UEFA Champions League Final 2011

It may be a coincidence, and it may be karma, or it may be nothing at all except a combination of circumstances that arose for no reason at all, but I personally have been very lucky recently. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in the UEFA Champions League this year.

My first game during this two-week trip to the UK was at Old Trafford, Manchester United's home field, on May 22 for the last game of this year's Premier League season. This banner in honor of Ryan Giggs hangs at the Stretford End of the stadium. He has been playing for the ManUtd first team for 20 years!

The UEFA Champions League is the annual competition among the best professional soccer clubs in Europe. These clubs select themselves for the tournament each year by winning the national cup in their respective countries the previous year, or by placing high enough in their respective national leagues the previous year to qualify. In England, the top four clubs in the Premier League qualify, as do the top four clubs in Spain and Italy and the top three in Germany and France. If I remember correctly, every European country has one team or more playing in the Champions League every year.

The Premier League trophy was presented to the team after the game, a carefully staged affair where only the professional photographers, jostling each other in a temporary wooden enclosure, got a good view. After the presentation, players and the coach strolled around the field in a kind of informal lap of honor. This is Sir Alex Ferguson, who has coached ManUtd since 1986 (yep, that's almost 25 years!), with a group of young people. My guess is that they are his grandchildren. A cute, human moment that you won't see on TV.

My team, Manchester United, qualified for this year’s Champions League (2010-11), as did Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur, the uniquely named club abbreviated as “Spurs” which my dad supported all his life. I already blogged here about ManUtd’s match against Valencia at Old Trafford in the Champion’s League in December. That was the first precursor of the luck to follow: the match was played on my birthday, and David (an old schoolfriend) and I had a great time watching it. Okay, the score was a 1-1 draw, which was less than ideal, but it was my first visit to Old Trafford, the Theater of Dreams where the club plays at home, and it all felt pretty special.

ManUtd duly advanced in the tournament, as did Chelsea and Arsenal, and thanks to Tom in Paris (more about that in a later post) I discovered in February that the final of this year’s Champions League was to be held in May in London at the new Wembley Stadium. I immediately checked the availability for tickets for that match on line.

It is very hard to capture soccer action from the stands. The only time that you can really do it is during a set piece, like this free kick. If I remember correctly, this Blackpool free kick scored. The ball in the photo is to our right of the head of number 15, Nemanja Vidic., ManUtd's Serbian captain. Poor Blackpool were relegated from the Premier League after this loss at Old Trafford: all rather sad.

This game is the European equivalent of a Superbowl, and so tickets are always very much in demand. The teams who make it to the final each get a substantial allocation, 25,000 for each team this year, which they themselves allocate typically among their season ticket holders, the people who have paid for seats at every national league game of the season. UEFA, the body that administers soccer in Europe, also allocated itself 25,000 tickets this year. Only 12,000 tickets were available to the general public, to people EUFA called on their site “neutral football fans.” (For those of you who don’t know soccer, that is ridiculous statement: if you’re a fan, you’re absolutely not neutral!)

EUFA decided to sell those 12,000 tickets to people who won a lottery for them. As each fan who won the lottery could buy two tickets, that meant about 6,000 winners. I don’t know how many applicants those winners were drawn from, but quite a few. Registration for the lottery took place between February 24 and March 18. On the last day for registration, there were still 8-12 teams in the tournament (the round of 16 was not yet complete, but some of the teams that would advance were already known), and so no-one entering the lottery had much hope of seeing his or her team in the Final. Maybe that reduced the number of entries.

After the game, 68,000 supporters pile out of the stadium and make their way home. This was taken on the road to the tram line. There were stalls and tents set up to sell T-shirts and souvenirs. We waited about half an hour at the station for the tram. There were six days to go until the Champions League Final in London.

I gave it a shot. In a way, I didn’t care who played: it would be a great event whoever was there. Yes, of course, I’d prefer to see Man United and Barcelona, my team against the best team in the world, but that was a long way away, both time wise and in the realm of possibilities. Besides, what chance did I have of winning the lottery?!

I concentrated on work. There were other reasons for wanting to fly to Europe in May, but none of them would be convincing if I didn’t have a good first quarter of 2011. Fortunately (see: there’s that luck again!), I had a great first quarter.

