Summertime

It's interesting to think about how our ancient ancestors migrated across continents to populate the world. Before established roads and maps were invented, nomadic tribes crossed continents on foot and oceans on canoes. They survived threats from predators and the environment itself, crafted tools and shelter to make their homes, and hunted and gathered to keep fed and alive. It's interesting to think about because if our early ancestors were anything like some of the tourists I encounter on my day-to-day during the summer months, we'd be extinct.

I've mentioned the inability of travel-weary people to figure out how doors work. People also oftentimes can't figure out how to turn on their TVs, failing to try the power button. Some guests can't figure out where the bathroom is in their room when there are two doors to look in, one of which being a closet. Basic directions to a room start to sound like IKEA instructions. The hotel suddenly becomes a magical labyrinth where everything is a mystery. I'm essentially a Minotaur in khakis and a button down tasked to point people in the right direction and to solve mystic riddles like how to connect to the WiFi, when I should just be another human being interacting with other human beings that happen to be on vacation.

I like to think the heat makes tourist's brains melt. Summers around here are hot, especially in Death Valley, and a lot of tourists drive through there this time of year to see what the hottest place in the US is like (hint: it's hot). Heat makes people uncomfortable, irritable, and spacey, and when you couple that with a hangover from a couple nights of partying in Las Vegas and a four hour drive through a rolling beige landscape, mental faculties aren't going to be firing at 100%.  Whatever semblance of common sense and critical thinking that may have existed in a person is sweated out of the system along with the previous night's shots. The ability to pay attention or listen is a distant memory. Instincts like perception and invention-- instincts that have advanced the civilization for all of human history-- are gone as soon as the city limit sign for Pahrump is in the rear-view mirror.

Mt. Whitney is also a popular destination, and while not hot enough to melt a brain, the air is thin enough apparently to suffocate it. People come in droves for permits to climb the mountain, so cocksure and ready to conquer the tallest mountain in the contiguous US. One would think, surely, being in alpine territory, those instincts of survival and exploration would kick in, but when you consider people come from their homes in San Diego-- at sea level-- and immediately try to climb a mountain that's over 14,000 feet without acclimatization and wonder how they got altitude sickness, or that SAR was called out recently for an injured hiker only to discover he just wanted a helicopter ride back to his car, you start to wonder how some folks survive into adulthood.

Summertime is the busiest season for tourism for the Owens Valley. Being the midway point between Death Valley and Yosemite National Park, and being at the base of Mt. Whitney, makes Lone Pine a popular stop. When exhausted and sunburned tourists, either off the trail or from the desert, brains mush from too little air or too much heat, they oftentimes get to talk to me. Thinking about those brain-melted tourists being descended from ancient nomads is about as believable as me being a Minotaur, but in a way it makes the world that much more magical. If they can make it here, weary travelers emerging from tall mountains and vast deserts, then I can do anything I set my mind to.

If nothing else, I can at least feel good in the fact that, in those moments that I feel stupid, I'm not alone.

The Devil's Itch

Yesterday, before I headed out for a run, my friend yelled out, "Remember sunscreen!"

I shouted back, "I did!" because I actually remembered to wear sunblock, and I then set off down the road and then through the desert. June in the high desert means abundant sunshine. Anyone who's met me knows I'm fair skinned. When I'm out for awhile I get rosy, and if I'm out for a bit longer I get beet red, and one time that lead to blisters and a world of hurt, but a few years back I learned the hard way about one potential side-effect to getting too much sun: The Devil's Itch.

It was after a fun weekend of camping and climbing, sans common sense and sunscreen. My chest, back, shoulders, legs, everything got roasted, and I prepared to have every inch of me freckle and peel and be tender for a few days. A few days after that weekend I was getting ready for work when I started feeling itchy. Thinking it might be just a normal itch, I unconsciously scratched at it and thought nothing of it. When every inch of my body started itching in screaming pain, I ended up on the floor in a ball hoping for it to stop, rolling around the carpet like a dog with fleas. I willed myself up and into the bathroom, took a cold shower, rubbed in some aloe vera gel after the fact, and went to work thinking, What the hell was that about?

