old Christmas trees never die...

...they just get planted, watered, and grown into windbreaks. That's what happens to 'em around here, anyway. I dug this hole. Well, finished it. Dad just loosened up the soil on top, then I did the rest with a post-holer. I actually got a bit overenthusiastic—the hole was too deep, even after we added some sterilized steer manure to the bottom. But here's the finished product! This one's for you, Polly.

back to the family

Continuing from yesterday... Most of my father's family has been in the New World a looooooooooooong time. I'm talking mid- to late-1600s, here. That was before they even invented the word "revolution."

Let us now go back to my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather, Panwell Van Der Poest, born in 1550 in Arnhem, Gelderland, the Netherlands. Yessir. According to Ancestry.com, I'm Dutch. And Pop always thought he was all German! He is on his mother's side, perhaps (the High side...his mother's maiden name was Margaret Louise High). But not the Post line! We're from the Netherlands, it seems. At some point, Panwell emigrated from Gelderland to England and married an Englishwoman, Susannah Van Gelder (from the sound of her name, she might've been descended from Dutch immigrants too). They had a son, Arthur, in 1580. It was either Arthur or his father Panwell who changed their surname to Post, more likely to fit in better in English culture. This means, then, that I could be a wee bit English now as well as Dutch, German and Norwegian. I didn't see that coming (if it's true).

Arthur's son Richard Post (b. 1617) did something very naughty. I found a story, a written account on Ancestry, which stated that Richard committed some heinous religious act that made his father disinherit him. Given the time frame we're looking at here, I'd say Richard probably converted to Protestantism. Possibly he did it for love. I can just see it now: Richard's wandering down the streets of Kent with the foolish dreams of a young man in his head, when suddenly he sees a beautiful woman. She's calm, demure, strong, and absolutely gorgeous. She seems to float over the ground rather than walk. Her eyes could charm the beasts and her voice could soothe the swelling seas. She's everything he's ever wanted and more. He's smitten, consumed. He must have her. But she's a Protestant. No problem-o, says Richard to himself. I'll just convert to Protestantism. YOU'LL DO WHAT?! Arthur hollers, grabbing Richard by the ear and shaking him.

For whatever reason, Richard and his new wife Dorothy (née Johnson) packed up and headed for the New World soon after Richard was disinherited. After arriving in New York, they welcomed little John into their life in 1646. John sired another son named Richard, in 1684. Richard then begot Joseph Post in 1720. Joseph was the first Post who had the stones to leave New York. He didn't go far, though. He went to Pennsylvania, married Mary Smith, and had a mess of kids. One of these was named Jeremiah, born in 1769. Yep, one of my ancestors was named "Jeremiah Post." (Don't worry, the Post family name game gets even better.) As if that wasn't good enough, he lived at about the same time that Jedediah Smith was exploring the West. I wonder if Jeremiah's mother and Jedediah were related...? Anyhow, Jeremiah married a woman named Martha Craycraft (born 1776, incidentally) and sired Charles G. Post on her in 1800. Charles G. married Elizabeth Bryant (who was the daughter of David Bryant, a private in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War). And in 1832, Charles and Elizabeth had a son named— [SIDENOTE: Don't get the impression that my ancestors were only children. Most of the Post men were randy buggers, and had oodles of kids, just like Joseph did. Jeremiah, Richard, John, all of 'em had at least 7 kids or something. Joseph, however, appears to be "the Post with the most," if you take my meaning.] —Leonidas Hamline Post. You can't beat that name with a stick.
In 1875, Leonidas Hamline fathered a little junior Leonidas (with a mysterious woman named "Althea" whom I haven't been able to find any information on at all). It was Leo Junior who fathered my grandfather, Edward Post, in 1917. Edward went on to marry Margaret Louise High and have my dad, Timothy Post, born 1953. Tim met Beth Ann Fritz in Nevada, married her, and welcomed yours truly into the family in 1986. All other things being equal, my kids should start popping into existence in the 2020s. That's nearly 500 years of Posts. We went from the Netherlands to central England, to New England, to Ohio (Charles G. moved from Pennsylvania to Spencerville, Ohio), to Florida (where Grandpa Ed relocated) to Nevada (Dad loves it there) and then California (I was born in Auburn, up in Placer County).

Some of the information I've uncovered is almost too fantastic to be true: another Dutch ancestor on Dad's side was born in China. I surmised he might've been the son of a crewman on a trading vessel. The link between us is unreliably rickety, though. I do know that I have at least two relatives, one on each side of the family, who fought in World War I. Add in David Bryant and my grandfather, Harlan Fritz (who fought in the Korean War), and my family tree is starting to look rather illustrious, isn't it? (And I haven't even factored in the accomplishments of my female relations yet; who knows but that some were suffragettes, or revolutionaries, or entrepreneurs, or scientists? I have yet to find out.)

As I said before, I don't know how much of this is true and how much isn't. I'm relying on work that others have done, based on sketchy sources and vague census records. (By "vague census records" I mean "census records with names that are often flagrantly misspelled, and were probably collected by buck-toothed yokels.") But it's fun to believe that it might be true. It's the ultimate kick in the pants to muse on the nature of my family tree. The thought of who and what I might have sprung from dazzles me. I wonder what Panwell Van Der Poest looked like. Which ale he preferred. Where he liked to hang out after he got off work. What kind of father and husband he was. What made him decide to move across the English Channel. I wonder what kind of voyage Richard and Dorothy had going over the Atlantic in the mid 1600s, and what went through their heads when they saw the New World on the horizon. I wonder who that mysterious woman Althea was, what her family was like, and what possessed her to marry a man named "Leonidas." I wonder if Joseph Post whistled while he built his family a house in Pennsylvania a hundred years later, and if he did, what tune it was. I wonder if Martha Craycraft was proud that she was born the same year the Declaration of Independence was signed. I wonder if Jeremiah Post liked to proselytize, if Charles G. ever went exploring, how many other kids young Leonidas beat up for making fun of his name. It boggles the imagination, to say the least.