On April 5th, an email arrived from Ticketmaster. I figured it was junk, another list of pending classic rock concerts, but no: “Dear Ian Stock, We are pleased to inform you that as a result of the lottery process, your application with the customer reference number: 508094 for the UEFA Champions League Final 2011 has been successful.” Good grief: I had actually won! I never ever win things, and certainly not lotteries. Can’t say that any more, now can I?

The Guardian's Sports page on May 28, the day of the Final. It voices what we all hoped to see in a match that I only dreamed about when I signed up for the lottery. If you live under a rock or otherwise avoid soccer in your life (may I take this opportunity to express my profound sympathy!),the two players are: in the Barcelona shirt on the left, the current FIFA world player of the year, Lionel Messi, and in the ManUtd shirt, Wayne Rooney, whose overhead kick in the local derby against Manchester City was rated the best goal of the Premier League's entire season.

By this time, the semi-finals were set up, and Manchester United and Barcelona were both still in the tournament. ManUtd faced Schalke, the upstart German club who had wiped out Inter Milan in the quarter finals but who were new at this and likely feeling the pressure. Barcelona was playing their old favorites in Spain, Real Madrid. It was Jose Morinho, now managing Real Madrid, who had engineered Barcelona’s defeat last year at the hands of Inter Milan in the Champions League semi-final, but I didn’t fancy his chances of accomplishing the same feat twice. In short, my dream match, every soccer lover’s dream match of this year, was getting closer.

My first instinct for the second ticket was to sell it. If an English club was in the Final, it would be worth a small fortune, probably enough to cover the entire cost of the trip. But it wasn’t the money that worried me. I have five sons (that’s where my luck has held through the years, by the way, in my children), all of whom are pretty fond of soccer.

I met Charlie at the airport, London's Heathrow, at lunchtime on the day of the game. UEFA representatives were there to greet people from Ford, Heineken and other Champions League sponsors. One of these representatives was kind enough to set us up in front of their placard for this picture. Note the ManUtd crest on my polo.

How was I to choose who to offer the ticket to? I started with Alex, the youngest and a Manchester United fan. Logically, he should have jumped at the chance, but lately he tends to say no to a lot of things, in particular to anything new and different. The added complication was that the Final was taking place before the end of the school year, meaning that we couldn’t turn the trip into a vacation. Final exams were happening the next week, and so he would need to fly out on the Friday before the game and back on the Sunday after the game. Sure enough, his first reaction was that he didn’t want to spend 24 hours flying to see a soccer game lasting two hours, and he turned it down.

I tried Charlie, the next oldest, fully expecting him too to turn it down. Charlie is a serious Arsenal fan, and year in year out Arsenal are serious ManUtd rivals. But no, he barely paused before accepting the invitation. When I pointed out that the chances were then good that ManUtd would be in the Final, he just shrugged: “it’s the chance of a lifetime.” Hey, that’s right: I’m a fair bit farther along in my life than Charlie, and this was to be my first ever UEFA Champions League Final. Charlie figured it out.

Here's another one of Charlie at the airport. Turkish Airlines impressed because they managed to pick both finalists to sponsor, even though they were not sponsors of the Champions League as a whole. Not bad judgment, that!

I didn’t have any final exams this year, and so booked a two week vacation around the Final and flew to Heathrow on May 18th. Work again cooperated, with a public offering to help with at the beginning of May, completed before I was due to leave. And a friend at NextSpace, an Englishman who is an Aston Villa fan, told me that his dad, Paddy Campbell, of Glossop, Derbyshire, a ManUtd season ticket holder for donkey’s years, could probably find me a ticket for ManUtd’s last Premier League game of the season on Sunday May 22. They had already won the league, and so there was nothing at stake, but the trophy would be presented at the end of the game and this sounded like a great warm up to the Final the next weekend. I delightedly got in touch with Paddy, and crossed my fingers.

This one's a bit dark: the flash was playing up during this trip. It shows Charlie in front of Zinedine Zidane, hero of the French World Cup campaign in 1998, in the UEFA space in Hyde Park devoted to the history of the Champions League. Zidane was caught by the photographer as he shot the volley with his left foot (he is right-footed) that won Real Madrid the final in 2002. It was a beautiful goal, and Charlie's always been a big fan of Zidane's.

You guessed it: Paddy not only found me a ticket, the season ticket of a holder who could not make the game, he found it for free. I owe you, Paddy!

