments to get vaccinated in their stores. Pam’s friends, Daryn and Candace, were successful in getting appointments, so Pam dove in to the Ralphs site and eventually snagged some appointments for us at a market in a scary part of town. Appointments that, thankfully, we were never going to need.

When the county began offering vaccinations at the Forum, Pam and I thought it would be a good place to get the vaccines. It was close, and it was not as large as Dodger Stadium. In addition, we have seen numerous shows at the Forum since they refitted it for concerts, and Pam has always gotten us good seats there, so we felt good about trying. As we never buy Dodger tickets or see shows there, Dodger Stadium was off limits.

At first we were hopeful. Pam logged on to the site and thought she had an appointment, but the site crashed before she could complete the process. I tried to log on, too, but got nowhere. We waited for the new appointments that were to become available the following week, and despite the fact that our other friends were getting appointments, we got nowhere yet again.

Though I was less hopeful, Pam was not to be deterred. After dinner last Sunday, Pam tried again to get a reservation at the Forum. Shockingly, she did. It was for the following Friday. She said, “Harry, get on your computer and log into the county site. There are reservations open at the Forum!” Needless to say, I logged in and noted that nothing was available. Big surprise.

As I mentioned earlier, Pam is a saint. She is also never content with getting beaten by a web site. So she ignored my frustrated cries of dismay and logged back into the county site, this time for me. Next thing I knew I heard her say, “Harry, I can get you an appointment on Thursday! Do you want it? Or should I try to get one on Friday so we can go together?”

Being the Debbie Downer and realist that I am, I told her to snag the Thursday reservation while it was available. She did. Then she tried to go back in and get one for her on Thursday or one for me on Friday, but there were none to be had.

So I got my vaccination Thursday. It was pretty easy, as the county has the vaccination process working much better than the web site. Interestingly, I received an email from Ralphs just after I got back from getting my vaccine letting me know that they were cancelling my vaccination appointment in their store in the scary part of town. I just smiled.

Home Bound

December 20, 2020 / hkraushaar

We went to Shelby’s yesterday, the one place we go to other than the market on a regular basis in 2020. The highlight of the visit was watching Portia decorate the Christmas cookies she and Nana (Karen, Bryan’s mom, who is here from Kentucky) made earlier in the day. Portia did the decorating with the help of Nana, Glam (Pam, who wants to be called Grammy, but Portia can only say Glam), Mimi (Kimberly, who Portia calls Mimi), and, of course, Shelby (Portia’s mom). We will see them again on Christmas Eve and Christmas day, having celebrated Hanukah with them the week earlier.

When we go to Shelby’s we feel somewhat normal, going somewhere and not thinking about COVID, something that has happened all too infrequently this year. Clearly, we miss leading our normal life, seeing friends, going to restaurants, listening to live music, going to the movies, or just relaxing, but not as much as I would have expected.

We have been living the life of COVID for nine months. Long enough for memories of our past activities to dissolve into the recesses of our fading, geriatric minds. Long enough to gestate a human. More than long enough for me to adapt to it.

As I sit here writing this, I am riding a wave of La Nina spawned, drought enhancing sunshine in Los Angeles. I long for clouds and rain. Partly, because we need it, but also for any reason other than COVID not to venture outside. That is not going to happen anytime soon.

As 2020 draws to its inexorable close, I have been reflecting on it. I am essentially home, not homeward, bound, and I am embracing it all too readily. Apparently, I am letting my inner hermit flag fly, the part of me that eschews the rest of the world. Sometimes I wonder if my virus induced exile from the outside world will remain my normal state post COVID, as I actually enjoy my hermit lifestyle. Well most of it, anyway.

I freely admit that I am extremely lucky. Part of what has enabled me to adapt so readily to my new reality is that I have a great family.

Pam is smart enough, or tolerant enough, of my quirks to just ignore them. COVID has practically eliminated my Porsche related activities, and, hence, comments and stories, which has made that easier on her. Though to some extent they have been replaced by my incessant comments about my Tonal, the newest toy in my life.

Kim, who is stuck here until COVID ends, generally ignores my quirks until she feels she has to rip the crap out of me for being weird, her way of dealing with my irritating habits and reminding me she loves me. I am lucky she still readily accepts my advice when she needs it, playing the plaintive Ddddadddddddyyyy card when necessary, and gladly consuming my meals when I cook them for her.