My work has only just begun. I've added so many relatives in such a mad frenzy that I shall have to go back and comb through them once again. I need to weed out the discrepancies (who were born, say, after their fathers and mothers died). That's only half the task, though. I should like to begin going back the other way and fleshing out the branches of my family. I want to expand my family tree sideways and forward now instead of back, and find out if I have any illustrious relatives in American (or even European) history. You want to know the real reason I began doing this? You'll laugh when you do. I want to find out if I'm related to Wiley Post. You know, the famous pilot. First man to fly solo around the world. Set a bunch of altitude and long-distance records. Died in 1935 with humorist Will Rogers when their plane crashed near Point Barrow, Alaska. I just want to know, one way or the other. That's all. But the stuff I've found out since then is pretty neat, too.

Your turn, Ian.

immigrant song

Just so you know, I'm unsure how much of the following is true. Once I got back beyond the 1800s, I was cross-referencing other people's research instead of using our own recorded family history. But if what I found is true, then...

Well, let me tell you about it first.

This turned out to be a lot longer tale than I thought, so I've split it into two parts. This is the first, and will concern my mother's side of the family. I'll do Pop's side tomorrow.

It never seemed wise to shell out good money to Genealogy.com or Ancestry.com merely to determine the nature of my family tree. But I desperately wanted to know. Was it a poor, malnourished wisp? Or was it an oak, a mighty, spreading growth with roots which plunged deep into Old World soil and sprouts which soared across the waters? How illustrious were the branches? Were there any famous leaves, celebrated buds? To which twigs may I claim relation? Which blossoms have awed the world, if any? What blooms have made their mark on humanity, broken molds, shattered records, defeated obscurity, ground mediocrity into the dust of ages? Who, exactly, am I? And who am I related to?

I had almost no idea. Dad was under the impression that he was 100% German, and that his ancestors (formerly called the "Von Posts") came over on the boat in the 1840s. Whispered rumor suggests I'm distantly related to the folks at Post cereals, but not closely enough to warrant an inheritance. (Bummer.)

I knew even less about my mom's family. The word on the street was that one branch emigrated from Prussia, also in the 1800s. The rest of the family was already in the States by then. That's as far back as our written genealogy goes, so it was impossible for me to know exactly where the rest of my family came from. Or it was until Ancestry.com came along.

One rainy afternoon a few weeks ago, Mom and I finally broke down, bought an account, and started poking around. The rest of what follows was gleaned using Ancestry's records. Though I made use of official records as much as possible, I had to rely on other people's family trees for the most part. I have no idea how accurate this information is, if at all. But some of the things I found were rather amazing, regardless.

My mom's family hasn't been in the country too long. Her mother's maiden name was Leitzen, and by all accounts, the Leitzens were big-boned, no-nonsense Illinois farmer folk. I don't know much about the family line beyond that. Mom's mom's mother's maiden name was Rhodes; I'm actually named after my great-great-grandmother's father, Andrew Rhodes. After him and the Leitzens, Ancestry just petered out on me. No hints, no records, nothing. Same thing with my grandpa's father's line, the Fritzes. That's about as German a surname as you can get. I can only assume that they were all emigres, early 20th or late 19th centuries, as assumed.

On mom's dad's mother's side, however, I got a little farther. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand introducing, Anders Hansen! Born in Gjerpen, Norway, June 24, eighteen-hundred and thirty-three! (P.S. WOW.) I don't know what the situation was like in Norway in 1833, nor what warranted his emigration. Maybe Anders was sick of freezing his butt off every winter. Whatever the case, he took his wife Mariah and split for the States. Upon arrival, Anders and Mariah changed their names. I'm not sure why they did this. "Hansen" seems perfectly easy to pronounce. But they changed their names anyway. They became the Sandleys. Anders also changed his name to given name to Andrew. Maybe he did it to fit in; maybe it was "fixed" by whatever passed for Ellis Island back then.

Either way, Andrew and Mariah Sandley entered the country sometime in the 1850s or 60s. Anders Hansen became the other grandfather I'm named for, Andrew Sandley. He and Mariah settled in Wisconsin and gave birth to a son, Ole Sandley, in 1870. Ole and his wife Amy (originally Amy Van Voorhis) gave birth to my great-grandmother, Ruth Sandley, in 1908. NINETEEN-OH-EIGHT. (P.S. DOUBLE-WOW.)
I actually knew her, too. She lived to the ripe old age of 99. She got that gene from her father; Ole died in 1964, at the age of 94. I can remember going to visit Ruth in Freeport, Illinois, many a time. First at her home; then at a nursing home; then at one of those rather sad places where the extremely elderly wait around to die, peeing their pants and losing their memories. She barely recognized us by the end. The last time I saw her was when I and all of my Fritz-side cousins had a big reunion at Grandpa Fritz's place. She was frail, wispy, thin as a stick, her voice faint and scratchy as an old phonograph record. Her hands were gnarled and wrinkled. But that didn't matter. I was always struck by some ineffable awe in her presence. It was the same of awe I felt in museums when I looked at well-preserved artifacts. This woman had lived almost an entire century. She had been born in 1908, the same year as Rex Harrison, Louis L'Amour, David Lean, Edward R. Murrow, Tex Avery, Ian Fleming, Mel Blanc, Milton Berle, and William Saroyan. The same year a massive asteroid exploded over Siberia. The same year Robert Peary set sail for the North Pole. The same year Henry Ford manufactured his first Model T. The same year Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were supposedly killed in Bolivia. My great-grandma Ruth was four years old when the Titanic sank. Six when World War I broke out. Twenty-one when the stock market crashed. Thirty-three when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Thirty-nine when Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier. Sixty-one when man walked on the moon. Sixty-two when the Beatles broke up. Eighty-one when the Berlin Wall fell. Ninety-three when the Twin Towers were destroyed. This woman witnessed history. What impressed me the most about her, though, was how lucid she remained, until the very end. Her body was withering, but her mind was hale and healthy. Her voice quavered, but she spoke with conviction, intelligence, and wisdom always. I miss her a lot for only having seen her three times. And oh, the stories she told... I'll bet old Ole could have told a story or two himself.