Duly interrupting my week in the Highlands of Scotland, I watched a very entertaining game at Old Trafford. The supporters were in fine voice in the tram on the way to Old Trafford, and in finer voice in the stands. I learned new songs, most of which are pretty much unprintable and involve Liverpool (a traditional local rival) or Manchester City (another) or both. ManUtd were down 2-1 against Blackpool at one point, but came back with some lovely fluid moves to win 4-2. “Campeones, Campeones,” sang the crowd in Spanish, “Olé Olé Olé!”

The first thing I noticed on the tube with Charlie on our way to the Final was that the ManUtd fans were no longer singing that song in Spanish. At Old Trafford, they rarely stopped. It made sense in a way, singing that song non-stop on the day that the Premier League trophy was presented to Sir Alex Ferguson, Manchester United’s manager and coach. But I felt that its absence on the tube to Wembley was a bit of a sign, an unspoken expression of self-doubt.

We're getting closer! Walking from the tube at Wembley Park station, we arrived at the new Wembley Stadium, built after the old was knocked down in 2002 (about). We're starting to feel it!

They were still pretty loud on the tube. It was the first time that Charlie had heard English football fans on their way to a match, and I could see the surprise on his face as they roared their chants and songs up and down the carriage and then on the platform. Barcelona fans and passers by alike looked uneasy.

We had taken the tube from Heathrow, where I had met his arriving flight, direct to Hyde Park, where EUFA had been putting on a show all week. We saw the Champions League Cup, an impressive hunk of silver, and a sort of museum of past Champions League highlights. Then lunch in a pub at Marble Arch, a walk along Oxford Street and on to the tube at Bond Street for Wembley Park. It started raining as we arrived at the stadium, and we elected to find our seats under cover straight away. We bought programmes and watched and waited.

There was a show before the game. Much of it probably worked better in TV than from the stands, but this was a fine moment. The crests of each finalist straddle the UEFA crest (of course bigger: bureaucrats often suffer delusions of grandeur!) The red-shirted guardsmen at the bottom of the photo have taken time off from guarding the Queen to escort the Cup to the stadium.

After the match, Sir Alex commented that he had never played against a better team, and he must have known that (as I did, as most soccer fans did) in advance. More power to him, then, for not trying to play defensively, which would have been an alternative approach to take, Mourinho’s approach with Inter Milan the year before. No, his team played the same fluid attacking soccer that is his and their trademark.

It made for a great game, because Barcelona seem incapable of playing any other way: both teams ran themsleves ragged attacking.  It was beautiful, fluid play almost the entire match.

Half time found the teams even at 1-1, and the ManUtd goal, courtesy of a Rooney-Giggs one-two and a perfect shot from Rooney, had woken up the ManUtd fans, who had generally been quieter than the Barcelona fans. They weren’t the only ones woken up, incidentally. I happened to glance across at Charlie as I leapt up howling after Rooney’s goal, pounding the air with both fists, and there he was, my Arsenal fan and heir, howling away and pounding the air with both fists just like his dad!! Good times!

Here's the Barcelona end of the Stadium, where most of their 25,000 fans were cheering their team on. They were loud and colorful and a sea of movement, especially in the second half as their team took control of the match. They watch these players every week, and must know by now what they've got.

We came back to earth in the second half, as Barcelona ramped it up, demonstrating why people are starting to talk about them as the best team ever. Literally. Charlie and I had seen them before, with Alex and Marie-Hélène at Candlestick Park during the summer of 2009. They were playing an exhibition game against Chivas de Guadalajara, the Mexican professional team. It had been like watching the Harlem Globetrotters, only playing soccer. Chivas scored first, and Barca only managed a 1-1 draw that day, but the scoreline gives you no sense of their total superiority on that field of play. Barcelona were running rings around Chivas, and making it look easy.

Here is the ManUtd contingent, holders of the 25,000 tickets allocated to their club, at the other end of the stadium. The words read "Spirit of 68," a commemoration of the first time that ManUtd won the Champions League (then called the European Cup) in 1968, at the old Wembley Stadium against Benfica. That match featured Bobby Charlton, Dennis Law and George Best, the holy trinity of my youth, for the winners.

They were not that much better than ManUtd, but a memory of the Final illustrates how that second half went. Soon after the kickoff, three or four Barcelona players, who had possession on Charlie’s and my side of the midfield, were surrounded by a superior number of ManUtd players running in hard and seeking to dispossess them. They did it just right, according to the book, hard and fair tackles, and by rights should have come away with the ball.