There aren't a lot of articles on The Devil's Itch, also known as Hell's Itch, but from what I've found there isn't much reasearch on it and roughly 5 to 10 percent of people have dealt with it at some point. It manifests 24 to 72 hours after the initial burn, usually where there was the most sun (like shoulders and backs, or in my case everywhere on my lobster bod). While apparently nobody knows exactly why it happens, it can last up to a couple days and can drive a person up the walls. It's not permanent, but it absolutely leaves an impression. Like, there's a subreddit for it of people swapping experiences and remedies, which goes to show that, one, there's an internet community for everything, and two, it's pretty gnarly.

Maybe it's caused by nerve endings in the skin firing off while healing, or the oils in the skin being reintroduced into damaged tissue or something, but I don't know since I'm not a doctor or medical researcher. I'm just a guy that tends to get pink when the sun's out that learned a valuable lesson in skin care one time. When I'm out and about in the desert, especially in the warm season, I do my best to remember the SPF 50 and a hat. It'll be a miracle if I don't get some kind of skin cancer, but I'll also consider myself lucky if I don't have to experience that kind of sudden, maddening pain again.

Remember: prevention is the best medicine. Use common sense, use sunscreen, use hats and long sleeves, and maybe you'll make it through the summertime without crying and writhing on the floor from The Devil's Itch.

Bakersfield

Roadside signs advertising fast food, motels, and truck stops clustered together along the freeway exit along with power lines and billboards, like weeds competing for sunlight. It was fitting considering I was looking at Weedpatch Highway, east of Bakersfield, right off the freeway.

I was sitting in a McDonald's, staring out at the hazy horizon at the businesses across the road while I ate a cheeseburger, thinking about how excited I'd get to go to Bakersfield when I was a kid. My family would make the three hour drive from the Owens Valley once a month to visit my grandparents, so I spent many hours of my childhood in the back seat of a Suburban watching the desert floor of sagebrush and Joshua trees turn into rolling hills of golden grasses and sycamores, and then to miles of farm land that looked like a patchwork quilt from above. It was a departure from the norm, so I thought it was fantastic.

After my McDonald's lunch I headed west on Edison Highway. Scrap yards, shuttered buildings, and businesses with spray painted signs lined up on the left, a seemingly endless line of train cars stretched to the right. Downtown is a collection of '20s design and utilitarian brick buildings from the '60s. New suburban developments have taken over where corn and cotton fields had fallowed years ago, nestled against older post-war neighborhoods and oil refineries. Oil wells bob up and down in backyards. New freeways cut through town like asphalt rivers. Palm trees and tumbleweeds sway in the wind.

After spending the day with my aunt and cousins I drove my dad and myself eastbound to home, just like my dad drove my family back in the day. Bear Mountain and Tejon Ranch off the 58 were a welcome sight, but the best view of Bakersfield to most people (including me) is in the rear view mirror. The brown-gray haze faded back into the familiar rolling hills, and the rolling hills sprouted dozens of wind turbines, giant white pinwheels in neat rows standing in contrast to the deep brown of the hillside, as the landscape turned to desert beyond Tehachapi. The sycamores turned to Joshua trees, and they in turn became sagebrush by the time I got home.

Bakersfield isn't a pretty city. It's not the kind of city people dream of moving to, like San Francisco or Los Angeles, but a city you either learn to love, learn to survive, or learn to escape. There are a lot of cities like that in California alone; trying to reinvent itself, expanding for a growing population, full of people making a living or at least surviving, rural roots being taken over by the weeds competing for sunlight. Maybe it's being exposed to the pesticides and petroleum byproducts at an early age, or hearing that song from Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam since I was born, but there's something endearing about the streets of Bakersfield that make me both hold it in some reverence and avoid them like the plague if I can.

Blog Update 5-10-18

Hi there! How's it going? How've you been? Thanks for checking out my (seldom updated) blog! I guess the Blog Update post is an annual thing, and since I haven't written much in the last, y'know, couple years or so, I figure I should give the lowdown on what I've been up to instead of writing:

• I'm still running! I finished the Old Agoura 10K again, and I got 6th place in the Transplants Brewing Fundraiser 5k a couple months ago. I missed The Wild Wild West run-- the local race here-- but I signed up for the Spartan Race in LA in December because I don't love myself I know what I'm up against and love a challenge. I plan to run the Santa Clarita Half Marathon again this year, and maybe find another race between now and then. 
• I'm still not smoking! It's been two-and-a-half months I think. I guess I have more energy, I've stopped coughing all the time, I smell better, and I'm saving money, so it's a net gain even considering the cravings that come up every now and then. I'll keep it up.
• I officiated another wedding! I seem to officiate one once a year now, so that's fun.