I see Shelby, Portia and Bryan weekly, though Pam sees them more often than that. Getting the chance to spend time with Portia, watching her grow and learn and begin to embrace her terrible twos, has been the highlight of the year for me. I like it when she says, “Glump, do this.” Or, “Glump, do that.” My chosen monicker is Grumpy, but she calls me Glump. I admit it is fun being bossed around by a 20 month old.

I am able to work from home. My 20 year old threadbare, dust impregnated, bargain basement desk chair has become my COVID equivalent of a La-Z-Boy recliner, albeit less comfortably. My 27 inch 4K computer monitor is my fixed window to the world, though my TVs, iPhone and iPad also fill that role to some extent. Shockingly, that seems to be sufficient, as I sit in front of my computer, even when I have no work to do. Somehow it feels comforting and natural to just sit in my chair, despite my glutes falling asleep while doing so.

When COVID started I bemoaned the lack of new TV programming. As I have written about before, I have always been a die-hard consumer of Network TV pablum. I used to enjoy watching without being engaged or stressed or educated. NCIS has been my go to show for years, though SWAT had been giving it a run for its money late last year. Since COVID, I have spent hours watching programming with Pam on services I rarely had used before. Shows that I never would have seen without COVID. A lot of it was garbage. Right down there with the Real Housewives and the Bachelor, but some of it was good, really good actually, a fact that should scare the hell out of Network TV, as I actually had no idea there were new episodes of NCIS and SWAT until four weeks after their seasons started.

The other area that has helped me adapt to our new normal has been my ability to continue to exercise. I have been running outside for the past nine months, something I have not done in decades, and I truly love it. Additionally, I invested in a Tonal to enable me to lift weights in the comfort of my house. It was a life changing purchase, as I love the machine and have found a whole new community of supportive, non-political posters on Facebook. Another unintended, but thoroughly appreciated, by-product of the Tonal was that it has given me a chance to rekindle my somewhat stagnant, long-distance relationship with my sister, Arlene, who also bought one. We have been chatting like teenagers on a weekly basis about this coach’s program or the degree of difficulty of that exercise.

In the decades I worked out prior to COVID, I never spent much time in exercise classes, preferring to do my own thing on my own terms and avoiding all the class based drama at Equinox. I have to admit that I find it a tad disconcerting that I am becoming a groupie of several Tonal coaches, going as far as referring to them as my senseis.

I do not physically interact with anyone else other than my brief dialogs with my cronies who work at the market and bagel store and the occasional person delivering the new items we have purchased or those that come here to provide a quote for some home improvement we want to make. I think I actually amazed Kim and Shelby recently when I spoke about the conversation about parsnips I had with Ron, the produce guy I know at Pavilions.

So 2020 is winding down, and here I sit. At my desk. Something I do daily. My glutes falling asleep in my threadbare, dust impregnated, bargain basement chair, as I stare at my window to the world. Today was not much different from yesterday or the day before. This week was not much different from the week before. This month was not much different from the month before. It is just the same broken record. Month in month out.

My inner hermit loves being embraced. It loves that I have adapted to being homebound and that I am living the COVID life. Of course, it also fearfully wonders how long it will take me to banish it sometime next year. I wish I knew.

Happy Holidays

Flat Six Musings

October 3, 2020 / hkraushaar

As the percentage of Covid infected among us continues to drop, I have started to re-engage the outside world. A couple of weeks ago, I was worried that I was beginning to become an agoraphiac, as I had not driven my babies in quite some time. I wrote about it and received a nice rasher of shit from my Flat Six (AKA Porsche) cronies, telling me in no uncertain terms to get out and drive. And so I did.

Last weekend I met my friend Mark at the gas station, and then we went for a drive. It was pleasant. Nothing serious. Nothing twisty. Nothing fast. Just a nice drive up the coast. I was in my Cayman, and he was in his 911. Both of us were on our phones with each other, as being the yentas we are, we kibitzed as we drove. We did about 90 miles up and down the coast with a nice stop north of Malibu at Trancas for some coffee and muffins. It was great. It was just what the doctor, if not Eric Garcetti and Barbara Ferrer, ordered. It left me feeling less agoraphobic.