But no, the Barcelona players flicked the ball back and forth among them, as they love to do and do incredibly quickly, with the ManUtd players hot on their heels again and again, and then one of the Barca players flicked it out of the danger zone to another player unmarked in the middle of the field. The Barcelona fans again cried, “olé!”

Here we are in our seats, Block 550. This was taken by a ManUtd supporter from Lincolnshire.

David, my friend and a ManUtd fan from Marlow, watched the match on TV and commented that Barca always seemed to have 8-10 men in midfield! Very dispiriting for United, doing it right, doing what they were supposed to do, time and again, almost to no avail.

There is an inordinate amount of press comment on the Final, just as there is on a Superbowl, much of it accurate, and I won’t repeat it here. It was obviously disappointing to lose 3-1, the second time that we have lost to them in this season final in three years. But as Charlie and I made our way in the crowd toward the train back to the hotel, I heard myself saying again and again, “they’re just so good.” And the Barcelona players are.

The flash messed up again, but here we are with Barcelona ready to kick-off for the second half. We had an awesome view of everything, as it happened, all the movement off the ball from both teams, the speed of the match, the moments when we were simply in awe. In a good match, that may happen a few times. In this match, it happened again and again. And there we were, right there in the thick of things!

It is not a coincidence that the three nominees this year for FIFA’s Ballon d’Or, the annual award for the best footballer in the world, Messi, Xavi and Iniesta, all play for Barcelona, the first time that has ever happened. That match was the best football I’ve ever seen live, and I’ve seen a fair bit over the years. ManUtd were not embarrassed, but they were well beaten. “Campeones, Campeones, Olé Olé Olé!”

It was a beautiful game, and Charlie and I were very lucky to have been able to watch it live and in person, at the new Wembley Stadium in London.

Patriot Guard Riders

You don’t expect much from the airport shuttle, not from any airport shuttle. A timely arrival at the airport is all that is promised and all that you need. So when you hear something of an inspiration en route, as I did last month, it stays with you.

Dennis with his bike, christened "POWMIA," at a Gilroy parade of the Patriot Guard Riders. The bike is a Kawasaki 2007 Vulcan VN 2000cc engine Classic LT.

Dennis first explained why he had a part-time job driving the shuttle. He had retired not long ago after 20-something years driving tour buses all over the United States and much of Canada. His children were grown, the youngest had completed college, and he was set, except for one little thing: his “motorcycle habit.” That’s the phrase he used, and I had an immediate picture of him on his Harley on Sunday afternoons winding through the Santa Cruz mountains. Yep, that was a hobby that was worth a part-time job to support.

But there was more to the story. Dennis did enjoy his Sunday afternoon sorties, no doubt about it, but what drove him on his motorcycle, what drove him to spend $311 for a new rear tire every 9,000 miles (both the numbers were his), was something a lot more serious.

Dennis with his wife and granddaughter at the Gilroy parade. Naturally enough, his T-shirt reads "Support Our Troops." Dennis and his wife have a son in Special Forces, who can't even tell them what country he is in. They write to him at a military PO Box. That's got to be hard for him and his wife.

Dennis is a ride captain for the Patriot Guard Riders. Sounds terrifying, doesn’t it, in a way? The phrase carries echoes of those phony patriots who tell us all what to do to justify their self-centered politics. No, Dennis is a whole different kind of patriot, right from the heart, all about looking after other people, and pretty damn good at it.

When Dennis returned from Vietnam in 1967, he did what he had to do, found a job, married, had children: in short, he lived a good life. He gave up his “motorcycle habit” to raise his children (it’s an expensive hobby), and then took it back up a couple of years after his daughter graduated college.

He joined the Patriot Guard Riders (http://www.patriotguard.org/). They ride alongside and escort the young men and women who have completed their tours of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, and sometimes, so sadly, those who never did finish in one piece. The Patriot Guard Riders escort them home or to their final resting place.

He told me of one particular trip when they rode shotgun for a busload of returnees on their way from the huge US Marine base at Camp Pendleton, down by San Diego, to Alameda Naval Air Station across the Bay from San Francisco. These were young people returning home to the Bay Area, and they would be meeting their families again, finally, in Alameda, after how long apart?