That's your cue, Robert.

Dad's luck

People often tell me I'm a lucky man. And when I say "people," I'm obviously talking about my mother. She watches me as I bumble my way through life, dodging this, ducking that, running headlong into the other, always somehow finding my way out of a jam. (Or, as happens more often, having the way out dropped into my lap.) She always shakes her head and says, "Well, Andrew, you certainly inherited your father's luck." Apparently, Dad does the same thing. He and I just roll through life, sanguine as you please, and when disaster strikes, we have to scramble to rebuild the dike. But we manage it somehow, either by hook or by crook. Pop even jokes to Ma that his middle name is "Damage Control." Looking at some of the tight spots I've been in, I can't help but think Dad's passed something on to me resembling chronic good fortune. But there's no use denying it any longer. I'm broke. Not quite flat broke, to be sure; I have enough money for maybe two months' rent, if I was living in an apartment. Possibly three, if I was in a cardboard box by the reservoir. So when I finally decided two nights ago that, yes, my computer had picked up a virus, my motherly caring side naturally wasn't the first on the scene. Nice going, bozo, my inner accountant groused. How you gonna pay for this? You might have to hawk those Monty Python DVDs after all. And ya thought you were out of the woods... I gave it my best shot. I deleted all my temporary Internet files. I ran Ad-Aware and AVG, my anti-spyware and anti-virus programs respectively. Nothing doing. The virus was still in there somewhere. My folks happened to have a copy of Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 lying around, so I installed that and gave it a go. It detected the virus, but it couldn't delete it: it kept freezing up. Well, shoot. I heaved a sigh, got up the next morning, and took my poor abused Toshiba into town to be fixed. Repairs would have cost me $200, which, as I've already pointed out, I don't have. It was right about then that a small dose of my genetically-enhanced luck kicked in. As I am standing in front of the repair counter, filling out the paperwork to have my laptop diagnosed and cleaned, my brand-new cell phone starts ringing. I put down the pen and answer it. It's my best buddy John, whose house I am going to for a barbecue later in the evening. He actually works at the same computer repair shop where I've taken my laptop. He's not there, though; he's home. He has strep throat, but he hasn't called off the party. He just wants to remind me that I don't have to bring any side dishes; he's got it covered. Bring a bottle if I so desire; he's got Scotch and beer out the wazoo. I say okay, thank him, hang up, and keep filling out paperwork. I finish the forms and hand them to the repair person. Just as she's beginning to fill in fields on her computer screen, my cell phone rings again. It's Dad. He wants to know what's wrong with my computer. I tell him that I've only just finished the paperwork, and diagnostics haven't commenced yet. I'll call him back when I hear anything. Dad says okay, and we hang up. The repair woman is almost finished filling in those fields, and is about to lay hands on my laptop and start plugging in wires, when my phone rings again. It's John. It's loud in the store and I can barely make out what he's saying, but I do catch a few revolutionary words: "...bring your computer over to my house and I'll fix it." I don't remember exactly what I said in reply. My mind had gone somewhat blank. Accepting $200 of repair fees and then finding out you're reprieved five minutes later...that pulls the rug out from under your brain, so to speak. I stammered a thank you, thought up some feeble excuse for the repair lady ("Uh, can we hold on for a moment? I've just thought of something else I might try"), and boogied. The expression "weight lifted from one's shoulders" gets tossed around a tad excessively these days. It's lost its power as a result. As I stepped out of the shop into the bright winter sun, I realized how powerful it truly was. I felt, quite literally, as if a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. There was a little extra spring to my step, a noticeable lightness in my innards. I wouldn't have to spend $200. That wasn't as good as being in love, true. But whew anyway. Shopping for a bottle for John's party was all the sweeter. In the end, I settled on some tequila and margarita mix. Who says you can't have margaritas in January, anyway? I ask ya, who? I went home and dumped some stuff off (including that long sought-after library copy of The Epic of Gilgamesh). Then I drove back to John's house with my diseased computer. He popped in a repair CD, ran some programs, isolated the virus, and killed it. Then (over the course of the party) we ran some more scans and tests. Both of us pronounced the machine cured at a quarter to two, after a spotty all-night vigil. Maybe Dad's karma rubbed off on me when he called right before John did? Who knows? Thanks to the help of a friend, I was able to get the dang virus off the computer for free. John, you're a lifesaver. I take back what I said about you being a square because you won't go to Australia with me. And I got to party in between the scans we ran, too. Beat that for luck.