This weekend I decided to do it again. Only this time I went alone, and I drove my 89 Carrera, mainly because I wanted a more visceral experience. We are suffering through a fall Santa Ana wind condition, with daytime temperatures in the 90s and 100s. No matter, as I headed out early Saturday morning with the Targa top off and the hot, Santa Ana winds whipping through the cabin.

I was still not in the mood for a serious drive, so I did most of the same one Mark and I did last weekend, only this time I was not on the phone. Instead, I was focused on the drive, remembering what driver engagement is all about when driving a fully analog car without nannies like traction control, without power assisted anything, and without the dual-clutch automatic transmission that lurks in my Cayman. In short, my focus was on the tachometer, as I shifted my way up and down thru the gears, listening to the sound of the air-cooled flat six as it competed with the wind for my attention. There was not much else on my mind. At least initially.

At some point, driving became automatic. The wind and the engine sound became consistent background noise that soothed me but enabled me to start focusing on other things. Like the conversation I had had with my friend Nick earlier in the week.

Nick is a really smart guy. He is a young entrepreneur driven to be a success. He is also one of the most knowledgeable people I know with respect to world and economic events. We see eye to eye on almost every issue we face as Americans.

Given that we agree on so much, why do we continue to discuss the issues? The answer is simple: We are voting for different presidential candidates. So we discuss the issues to try to find the nuances that lead each of us to our distinctly different choice.

After much thought, I realized that it is not only the individual issues that drive our decisions. Instead, it is our prioritization of each of the issues and the implication of the solution to each issue that leads us to different conclusions, because ultimately it is what each of us fears the most that matters more than what we agree upon. That is why we keep discussing the issues.

The drive back was a blur, as I ruminated about Nick and life in America in 2020. Soon I was nearing the end of the drive on the coast, approaching the McClure Tunnel and the start of Interstate 10 eastbound.

It was time to shift my focus back to driving, but before I did, I though about Nick and our relationship. Nick and I respect each other. We value each other’s opinion and thoughts. We see value in our friendship despite differing political views. We will still have a relationship after all the votes are counted, whichever month that is.

I hope the same can be said for the majority of Americans.

Forgive Me Ferdinand

September 20, 2020 / hkraushaar

For the past six months, it's been a Covid life for me, just like it has for everyone else.  I have bemoaned the sameness of each day, thinking that everyday is a Monday, but it isn't.

Which brings me to the point of this post. With thanks to Robert Earl Keen, I am guilty of a Dreadful Selfish Crime, as I have let my Porches languish for months, just letting them sit in the driveway and the garage, patiently waiting to be driven. But I don't, and it saddens and frustrates me.

I realize that despite Covid I have it pretty damn good.  We are all employed and all healthy so far, but I spend so much time at home with no real interest in venturing outside, that I think I am losing my desire to do so.  I am concerned that I am turning into an agoraphobiac, at least when it comes to driving.

My main excursion each week, when I actually drive, is on early Sunday mornings when I go to the market at 6:15 AM and then to the bagel store at 6:45 AM. Pam, Kim and I also go to Shelby's to see our exalted granddaughter, Portia, each week, but it is a short distance away, and I let Pam drive to Shelby's house.

Since last November, I have put about 500 miles on my Cayman GTS and 500 miles on my 89 Carrera Targa.  I could drive them, but every time I have time on the weekend to get out and drive, which is less often than I would like, I opt not to, as I am concerned about finding an open public restroom and then frequenting it while on the drive.  Hence, my agoraphobia concerns.

Instead of driving my cars, I let them idle for about 15 to 18 minutes each week, which is not a good thing, but it is better than nothing.  Of course, with my Covid mental state, I rely on an alarm on my iPhone to remember to turn them off, instead of letting them go idling into the sunset.

I know I could, and should, drive them.  My Porsche cronies are driving theirs.  I see many of their posts on Facebook, chronicling their organized drives, days at the track, and socially distanced cars and coffee meetings.  It further saddens me that I cannot motivate myself to join them.

It's not like I am unmotivated to do other things.  I workout religiously, running outside three times a week and using my Tonal to lift weights three times a week.  Pam and I have completed several project around the house, and I have learned to make pizza and bread.  I take the trash out so often, that Pam and Kim have decided that I must have a girlfriend living in the dumpster in the alley.