Dennis didn't send me any photos of one of his escort missions, and so I looked online to get a flavor of them. Here in 2009 Patriot Guard Riders escort the motorcade of Individual Augmentees (military people, in this case sailors, on their way to a posting) to a welcome. To get a more complete picture of Dennis's convoys, add a few hundred bikes and riders!

This was a bus ride that none of those returning soldiers would ever forget. The Patriot Guard Riders turned out in force for them. There were 646 big bikes or more escorting that bus the 400 plus miles from Camp Pendleton to Alameda. Some dropped out and others joined in, but there were 646 or more big bikes for the entire route home of these returnees.

Think about that for a moment.
We’ve all seen those groups of bikes out for a Sunday afternoon ride in a group, and we’ve all been impressed by the roar of 20 Harleys gliding by. Think about 646 big bikes doing the same. Dennis said that they rode two abreast at two second intervals. Any less and they were too close, any more and people cut between them. That’s a no-no. They haven’t joined up 646 strong in honor of our returning heroes in order to be interrupted by grandpa on a visit to the grocery store. I did the math: 323 times two seconds is over ten minutes. At 60 mph, that’s a total of ten miles of bikes in front of and behind the bus. That is one hell of an escort!

According to a Patriot Guard Riders blog, where I found this photo, it shows Patriot Guard Riders attending a military burial in Liberal, Kansas in response to a scheduled appearance by the Westboro Baptist Church in May 2006. The blog is at: http://pgrnyvrp.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/

I peppered him with questions, and Dennis explained more. They were able to stay together for ten minutes of drive-by on busy freeways because law enforcement agencies allow them to. They not only allow them to, they help the convoys, for example by blocking freeway entrances until the whole escorted convoy has passed by.

Other local law enforcement agencies are informed about the convoy, and set themselves up on bridges over the freeway: police officers, firefighters, paramedics, all waving to the returning soldiers (the civilians) or saluting them. Groups of bikes take turns to ride up alongside the bus, on both sides, and then peel off while others ride on up alongside. Are you getting goosebumps yet?!

Hear that roar! Dennis said that he was sure that the families waiting in the Alameda Naval Air Station could hear their loved ones coming from a mile away, droning and roaring closer and closer as hundreds of big bikes turned off the freeway with the bus and finished their long ride escorting the men and women home.

This shot appeared in the Stamford Advocate, with the following credit: "The Patriot Guard Riders motorcycle group precedes the casket carrying the remains of Staff Sgt. Derek Farley down Routes 9 and 20 in Schodack on August 25, 2010. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union) Photo: Skip Dickstein." I bet that this photograph made Staff Sgt Farley's family and friends feel about as good as anything could have made them feel.

Welcome home, soldiers!

Dennis is a Vietnam vet. He remembered the weird way he was welcomed home after his tour of duty. I remember those times too, the moral ambiguity of that far away war, the political passion that interfered with everyone’s appreciation, our appreciation, of the sacrifices that our young men (just men then) were making. It was a terrible time to be a soldier, fighting for a native land that saw you as a pawn in somebody else’s game, a victim or a perpetrator in the country’s own internal struggles, when it saw you at all. Dennis said simply that he did not feel much of a welcome when he returned home.

Here's Dennis with a World War II veteran during Veterans Appreciation Day this year in Dixon CA. He told me that 200 big bikes showed their appreciation that day.

Rather than become embittered, as did so many back then, Dennis has fixed the problem. He and thousands like him in the Patriot Guard Riders (he says that there are now over 215,000 strong, but not all ride) now assure the young men and women returning from these terrible wars (because all wars are terrible on some level) that they return with honor, knowing how much their country appreciates what they have done for us. I never even knew that any of this was happening. This short shuttle ride was an inspiration, an eye-opener.

Way to go Dennis! You’re the man!

July 2011: here’s an example of what Dennis and the Patriot Guard Riders do, taken from a recent newscast on the return home from Afghanistan to the Bay Area of the body of US Marine Staff Sergeant Nicanor “Nick” Amper IV: http://www.ktvu.com/video/28554478/index.html. Thank you, Sergeant. Rest in Peace.

 

Christmas 2010 and Alex’s Birthday

Christmas morning on Flora Lane.

During dinner last night, Charlie asked when there would be new photos posted up here, reminding me that it has indeed been a while.