Much like last year, my focus has been elsewhere. My calendar has been-- and continues to be-- full every week, so at least I haven't been bored. With the busy season at work dawning and a lot of weekend activities lined up, there won't be a shortage of things to write about. However, it seems like the more interesting stuff I do, the less I write, so, y'know, sorry about that. 

Anyway, I just wanted to touch base and say "hi" since I don't think I do that enough. 

Have a good one! I'll write something soon! 

Kids These Days

"Kids these days, am I right? They keep doing stupid things," Your Facebook friend says in a post, "Somewhere down the line we must have failed in raising our children, because if we did well enough they wouldn't have started eating Tide Pods, snorting condoms, or whatever dabbing is. We survived childhood with spankings and playing outside! Gen Z is going to be the end of us."

There are probably thousands of posts along that vein; kids nowadays are dumb, and they do dumb things because they're dumb. Maybe it's just because I'm a part of the Millennial generation, but I don't think that's a fair assessment. Don't get me wrong, Gen Z eating laundry detergent packets isn't the brightest move by a long shot, and my generation spearheading "The Cinnamon Challenge" and planking doesn't help matters either, but to say that Gen Z-- or Millennials, for that matter-- are comparatively dumb ignores the past in an egregious way.

My favorite example of older generations doing stupid shit stems from the 1970s. As told in the Harvard Chronicle on May 7, 1973, some students got into eating light bulbs. One Harvard glass eater described coughing up blood "for a few days after swallowing an insufficiently chewed piece of a whiskey bottle" but had no trouble when eating the thinner glass of light bulbs. Keep in mind, of course, that these are Harvard University students I'm talking about here. Some of what were considered the best minds in the nation defended their hobby of eating glass by saying "At UMass they get into clothes dryers, turn them on, and see how many times they can go around without throwing up." The article states the record was 100 times.

There was phonebooth stuffing in the 1950s, where people would see how many college students could be squeezed into a phone box, like if the TARDIS from Doctor Who wasn't larger on the inside. Though, after that fad came hunkerin', which is essentially the mid-century equivalent of the "Slav Squat" meme of today:

It's like an alternate history of The Cold War
(left photo from Life, right image from Hint)

Hunkerin' was such a fad that, according to a Time Magazine article in 1959, people were suggesting US President Eisenhower and Secretary Khrushchev of the USSR to hunker together to set aside their differences and end the Cold War. That's basically like telling Trump and Kim Jong Un to dab for peace. It's just as ridiculous, but it was the in-thing back in the day. 

Goldfish eating was a thing that happened in the 1930s since they didn't have Tide Pods yet. Starting in Harvard (true innovators, really) in 1939, students across the US decided it would be hilarious and fun to swallow live goldfish, making them at least irresponsible pet owners and at most puking messes wasting college tuition. The challenge was to see how many they could eat, with schools competing to see who would win what essentially was a really fresh but cheap sushi eating contest. 

The 1920s had flagpole sitting, which is more than a song from the late 90s: it was people sitting on flagpoles for long periods of time, which is pretty stupid and the grandfather of planking. Though, if you want to dive in to the ancient ancestor of planking, there's the stylites that lived, fasted, and preached on top of pillars. In their regard it's more akin to chaining ones self to a tree to protest logging, but it's still someone on top of a post for attention. 

Kids do dumb things, but they've always done dumb things. What sets Gen Z apart from the rest of history is that they have the largest global platform to display their stupid trends. If people in previous decades had the internet as we know it today there would absolutely be YouTube videos of kids eating glass as a prank or Facebook posts of Harvard guys taking goldfish shots, but they didn't have those platforms. We look at the stupid, reckless behavior of kids today because it's everywhere. You don't have to be in an Ivy League school to see people do dumb shit anymore. Previous generations aren't as infallible as they like to think; they're just forgetful. Probably from eating all that glass or for having all those toothaches.