boy, 5, dunks self in pond

XENIA, OH - An area boy nearly gave himself hypothermia following an accidental dip in a near-frozen pond in Shawnee Park. Andrew, 5, stated that he was running from his father during a friendly game of tag when, as he looked back over his shoulder, he suddenly found himself bobbing up and down in murky green water. Andrew's mother arrived on the scene to find her sopping son wrapped securely in his father's sweater, and Dad freezing his heinie off in the chilly autumn weather. I was originally going to steer clear of old personal anecdotes, partly because of my innate modesty, and partly because of my journalism training (all that stuff's "old news"). However, I have noticed these stories being employed to great effect elsewhere in the blogsphere. So I have amended my previous stance, as they say in Politicspeke, and am now going to start includin' 'em. I was born in Auburn, California. My folks moved around NoCal a bit before making the hop down to the Mojave Desert when I was 19 months old. That's where my brother Harlan was born. We moved east to Ohio shortly thereafter. One of the first places we lived in Ohio was this marvelous little town called Xenia. I wish I remembered more of it, but my memory does not serve me well. I basically remember only one thing from our time in Xenia, and that's the park. Magical sort of place, it was. Seemed to be all rolling hills, green fields, quiet streams, small ponds, stone bridges, and Canada geese. The geese were everywhere. They (literally) flocked to the place during their seasonal migrations. I can remember many lovely autumn afternoons spent watching these geese with my brother and my parents as we strolled through the park. One cold and sunny fall day in 1990, Dad took my brother and me to the park while Mom did the grocery shopping. She dropped us off and left us to our own devices. Soon enough, a game of tag broke out. Harlan and Dad and I were running all over the place, laughing, yelling, leaping about, and breathing the frigid air into our heaving lungs. This is what I remember. Dad had zeroed in on me, and I was doing my darnedest to outdistance him. At five years old, I didn't have much of a chance. I was looking back over my shoulder to determine how rapidly my lead was shrinking, when suddenly... I don't remember actually hitting the water. The last thing I remember is my foot coming down on empty air. The next memory I have is being submerged in one the park's numerous ponds, bobbing up and down on my back, staring at the concrete wall of the pond two feet beneath the surface. There was a metal pipe bolted to the wall; both were smeared with goose droppings. I don't remember being disgusted by this, even though I now knew why the ponds were always so green. I was in the water only a few seconds. Dad must've fished me out in a hurry. The next thing I remember is standing on a park bench as Dad wrapped his voluminous sweater around me. Again, I don't remember being cold. My memory is so poor that only the visual imagery remains. Dad, Harlan and I began to walk to the entrance to the park. Mom pulled up to see Dad, sweater-less and quite chilled, and her eldest son waddling along behind him, wrapped from chin to toes in a huge wool sweater. I must've looked like a tiny priest in a misshapen, oversize cassock. I don't remember anything after that. I didn't get hypothermia; Dad's sweater was huge (and pre-warmed) and thankfully there was no wind. My body temperature was likely already elevated by the spirited game of tag we'd been engaged upon, too. But Dad probably caught hell from Mom anyway, bless her. I know I took a lot of good-natured ragging from Dad and Harlan in the years that followed. Fancy being silly enough to accidentally run into a pond! I'm writing about this for a reason. While we're on the subject of false impressions, it might seem to some of you that I'm a competent person. I lived alone in Korea for a year, I'm learning to fly, I graduated college in 3.5 years (despite switching majors twice), and I've never fallen for any kind of scam or fraud. But nonetheless, these are the kinds of things that happen to me. Unintentionally dunking myself in ponds, I mean. On Saturday I misread the schedule and wound up at bartender's school on the wrong day for the wrong class. After an hour-and-a-half commute, too. I fired an arrow into the wall of my bedroom when I was thirteen, because, for some reason, I'd put it onto the string and was drawing the bow. In the house. Reminds me of a song.

In the days of my youth I was told what it means to be a man Now I've reached that age I've tried to do all those things the best I can No matter how I try I find my way to the same old jam — Led Zeppelin