It’s Easter Sunday today, and Alex and Charlie are staying with me this weekend. At 10 in the morning, they have yet to make an appearance downstairs. The time is right to look back on other special days, and the two most recent were Christmas last year and Alex’s birthday in January.

It was my first Christmas in the new place. Tom had accepted an invitation to cross the Atlantic to visit the rest of us, even if he had too many commitments in Paris to come for more than a week or so. That was enough for me! Charlie and Alex were spending half the vacation with their mother and half with me. That was enough for me too! I’m not greedy. Then there were the remainder of the formerly named “big kids” (now our young adults) to be brought together: Nick, Daphné and Alban.

Nick, Tom, Gino (Daphné's beau) and Daphné on the balcony for, you guessed it, a smoke. Ouch!

In short, my first Christmas task was herding cats! Christmas is above all a family time. When the next generation is aged 12 (almost 13) to 24, it is harder to convince them of the importance of spending time with their family!

They all enjoy Christmas, though, and so it wasn’t actually that hard to bring them all together for Christmas morning. There was the additional incentive of Christmas presents, of course, but I like to think that they would all have joined me on Christmas morning in any event!

(Fathers delude themselves: it’s an occupational hazard!)

Alex with one of his presents, which he designed himself.

Having managed to bring them all together for Christmas morning, I then did not manage to take one photo of them all together! Too much going on, with the present opening and snacks and drinks all around. Not a lot of photos of the presents either, although they all did pretty well. Nick, Daphné and Alban have started giving presents themselves, which made me feel very good, and added to the stack for the no-longer-so-little guys. I used to call them the “little guys,” but at almost 13 and well and truly 15, the phrase is no longer apt.

Charlie opening a large tube of Smarties, brought all the way from England, with Gino and Daphné watching. Each of the children received his or her large tube of Smarties!

Alex designed himself a skateboard during the fall, and with a little help from Cosmic Design Group here in Santa Cruz and Zazzle, we turned it into a Christmas present for him. Writing that down reminded me: this was perhaps our first (maybe the second or third?) Christmas without any real mention of Santa Claus offering the gifts: those years are gone now, even for Alex. He definitely liked the skateboard, and agreed to pose with it. But I should point out that when he first posed spontaneously and without thinking about it, the arrow pointed up. His siblings suggested that he turn the board upside down, to improve the picture: you can count on them!!

Tom on my balcony again.

The final Christmas photo, on the left, features Tom again, smoking again, on Christmas morning. Having smoked for 25 years, I am not the best placed to berate my young adults for smoking. So I try not to, or at least try to keep my complaints down. But I sure hope that they figure out the down side of smoking faster than I did. Tom especially risks his lovely singing voice when he smokes, and I look forward to him realizing that in the near future, thus confirming his father’s inferiority in the domain!

Tom was back in Paris long before Alex’s birthday. Nick was also in Paris for most of January, taking a well-deserved vacation after his company launched its product on an unsuspecting world right before Christmas. His major Christmas present was a Eurailpass. His present for Tom was so vulgar that there is unanimous agreement that it should not be shown in this post!

Alex on his 13th birthday with Isaac and Brendan.

Tom and Nick’s absence meant that the best that I could hope for at Alex’s birthday dinner was three of his siblings, Daphné, Alban and Charlie. I arranged the dinner at Chili’s, Alex’s favorite restaurant for the last few years, and that helped bring out the crowds (rhetorically speaking!).

Two of Alex’s friends came along for the ride, Isaac and Brendan. Isaac is the son of one of Alex’s soccer coaches, and Brendan is Russ and Annie’s son. (Russ was my closest friend at law school, and we still regularly hang out together). Both boys are on the same soccer team as Alex. As you can see from the photo, both enjoy making faces in front of the camera! As does Alex, when he actually permits himself to be photographed. Preserving memories of the children for posterity has a surprising number of obstacles.

Charles, Alex and Alban in Chili's.

Another obstacle is visible in the next photo, on the left. Alban is normally kind enough to joing his younger siblings for their special days, despite being 21 years old, not the ideal age for hanging out with the family. We appreciate that he joins in, as well as the regularity with which he shows up. But, Alban, could you please join in the spirit of the thing every so often, with a smile or a silly face or even a rude gesture, anything but that grim glare! There were two other photos of Alban taken during the same birthday dinner, and for each his expression was pretty much the same. Sigh!

Daphné and Gino at Alex's birthday dinner.