Cures your toothache and helps you understand why the 70s and 80s were how they were

Next time you start to shit on Gen Z for being stupid, remember that the ones broadcasting stupid behavior aren't representative of the whole generation. Don't be the asshole who thinks your generation was perfect either. If Mozart's canon "Leck Mich Im Arsch" about eating ass can teach us anything, it's that people have done and enjoyed silly and stupid shit forever and will do and enjoy it forever. Get off your high horse; this generation is just as doomed as the rest.

Speech

My job consists of a lot of talking. I answer phones and speak to people face-to-face for 40 hours every week, and I've done so for many years. Whether I'm explaining the differences in the two wings of the property, telling people things to do in the area, directing people where to go to dinner, asking for information when making reservations, or making small talk during check-in, I spend a lot of my day speaking. Because I talk to people from all over the globe I've done my best over the years to speak as clearly and concisely as possible so that, even in the case of language barriers, guests understand what I'm talking about.

In the last few days I've had a couple people comment on how I talk. One lady checked in the other day and mentioned how nice and professional my phone voice was when I had made her reservation the week before. A few hours ago a guest from the Netherlands asked if I was from the US, and then thanked me, saying my accent was clear and easy to understand. It's really uplifting, especially considering I wasn't really great at talking for a long while.

I have vague memories of being four years old. They're the kind of murky scenes that almost seem like dreams, but I do remember seeing a speech therapist, though I didn't know what was going on at the time. When I was at an age where most kids would speak pretty normally, I had an expressive vocabulary of about ten to fifteen words. Apparently I communicated in a lot of whines and grunts for the most part, with a select few words here and there when absolutely needed. This understandably worried my parents, so they sent me in for a bunch of tests. Doctors didn't see anything abnormal with me developmentally, so they suggested a speech therapist. I remember hanging out at the preschool with a lady that had me play a lot of games and talked to me a lot, which apparently helped me expand my vocabulary and form words, so by the time I started school I was on the same level as the rest of the kids. As the story goes, I haven't shut up since.

As I grew up I participated in school plays, getting background roles as a little kid and some speaking roles with actual lines to memorize later on, so I learned how to speak clearly and project my voice. In high school, since they cut from freshman year until after I graduated, I got into writing. That evolved into speeches, so I took my memorization and projection skills from school plays, applied it to speech contests, and did okay with them. However, even though I could do speeches well enough, there was one thing I had a really, really hard time doing: talking to small groups and individual people. Public speaking terrifies a lot of people, but I found that talking at an audience is easier than talking to a single person. While I could orate to a room of people about some social issue, I couldn't order fast food without being a nervous wreck, or answer a phone call from a number I didn't know. The first time I asked a girl out I was 19 and I thought I was going to puke. I wanted to die during my first job interviews. Even though I was a decent public speaker I was still, at my core, really, really, painfully shy.

I want to write about how I came out of my shell and went from being an introverted kid to a social butterfly in some kind of spiritual awakening, but honestly it was just from the hotel job. Prior to the front desk I did maintenance work and kitchen work, which was fine by me because talking to people scared me and there isn't much human interaction while washing dishes or shoveling horse poop. I didn't know much about hotels when I first started, but since it was just a summer job I figured I'd roll with what was presented to me. I spent a lot of the time stumbling over words, nervously mumbling over the phone, and clamming up when presented with questions, but as the weeks went on I got a little more comfortable with talking to people. When the summer job got longer my people skills improved and my speaking ability gained more polish. Now, almost nine years later, not only is this the longest summer job I've ever had, but I can talk to pretty much anyone without much trouble.

Then again, it helps that I get paid for it. I'm still a nervous person and inherently introverted. Plus, half the time I think my voice really is annoying (the other half I think it sounds like my dad, which I guess is okay but it's still a little weird to me). Either way, I have to admit talking to people is a lot easier now than it was when I was a kid. I can strike up conversations with strangers without much trouble, make appointments without getting too nervous, answer phone calls just fine, and even order fast food (I still panic in the drive-thu though because people are waiting behind me and the clerk is waiting for my order and I always forget what I want whenever it's my time to order so I blurt out a random number and hope it's a combo I'll like).