first solo

I spent an uneasy evening yesterday judiciously reviewing the checklists for the Cessna 172M (particularly those regarding emergency procedures). During this, I somehow managed to avoid the temptation to listen to Europe's "The Final Countdown" on YouTube. Following this, I got up at my usual 6:30 this morning and drove down to the airport for my (gulp!) first solo. Perhaps I should provide some explanation here for any visitors who might be unfamiliar with the process of learning to fly. After a certain amount of dual instruction—where your flight instructor is sitting right next to you in the plane—you start to do "solo flights," which, as the name suggests, you do entirely by yourself, alone in the airplane. Sounded a bit spooky to me when I first heard of it. But I was ultimately surprised by how not-nervous I was when the big day finally rolled around. I got up this morning, had an onion bagel with cream cheese, and got my flight gear around like it was just another day of practice flights in the pattern. I attribute that to Harold, who, as I mentioned before, is a superb instructor, and makes me feel very relaxed and cool and groovy about this whole flying gig. The only difference in my preparation between this day and any other, in fact, was that I had to fill out a "rental agreement" for the plane I'd be flying...seeing as how I'd be flying it by myself and all. I wasn't even nervous that my mom and dad were going to be there. Mom and Dad, always supportive as all get-out, both made special trips to the airport to see me fly (Mom in the truck with me, Dad from work). Mom shook Harold's hand, then she adjourned to the picnic tables outside of the airport building. Harold and I went right out onto the tarmac to good ol' N42126 and did a quick preflight. Then we saddled up and took off. We did a couple of touch-and-gos together to practice first. Harold said they were really nice. It was a beautiful morning: calm as you please, with hardly anybody else out there. Mary Lou was out somewhere to the south in her Piper Warrior, and during the second pattern entry a helicopter flew by us heading north, but that was it. As we flew, Harold briefed me on what we'd do. He said he'd have his hand-held radio with him on the ground as I flew, but that he wouldn't talk to me on it unless he needed to advise me of traffic or runway problems. He also said that the minimum for a first solo was three touch-and-gos, but that if I wanted, I could do more. If I felt like it, he said, I could also leave the pattern after the last touch-and-go and fly south over town for a bit. Then he added, "If you don't want to solo today, that's fine. I like to give people the option, just in case they feel they need to practice more." I mulled that over for only a moment. The stars seemed to align. I'd been pumping myself up for this all weekend. I'd studied, I'd practiced, it was a beautiful day, and I figured I was about ready to give it a shot. I said as much, too. And then I landed, taxied to the ramp, and shut off the engine. Mom and Dad were now standing on just the other side of the chain-link fence. I said hi to them quickly, then prepared to take off again—alone. Harold signed my logbook, endorsing it with his signature, signing me off to solo. Then he said he was going to go get his hand-held radio so he could listen to me calling out my pattern movements ("Apple Valley, 42126 turning left downwind, runway 18" for example). Then...it was time. Climbing back into that left seat, I felt rather like a fighter pilot going out to combat a veteran enemy ace one-on-one. The cockpit seemed awful big without a second body inside of it. I clapped my headset back on, ran through the start-up checklist, pumped the primer once (since the engine was already hot), and cranked her up. The 150-horsepower Lycoming engine flared to life immediately, with a few burps and a boom. I adjusted the throttle to 1000 RPM, snapped on the GPS and radios, made sure the frequencies were correct and that the transponder was on standby mode, made a radio call to announce my taxiing to the run-up area at 18, and then... ...and then... ...I began to taxi. By myself. It was about here that the theme from the movie Clash of the Titans started playing in my head. Taxiing went fine, just as if Harold was sitting next to me. It was silent in the cockpit; all I could hear was the near inaudible hiss of my operating headset, and the dulled roar of the engine outside. I taxied all the way down to the end of runway 18, turned into the run-up area, and got out the checklists again. I made sure my seat belt was secure; checked the flight controls; adjusted the instruments and the mixture controls; ran the engine up to 1700 RPM and tested the magnetos and carburetor heating system; checked oil temperature, vacuum and ammeter; ran the power back down, set the transponder to squawk 1200 (visual flight frequency)...and then inched myself up to the runway. I stopped at the hold-short line (a series of solid and dotted yellow lines painted on runway entrances, indicating where to stop for incoming traffic), looked right, looked left (squinting against the golden morning sun), and then called out on the radio, "Apple Valley, 42126 departure one-eight, stay in the pattern." That was it. I was cleared for takeoff. I took a deep breath. The trumpets and drums playing in my head kicked up a notch. Then I pulled onto the runway, punched the throttle all the way in, and started rolling down runway 18. Those testimonials I had read online last night weren't kidding: without 200 extra pounds of human in it, the Cessna climbed like a homesick angel. I jumped off that runway at 65 miles per hour and was zooming past the airport building (and my folks) before I knew it. I was proud of my takeoff: I'd managed to keep the nose wheel stuck fast to the center dotted line. Now I was climbing out at 80 miles an hour, just like Harold and I'd practiced. At 3500 feet mean sea level (about 400 feet above the ground) I turned left and entered my crosswind leg, calling it out on the radio, keeping my right foot planted squarely on the right rudder pedal to keep the ball on my slip/skid indicator centered. I stuck to 80 mph, too—just like we'd practiced. There were a few moments when I let it slip by accident, and we got up to 100 mph, but not many. A few seconds later I turned left again (making another radio call: "Apple Valley, 42126 turning left downwind, one-eight"), and was headed back parallel to the runway. At 4,000 feet MSL I leveled off and throttled down to 2,000 RPM. The weather was beyond perfect. The sun was shining, the Cessna was handling like a swallow (where it had handled like an albatross), there wasn't a breath of wind aloft, and I began to think to myself, Hey, this isn't so bad. And still that bombastic orchestra kept thundering away between my ears. Abeam the runway numbers, I pulled the throttle back, lowered the flaps a little, turned on the carburetor heat, and began to descend. I stuck to what Harold had gently drilled into me: descend at 500 feet per minute. At 3800 feet MSL, turn left base (the second-to-last turn before the final approach), adding more flaps. Don't forget to call out on the radio that you're turning left base. After turning left base, lower airspeed to about 70 mph, continuing to descend at 500 feet per minute. Then turn onto your final approach, adding a last bit of flap, making a radio announcement, and then... ...well, land. I did all of this, if you don't mind my saying, pretty near flawlessly. I turned left base at 3800; pulled the throttle out some more to descend properly; watched my airspeed; made the appropriate radio calls; and lowered the flaps further, all pretty much simultaneously. When the time came a few seconds later, I turned final, added more flaps, made the last radio call, and started my approach. I kept my eyes on three things as I came in for that first touch-and-go landing. First, I watched my airspeed. Final approach speed is 65 miles per hour, the lower bound of the green (safe) arc. Too fast and you'll bounce when you hit the runway. Too slow and you won't even reach the runway. To help make sure I was doing okay and would reach the runway right when the airplane reached the ground, I kept my eyes on the VASI lights on the left side of the runway. I forget what the acronym stands for, but VASI lights are a brace of bright beacons that inform pilots if they're too high, too low, or just peachy to land. Too high and both lights appear white. Too low and they both glow red. If you're at just the right height, however, the left-hand light turns red, and the right-hand light shines white. There's a nifty mnemonic device my previous instructor Mike taught me (which most instructors inculcate their pupils with) that helped me remember what the VASI lights' colors mean. "Red over red, you're dead." "White over white, you're outta sight." "Red over white, just right." Every time I looked, I was red over white. Perfect. I also kept my eyes on the runway itself. What with all the landing practice Harold and I have been getting in, I've gotten pretty good at eyeballing how far I am from the runway, and how high I am away from it. Because of this, I know just when to pull a little power (to decrease altitude) or add in some more (to increase altitude) when I need to. See, that's the weird thing about landings. Normally, your pitch (how far up or down the nose of your plane is pointing) determines your altitude, and the throttle controls speed. When landing, this is reversed. With the flaps down, you use the pitch to control your speed (pointing the nose down to speed up, and up to slow down) and the throttle to control your altitude. Lucky for me that I have such a good instructor in Harold, and that he and I hit landings so hard the past few lessons. It was a piece of cake to get myself lined up with the runway (even if I did turn a bit early for my final approach), keep myself at the right altitude and airspeed, and just come right on in. I flared a few feet above the runway, floated a little while (the Cessna was remarkably light, after all), and touched down in a decently smooth fashion. Yes! I straightened myself out, popped the carb heat off and the flaps back up, pushed the throttle back in, and took off again. And that was all there was to it. I did that twice more, and the sunniest of grins began to spread over my mind (if not my face, which was still set in concentration). Hey, I thought again, this is nothing. This is actually pretty easy. This is GREAT! I came in for the fourth and final time for a full-stop landing, having successfully kept my eye on the Stinson that was taking off, and Mary Lou, who was on the ground fueling up her Warrior for most of my touch-and-gos, but who took off again right before I finished. I landed, popped the flaps up, adjusted the throttle to 1000 RPM (taxi power), taxied right off the runway, shut off the carb heat and set the transponder to "standby" once again, made one last radio call ("Apple Valley, 42126 is clear of runway one-eight, taxiing to the ramp") and taxied to the ramp. Mom was smiling and bobbing up and down and flashing me an enthusiastic thumbs-up when I came wheeling in and pulled to a stop right by the gate in the chain-link fence. Dad walked through the gate and stood just off the high wing of the Cessna (well clear of the whirling propeller) as I shut off the avionics, pulled the mixture control all the way out (idling the engine to shutoff), switched off the ignition, and shut off the master switch. And that was the end. I took off my headset, laid it on the dashboard, leaned back, and took a breath. The symphony in my head drew to a soft and satisfying close. Later, there would be congratulations, and hugs, and handshakes, and pictures taken next to N42126, and logbook signings, and more congratulations (from Debbie, Apple Valley Aviation's receptionist, who'd come out to watch me), and a congratulatory second breakfast of burgers and burritos at Skidmarks Cafe just inside the airport, but at that moment, as I stepped out of the plane back onto solid ground and breathed in some of that cool desert air, I was on Cloud 9. And I haven't come back down since.