I don’t want to suggest that I’m prone to manipulate, but it is certainly true that I do want to bring the children together regularly.  This is particularly the case at birthdays, Christmas and the like. It is also particularly the case since Marie-Hélène and I formally moved apart. We had been living apart under the same roof for years, but the formality of the step may well have provoked reactions on the part of the children. It’s hard to tell. They don’t really want to get involved in the parental issues surrounding the separation, which is wise, but who knows if they can really immunize themselves against its consequences?

Birthday boy with cake: candles lit.

My relationship with all of Marie-Hélène’s and my six children is very important, and is not less or more important because of the presence or absence of biological ties. We raised our own two joint efforts, Charlie and Alex, from birth. I raised Nick and Tom from birth, and Marie-Hélène and I spent 16 years together raising four children who each had one parent elsewhere. It upsets me a great deal when any one of my six children seems more distant. The reason for the distance doesn’t matter, even if it does make sense on some level. I suspect that it will continue to be upsetting.

The ties that bind us all have been formed and tightened for their entire lives for Charlie and Alex, and for over 16 years for our four young adults. None of these ties are going to unravel now: I intend to make sure of that.

Birthday boy with cake: candles out! I think that I can see a little glimmer of pride here.

One of the ways that I bring Daphné to these special days despite her undeniable and primary allegiance to her mother, is by also inviting her boyfriend. Actually, it’s my preference to meet her boyfriends and get to know them in any event, and so I would normally invite them and be happy to see them. But I have noticed that Daphné appreciates it when Gino is invited, making me more likely to invite him.

It was a good birthday dinner. It had been a good Christmas. Our family continues. In a way, we have become two different families, one with Marie-Hélène as the parent or step-parent, and one with me as the parent or step-parent. That may have its disadvantages for the children at times, but it also has its advantages: the children all had a second Christmas with Marie-Hélène, and Alex had a birthday party with his maman as well as his little dinner party at Chili’s with me. Double the pleasure, double the fun!

Snowseeing in Tahoe

The most beautiful sight in nature on the move is big waves pounding on a rocky shore. It’s one of the sights of Santa Cruz, whenever the Pacific works up a swell.

Highways encircle Lake Tahoe, often right by the water's edge. Just off Nevada Route 28 on the northeast corner of the lake.

The most beautiful sight in nature standing still is deep fresh snow on rocks and trees. It’s a sight I see rarely.

Ploughed snow was everywhere, including the motel forecourt. It is about ten foot high here, between the motel sign and reception.

With this in mind, I had been watching the weather forecast for South Lake Tahoe all week. All week long, the forecasters promised sun in Tahoe on Sunday. I had finished an M&A deal on Friday, which always brings a good feeling of liberation, the boys were with their mother for the weekend, and a little snow tourism seemed like the ideal break. I waited to decide until Saturday morning, but when Caltrans announced on their web site that US route 50 was clear across the Sierra Nevada from Sacramento to South Lake Tahoe, no chains required, it only took me half an hour to pack and go.

“Snowseeing” is sightseeing when the sight is the snow.

View from the Heavenly observation deck, a little below the top of the Gondola. A glimpse of why people pay $32 for one trip up and down the mountain without skis. This is where Daphné lives for, and I'm beginning to see why.

I had no plans to ski, not even cross-country, but it had been raining all week in Santa Cruz, and snowing all week at Tahoe. Depending on which weather report I read, there were two or three feet of fresh powder.

A change is as good as a rest, and this change would be mile after mile of undisturbed deep snow.

I arrived at dusk on Saturday, found a motel room on Lake Tahoe Boulevard just down the street from the casinos across the Nevada state line, and went straight to a pub called MacDuff’s recommended by the desk clerk at the motel. They served a Sunday breakfast that was a classic British breakfast, complete with beans, grilled tomatoes, fried bread, bacon, sausages, eggs. Not forgetting English beer!

Looking down on South Lake Tahoe's casinos. This photo was taken from the gondola itself. It shows (mostly) the Nevada side of South Lake Tahoe. The casinos are in the bottom left corner of the photo. Can you figure out where the State line is located?

The morning sun got me up early the next morning, and I made it on the first city bus to the Heavenly Gondola, which left the motel at 8.53 am. I’d never taken the Heavenly Gondola, the main ride up to Heavenly Valley, one of the most beautiful US ski resorts. Today was the day!