But I just can't seem to leave my house to drive my cars, and I do not know how to change it.  Sooner or later, I will just have to force myself to get out and drive, but not just yet.

Tonality

September 5, 2020 / hkraushaar

Sometimes stuff just hits you right between the eyes. Sometimes it just resonates so totally you know it’s true, that its tonality is utterly undeniable. Then you recoil with the knowledge that you have seen your future.

For Jon Landau, such a moment occurred in 1974, as he watched Bruce Springsteen perform for the first time. He was transfixed by what he saw and heard, motivating him to write that he had seen rock and roll’s future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.

For me, such a moment occurred when I saw my first Tonal advertisement. We were at Jeff’s, house watching football games and chatting. Besides the games, the big event of the day for me was the blind bourbon tasting Jeff had planned.

I had come into a windfall late in 2019, ending up with two bottles of 20 year aged Pappy Van Winkle Family Reserve bourbon, arguably the most overvalued bourbon in history. Over the years, Jeff has plied Pam and me with copious amounts of ridiculously expensive tequila, so I gave one of my bottles of Pappy to Jeff as payback. Rightly, Jeff felt that the Pappy should be the featured bourbon in the taste test.

As I was sampling bourbon, I suddenly knew I would be leaving Equinox sooner rather than later, and that my exercise future would be home based. This realization must have thrown my bourbon taste buds into a tizzy. I ended up ranking my go to bourbon, Woodford Reserve, a great, reasonably priced bourbon, slightly above the 20 year Pappy, which at the time was selling for over $2,000 a bottle. That was the first time Tonal impacted my life. It would not be the last.

Exercise has been important to me since the summer of 1974. both in terms of health and enjoyment. I have enjoyed my years of running by myself and with a track club, swimming with a masters team, and pretending to lift weights at the gym, not to mention my couple of year stint in the Pilates studio.

For the past 17 years, I have been working out at Equinox, spending more time on treadmills than pushing weights. I am a weird guy. I do not exercise with music, and I generally avoid classes. I like listening to my body when I run, and I am not motivated by group grinds in spin classes. As I have aged, nearing and reaching the medicare threshold earlier this year, I have grudgingly admitted to myself that weight training may be more important for my health than cardio.

The thing was, though, that I just was not super motivated to lift. And when I did, I just went through the motions. I spent some money with a trainer which helped, but I could not justify the cost on an ongoing basis.

As Equinox prices continued to climb, I was thinking about quitting. What held me back were my gym cronies. I had been working out at 5 AM in the same place for 17 years. I was part of a great group. We were consistent. We were nice. We got to the gym at the same time. Heck, we even parked at the same meters in the same places year after year. The group was what kept me at Equinox. I would miss Doug, Gene, Josh, Shelley, Gavin, David, Three Bottles, and all the rest if I quit. So I hadn’t.

But I kept thinking about it. Then I saw the Tonal ad. I was mesmerized. I was intrigued. I was blown away with its functional, space saving design. I knew I should get one, but Doug, Gene, Josh, Shelley, Gavin, David, Three Bottles kept popping into my mind.

Then we went into Covid-19 lockdown. The gym was a four letter word to me. I did not care how clean the machines were kept. I just could not get over being that close to the exhalations of the other people. All of a sudden Doug, Gene, Josh, Shelley, Gavin, David, Three Bottles were not so important. I knew I was ready to make the change, but still not quite ready to pull the trigger.

One day I was speaking with my sister, Arlene, and I mentioned that I was thinking about getting a Tonal. She gasped and said, “I just ordered mine!”

At that point, I decided to act. I ordered my Tonal and began the tortuous wait for it to arrive. Well, it finally got here a couple of weeks ago. I am easing my way into it, as I have spent the past five months running and doing light calisthenics, including pushing around five pound weights, not a good platform for beginning a weight training regime.

I love the machine. I am using the coached workouts to get my body back into an overall toned state. More importantly, I am learning how to do the exercises correctly. The machine keeps tons of statistics. I ignore them. It has a killer AI that sets weights for me, I generally ignore that, too. I do not care about my strength score, about how much stronger I am or about how much I have lifted. I just like how I feel after doing the workouts. It is the best of both worlds for me. Coaches without judgement and without the competition of others. Equinox is in my rear view mirror and fading fast. I can see me using this machine for years.

Now I just need to find a few cronies.

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