and so, the long-awaited cabin fever sets in

It's 102 degrees outside. The Internet wasn't working until 10:30 a.m. because I went over the bandwidth limit yesterday downloading the Anniversary Edition of Ad-Aware. I'm having a homemade fruit smoothie every day. The most exciting thing I have to look forward to tomorrow is getting up at 7:00 to paint the shed, which I am actually looking forward to. I dug through at least four hundred article titles on the Demand Studios website, and I only found one that I thought I could successfully do ("Advantages of Renting a Car"). I've got a lopsided, half-deflated blister on my right heel that I desperately want to pop. I've run out of fresh reading material; what I do have are somewhat dense books like Keith Sinclair's A History of New Zealand and a load of self-help books regarding writing. My resolution to quit picking my nose, sworn in my parents' hammock under a sparkling canopy of stars late last night, lasted barely eighteen hours. And, oh yes! I've got five weeks until I find out whether I can leave for Alaska or not. I love my parents and it's nice being back in the States, but man...I've got to get out of here.

momentous decisions: an addendum

As an addendum to that last post: My folks have been pressing me lately to stay here in Apple Valley. This is not because they're clingy (although they wouldn't mind having me around). Mom figures I could stay at the house (and pay monthly rent), work in the valley (perhaps at my old job at the paper) and save up oodles of money. If I stuck around for a year, I could rack up a sizable amount. Plus, that would then give me time to bug my friends about coming to Australia with me, and also give them time to finish whatever they need to get done beforehand. If I go to Alaska now, Mom says, without prospects or patience, I'll burn up another huge chunk of what I saved in Korea, one-quarter of which has been sunk into my new car and all the related maintenance and insurance fees. This is true. I've given myself three or four months to find a job up there before I quit and return to the lower 48, and if I'm unsuccessful, that'll be three or four thousand dollars gone, not including food and expenses. Here, I have friends. Here, I have contacts. Here, I have cheap accommodation. Mom and Dad's suggestion is a sound one; I could save a lot, have plenty to spend on an Australian or European sabbatical (Jeff and I had talked about meeting up in England in the summer of 2010, six months before Adam and Elaine's wedding)...and, well, what-have-you. The only problem I have with that is it means that I'll have to wait to go to Alaska. I'll have to wait on flying...I'm not sure if they give flight lessons at the dinky little Apple Valley airport. I'll have a journalism job, perhaps (if I move fast), but I sense that I'll be unhappy doing it. I've worked there before and I know how hectic it is, even for an intern or an entry-level reporter. Perhaps most dismaying, however, is that I'll be living in my parents' house. I love them, and it's nice and easy and fun to live there, but my pride and independent spirit are niggling at me. How come you're sitting on your tucus in your nice parents' cushy house when you could be out gallivanting around the Arctic after a week of driving through the Western United States and Canada? Why are you still sitting here when there's sheep waiting to be herded and beautiful thirsty chicks waiting to be served cocktails in Australia? What's with you sticking around in Apple Valley when there are dozens of open teaching jobs in Japan and Greater Asia? I know I'm sounding like a stupid, flaky whiner, but those niggling feelings are undeniable. Running off to Alaska without carefully laid plans (or abundant capital) somehow just seems like the thing to do. I'm letting my heart rule my head here, yessir. But there've been people throughout history who have done that and made it big, haven't they? Give me a few minutes to think about it.