Maybe it's stupid, but I'm kind of proud of myself for growing from a kid that didn't talk at all, to a kid that was too shy to talk, to having people impressed enough by my speaking abilities to tell me about it. Sure, it may have come from nearly a decade of having pretty much no choice but to get good with speech, but I'm still flattered when little old ladies come up to the front desk and say, "Are you the young man who made my reservation? You have such a lovely phone voice, you sound so nice! Thank you, Eric!"

They never call me by my actual name. Nothing I can say will change that, but it's close enough and I'm too flattered to care.

Smoking

I’m pretty sure this is the longest I’ve been without a cigarette in years.

My smoking habit isn’t something I talk about much. It’s kind of embarrassing because, yes, I know how bad it is for me and, yes, I know it stinks. I know it causes several varients of cancer, tooth decay, heart disease, and stroke. I’ve had various resources over the years to help me quit. It’s only been recently that I’ve managed to stop with any success, and it’s only because I got sick enough to start coughing up blood, but I’m rolling with it and supplimenting it with the resources I've had before.

Even though both my parents smoked when I was growing up I didn’t think about how the act of smoking and the smell of cigarettes was almost omnipresent throughout my childhood. However, when I was 15 I tried a few puffs off a cigar some friends had pilfered. That evolved to bumming cigarettes at parties and finishing half-smoked butts from my dad’s ashtrays, sneaking out in the middle of the night to burn them by Main Street when my hometown was asleep. By the time I was old enough I started buying my own packs, so I started smoking more. By the time I graduated high school and started going to college I smoked with fair regularity.

I mostly stuck with Marlboro and Camel in my late teens and early 20s, chain smoking while I studied or using them as an excuse to step away from parties. Graveyard shifts were spent smoking to pass the time. Long drives in my Jeep were easier with the rush of wind from the open window and thin, gray ribbons of smoke escaping. Nothing was more luxurious than a glass of red wine and a smoke. Mornings I’d wake up early to watch the sunrise over a cup of coffee and a cigarette. Nights I’d smoke before bed. It was in everything I did.

After awhile it was just something like a nervous twitch. An American Spirit cigarette hanging out of my mouth was a much a part of my personal identity as the way I speak and hold myself, so I didn’t think too seriously about stopping. The price for a pack grew and the number of people who smoked in my social circles shrank, but deep down I felt that didn’t matter; it’s who I am. Even as I grew more health-conscious all I did was switch to lights and cut down somewhat. Friends and family insisted I quit, and though I wanted to withdrawal symptoms and even the prospect of them alone held me back.

Then I recently caught the flu. I’d had colds and the flu before, and I just switched over to menthols thinking the menthol would help my throat and the smoke would dry out the mucus in my nose and throat, despite none of that actually working or making much sense. This time, however, I didn’t feel like smoking. The body aches, chills, and incessent coughing made the prospect of standing outside in the cold and wind less appealing than staying in a warm bed. Withdrawal symptoms intermingled with general illness, and I couldn’t tell what felt more miserable. A few days and a bunch of Tamiflu later I was feeling a lot better. It dawned on me that it was long enough for all the nicotine in me to have cleared itself out of my body, and that I’d done something I’d been meaning to do for years totally on a fluke. 

The last few years I've stopped smoking at work so guests wouldn't have to be offended by the smell. I stopped smoking in my car so I can keep the interior nice. When I have a race to run I don't smoke the night before so I can breathe easier. I decided to only smoke after work during the week and after dark on the weekends. After setting personal restrictions, not smoking for a couple weeks, and getting over the withdrawal hump, it's occurred to me that there's no reason for me to smoke at all. It doesn't really do anything for me except take $12 out of my pocket whenever I need a pack and answer a call of a need I don't actually have. It's a way to waste several minutes and spend some time outside, sure, but I don't feel like doing I need it as an excuse anymore; I'm an adult, I can go outside if I want with or without an excuse.

As stupid as it sounds, the closer I get to 30 the more I think about improving myself. I was a regular smoker for nearly my entire 20s, and a heavy smoker for part of them. Nearly my entire life was spent around people who smoked, and half of it was spent smoking. I wasn't even going to acknowledge my quitting publicly, but I feel like euligizing about it can put that part of me to rest. I know if I keep it up I can spend at least the rest of this year in better shape than I've ever been. I'll continue to hold myself accountable, ignore the little urges, and with any luck my nicotine habit will be a thing of the past.

Thanks to coughing up blood for getting me healthier than ever.