a new car and semi-employment

We went car-hunting as a family unit last Friday. Dad is working a contract position for the state, and for some strange reason he gets every Friday off. So we all piled into the truck and went cruising around downtown Victorville looking for a vehicle for yours truly. We passed by the large dealerships on 7th Avenue without really meeting with much success. Number one, they didn't have what I was looking for: an inexpensive, medium-sized truck or SUV. Number two, they were all closed. (We weren't out that early, jeez.) However, right when we were about to give it up for the day, we happened upon a small dealership on Palmdale Road called Eagle Motors. Sitting in the parking lot was a white, noticeably undamaged four-door 1995 Jeep Cherokee SE. Missives like "$2995" and "LOW MILES" were scrawled on the rear windows. We parked and did an inspection. It seemed mechanically sound. There was a dent on the right rear fender, but that didn't bother us much. There was no noticeable oil leakage. The interior was old, but not overly worn or shabby. There was a slight amount of rust on the body, but nothing significant. All in all, it seemed a good deal. While we were inspecting the vehicle, a swarthy fellow with slicked-back hair and a polo shirt came out of the office. His name was Sal, and he was one of the salesmen. We talked with him, but he had little to say apart from a glowing description of the vehicle in front of us. At Sal's urging, however, Dad and I climbed in and took the Jeep for a ride around the block. I was pleased with the way it handled. It was a zippy little number (totally unlike a massive Ford Expedition which Dad and I had perused earlier in the week). The power brakes worked zealously well. We told Sal we were interested in the car, but we'd like to have it inspected by our mechanic first. He bucked and snorted a little, but finally agreed. We said we'd think it over. Later that day I called him and arranged to come pick up the car at ten on Monday and take it over to A-Action Automotive on Hesperia Road, near Bear Valley Road. And so I waited the long weekend, the Jeep growing on me the whole time, slightly worried that it would sell before I could go back on Monday and pick it up. With bated breath I drove into town that Monday morning. Whew! The Jeep was still there. Unfortunately, Sal wasn't. I had to explain everything to the proper owner of Eagle Motors, Carl, an old man with a stern glare, salt-and-pepper stubble on his chin, and a beer gut like a small porpoise. In spite of his imposing appearance, he was a decent ol' stick. Once I communicated the situation to him, he accommodated me quite cheerily. Since only he and his wife were in that day, there was no one to ride with me to the auto shop. So I offered to put down collateral. Carl asked for a hundred bucks and some contact info. I slapped both down (one on the desk and the other on a piece of paper) and drove the car over to A-Action. Steve Coultas, the proprietor and head mechanic of A-Action Automotive, also has a beer gut...but his bright eyes, sandy hair, big hands and jolly booming voice lend him a more congenial first impression. We filled him in on the situation, and he told us he'd give our car the kind of inspection that he himself would perform on a car he was about to give his own daughter. He said it'd be about an hour and a half. We thanked him and left. Mom (who'd followed me into town in the truck to pick me up from the mechanic's after I dropped off the Jeep) and I didn't know what to do with ourselves. We were in the downtown area, sure, but neither of us felt like traipsing around the Mall of Victor Valley for ninety minutes. We didn't have library cards, either. So we called up Dad at his office and told him we'd pick him up for lunch. We drove over to his office and then went to the nearest Farm Boys for burgers (well, I had a chicken club; I'm trying to cut back). Man, that was nice: just to be able to sit down in a burger joint and have some true American cuisine with people speaking English (and some Spanish) in the background, and the familiar stucco buildings with their red tile roofs glimmering in the hot Mojave sun outside the windows. Reverse culture shock is gradually turning into warm nostalgia. After that Mom and I dropped Dad back off and we went over to the Victorville post office to mail my brother Harlan a package. The line was hideously long, putting things into perspective for us Apple Valley residents. The good thing was, however, that between the burgers and Harlan's package, we'd used up the entire hour and a half. Or we thought we had. Upon returning to A-Action we'd noticed that the Jeep still hadn't moved from its parking space out front. Upon entering, we discovered that the shop was a bit backed up that morning and they'd be getting around to us in a little while. It'd probably be another 45 minutes, Steve said (as he frantically hurried around the office checking work orders). So, Mom and I just sat around in the tiny office (with its three AC Delco chairs and its piles of Drive magazines) and waited it out. Well, Mom did. I paced. Burns calories, you know. I telephoned Eagle Motors to apprise them of the delay and received a green light. I wondered if I should've given them more collateral. I walked back and forth between the wooden door of the office and the sliding glass doors across it (only two or three paces). These glass doors were blocked by large blue metal cabinets that had been placed across them to enclose the waiting area of the main office, but I was tall enough to peek over them if I stood on my toes. And stand on them I did, every four or five revolutions or so. Dale, the co-owner of A-Action, said I looked like an expectant father in the hospital waiting for his child to be born. "That ain't a bad analogy," I said. "I'm waiting to see if he comes out deformed." After about an hour or so, the affair was finished. It turned out that the Jeep didn't have quite so clean a bill of health as Sal had suggested. The brake rotors were below the legal limit for thinness. By law they'd have to be resurfaced and refurbished. The same was true of the inoperative blower in the ventilation system. As a matter of maintenance, Steve suggested we replace the serpentine belt; there was also a minor oil leak in the oil pan and the coolant system could have used a flushing, but those were minor details. The two major repairs were the rotors and the blower. Steve said we could either demand that the dealer fix those two problems himself, or else lower the cost of the car. He encouraged us to do the latter. Otherwise, he warned, the dealer would go with the cheapest fix and we'd come off the worse in the long run. That sounded like a good idea. Steve was nice enough to print up estimates for all the repairs on an individual basis, so I had some paper evidence to wave in Carl's face if necessary. In total, the two major repairs would cost about $250. On Friday we'd talked Sal down from $2995 to $2795. I decided to try to get Carl down to $2595, subtracting $200 for repairs. So we drove back to Eagle Motors. My heart was thumping in my chest. I'd never bargained for anything (successfully) in my life. The most experience I'd had was haggling for cab fare in Korea. I'd never even approached something like a car before in any previous transaction. But I was determined to do it. Mom and Dad had done most of the talking on Friday and I had set my face against them doing it again. It was high time I continued standing on my own two feet, irrespective of the fact that I was living in their house and eating their breakfast cereal at nine o'clock every morning. ...and it came off. I looked Carl dead in the eye, told him about what was wrong with the car (skipping the minor stuff) and told him I'd take the Jeep if he knocked the price down to $2595. He considered for a moment, then agreed. That warm, slow feeling of elation (the one that comes after accomplishing a nerve-wracking task) trickled through my torso and legs as we went through the motions. Carl took my information, entered it into a computer program, then printed it onto a bunch of forms, which I then signed. I then paid him $2800 (that was all the cash I had; plus tax the bill came to $2974.50, but Carl was kind enough to let me come back later and pay the difference). And then...after Carl scraped the "for-sale" epistles off the windows with a razor blade, I drove my new Jeep Cherokee off the lot. I stopped and put thirty bucks' worth of gas into it on the way back, but apart from that the drive was fun. Today I took the thing into A-Action again to have those major repairs done. They had to completely replace one brake rotor that was completely worn down (which upped the price by another thirty dollars), but they were successfully resurfaced. The blower now blows for all it's worth and the serpentine belt has been replaced. (Dad looked under the car yesterday and said the oil leak wasn't worth worrying about, and that the two of us could flush the coolant on the weekend, so we passed that over.) The bill came to $360. So, sports fans, that means I have blown one quarter of the twelve grand I saved up in Korea...but also that I am now in full possession of an operative, low-mileage, tough and capable automobile. Now I just have to insure it. In California. Yippee. So! On the employment front, I've heard absolutely nothing from any of the six or eight reporter's positions (ranging in location from Arkansas to Connecticut) I've applied to. I finally got up the gumption to call New Northwest Broadcasters' Anchorage branch, but was told that they had no on-air openings whatsoever. They requested my information and told me they'd contact me if anything came up. (And you know what that means...that's a polite way of saying 'Thanks, but no thanks.') I've gotten no bites in TV, radio or print. However...I have been officially accepted as a freelance writer for Demand Studios, based in the L.A. Basin. They're a sort of information-gathering firm that posts article topics on various subjects on its website (home, culture, art, travel, pets, sports, leisure, science, education, what-have-you). A large staff of freelance writers claims the topics, writes them up, and submits them. Demand Studios takes these results, packages them, and disseminates them to various online databases like eHow. It doesn't pay much; $5-$15 per article, usually, or royalties, but still, it's better than nothing. At least somebody accepted my help. Anyway, I wrote my first article for them today, a nice little "strategy" piece (which, according to their style book, means a 50-word overview and then a series of chronologically-organized paragraphs, separated by subheads, offering tips on something). The title was "Tips on Learning to Play the Piano." I figured seven fruitless years of piano lessons made me, at the very least, unequivocally qualified to explain that. I adhered the best I could to their style and formatting guide; we'll see if it gets accepted. Currently it's under review. I'll keep you "Posted." So, now I have a car and semi-employment; more updates as events warrant. Oh yeah, and someday soon here I promise I'll get around to uploading photos of my Jeju/Gwangju getaway. You'll love 'em.

Mom and Dad's home cookin'

I didn't wholly realize how much I'd missed it, however much I'd cogitated on it back in my studio apartment in Korea. To date, since I've been home, I've been treated to:

• Mom's spinach dip
• Rice Krispie treats
• magic cookie bars*
• spaghetti
• nachos
• quesadillas
• pickles 'n' meat**
• fried tilapia
• Dad's salsa
• Mom's hummus

And man, hasn't it all been delicious! In addition to these gems, there've been a few store-bought foods I've very much enjoyed having again, such as:

• root beer (Mug)
• Wheat Thins
• Kettle Chips
• real hot dogs (beef)
• Mexican food
• Drambuie
• Swiss cheese
• good beer

Might seem weird to you that I missed these, but I sure did. All of them were impossible to get in Korea, or else were extremely expensive. The hot dogs there were only shadowy reflections of real hot dogs, hence my emphasis on that adjective. The two popular home-brewed beer brands, Hite and Cass, wouldn't even stand up to Budweiser, which just goes to show how bad they were. We encountered some Mexican food in Western bars and clubs in large cities, but even this was strange (see my entry about the El Paso Restaurant in Jeju: Day Eight to learn more). You couldn't find a good potato chip to save your soul. As for the home-cooked food, it just tastes American, if you know what I mean. Anyone who's had Koreanized spaghetti won't hesitate to say that it's pretty good; it just doesn't taste like what you're used to. It's truly invaluable to be back on my home turf and have spaghetti that tastes familiar again. * These are simple to make: melt some butter in a large oven-safe dish, add some crumbled-up graham cracker crumbs, cover with a layer of sweetened condensed milk, embed an entire package of milk chocolate chips into that, then sprinkle a protective layer of shredded coconut over the top of that, and bake for 25 minutes. The butter soaks into the cracker crumbs and makes a delicious firm underlayer; the chocolate chips melt into the condensed milk; and the coconut browns just slightly, creating a truly mind-blasting and sweet dessert. ** This is an old German dish passed down in my family from generation to generation. Simply grind up some bread-and-butter pickles and some balogna, mix that with enough mayonnaise (I prefer Miracle Whip) to make a paste out of it, and spread it thick between two pieces of bread. Most awesome sandwich known to humanity, right there.

reverse culture shock

It exists. It took a little while for mine to sink in, but as Jeff so sagely predicted, it happened. I'm...weirded out, to say the least. Everybody I've passed on the street is speaking English; I have to watch what I say. If I have a bit of trash in my pocket, I can just throw it into a trash can; I don't have to go hunting for somebody's garbage bag left out on the curb. The shops all carry food I recognize; I'd better be careful not to blow all the money I saved on Three Musketeers bars and Progresso Soup. And that's not to mention the food I've had since I got back. First thing after my folks picked me up from the airport, we went out for Mexican. Now, I'd had some pseudo-Mexican in Korea. There were the nachos at Mix (a club in Busan) and the enchiladas at El Paso (see Day Eight: Jeju). At the time, in the absence of the real thing, and being so long removed from said real thing, I'd thought the pseudo-Mexican was pretty good. Boy, was I talking through my hat. I don't even remember the name of the place we went to; tiny ten-table sort of establishment, in a shopping center just off Mariposa Road in Victorville (same complex as the old Cinemark theater, Michael's, and Red Robin). I ordered up some chicken enchiladas, and they came, served up with Spanish rice and a great heaping helping of refried beans. I bit into the tortilla soaked with both its contents and its covering, and promptly sank into a year's worth of Mexican withdrawal, which fortunately was quickly remedied by what was already in my mouth. Ay carumba, that was bliss. So good to have something real, or at least as close to real as I could get north of the border (and this side of the Pacific). Things haven't changed. At home I was treated to one of Dad's quesadillas, whipped up Post Family style: Swiss cheese. He also added some leftover chicken. Boy, was that ever a trip down memory lane, and darn delicious to boot. I have since had a ham and Swiss on homemade buttermilk bread (awwwwwwwwwwwww); some of my Mom's nachos (smack smack); my Dad's hot wings (yummy yummy...hot hot hot); raisin bran (which I didn't even realize I'd missed); and, well, yeah. Just being back, and having the option to have all this stuff (even if I haven't had it yet) is blowing my mind at this juncture. Not to mention I'm still freaked out by everything I've mentioned above. There's more yet to come. Imagine how weird it'll be to start seeing some of my high school friends again. Or order a pizza from Papa John's. Or drive. Today Dad gave me my first lesson in how to drive a stick-shift, and dang if that wasn't like learning to drive all over again. That, too, has compounded my RCS. Wish me luck...Saturday we go to Big Bear, a place I've been millions of times but not in four years, for my Mom's birthday. Now, if that won't be a trip down Memory Lane...the long, sinuous drive up the San Gabriel Mountains to the secluded lake in the midst of a verdant pine forest on the mountaintops...I don't know what will.