The other side of snow did manage to make itself felt before I took the morning shuttle. It was 14 degrees when I left the room for breakfast, and the slush from the trip on the underside of the car was frozen solid. It ground its way along the ice of the motel parking lot before cracking off with two loud bangs. I crossed my fingers and hoped that there would be no lasting damage. I’m still hoping! I had checked the car antifreeze, and it was good to 0 degrees Fahrenheit, but forgot the windshield wiper fluid, which remained frozen until right around Auburn on the way back home.

The dogs with their sled at Squaw Creek. I'm at the back there, but this is all about the dogs! It was so obvious that they just loved what they were doing. Snow White is front right, one of the two lead dogs, and she did it all just right. At one point Brian cried out an abrupt "ha!" and without breaking stride Snow White turned sharp left and led the seven other dogs with her. I asked him: "what does 'ha' mean." "Turn left," he replied!

It was heaven up there at the top of the Gondola: the snow was crisp and clean and deep, and there was not a cloud in the sky. Way to go, weather forecasters!! I walked around for two hours where the resort’s snow-cats had packed the snow, alone in the silence much of the time, and my eyes feasted in the bright white glare of mountains at their most beautiful.

I walked through the Resort at Squaw Creek to get to the dog sleds. Here is part of the lounge. Talk about a panoramic view! All this fresh snow in a ski resort made for scenes from a movie wherever you looked.

There weren’t even a lot of people on the slopes: perhaps the temperatures were too low, perhaps the weather had been so bad that week-enders had been discouraged. They all missed something special at Heavenly.

In a couple of hours I was on the move again, following the guidance of a ski instructor on the gondola ride up.

He had told me that there were dog sled rides now available at the Squaw Creek Resort. Caltrans again told me that there were no chains required for this next stage of the journey up the east side of the lake, and off I drove to Squaw Valley. The Emerald Bay highway was closed, up the west side of the lake, because of the risk of avalanches.

Summer cabins half buried on the hillside.

Here is the company that offers these dog sled tours: http://www.tahoedogsledtours.com/. It was a lovely ride, easy and comfortable, criss-crossing the meadows which make up Squaw Valley. Plus I learned something. Did you ever ask yourself how dogs crap when they’re all pulling a sled in unison? Yep, learned that!

The guy who drove my sled, whose name was Brian, is the company’s founder. He discovered dog sleds as a hobby when he was a 23 year-old carpenter from Santa Cruz.  He now has 94 dogs and a solid business. Not forgetting his wife and two children, 9 and 13, in a ranch on 20 acres. Not a bad lifestyle!

I even managed to find a train on the way back home. This freight was waiting just outside Truckee station for the east-bound Amtrak train for Chicago (already late, of course) to arrive and free up the single track line west and up over the Sierra Nevada, across Donner Summit.

His carpentry skills come in handy: they help him build the kennels on the back of his truck which he uses to transport the dogs to and from their work. They helped him build the kennels on his ranch where the dogs all live. They helped him build his home, where he and his wife and children live. His is an inspirational story about making a living and building a business out of what you love to do.

So that was it: a short weekend communing with nature at its most beautiful. I came home reinvigorated and full of the joys of spring, despite the four hours of heavy freeway traffic on the drive back. “Such a lovely place,” as the Eagles sang, is Hotel California.

Another view at the water's edge.

Looking back on 2010

Every year (almost!) since 1997, we have sent an annual update to friends and family. They are collected here. This is the first update since we parents moved apart.

Early in this year of sadness, before the worst happened, Tom called from Paris. He doesn’t call a lot, and this time he sounded out of breath, as if he’d been running. He’d been in Paris for over two years, playing his guitar and studying music. Our home in Santa Cruz was quieter after he left, which was a relief for about a month and then a long-lasting reminder.

Tom in his Pete Doherty T-shirt, back in the summer of 2009.This was taken at a concert, I think.

Before leaving, he had a regrettable habit of working on the same few songs for long periods at a stretch, playing some of them in his room ten times a day, changing the timing or the phrasing a little, and I have to admit driving all of us a bit crazy. One of the songs that he played hundreds of times is called “A Time for Heroes.” It is the work of one of those extraordinary English musical talents that seem to appear like clockwork, decade in, decade out, this one named Pete Doherty. His band the Libertines recorded the song, but if you’ve heard of him it’s more likely because he dated Kate Moss and shared some of her problems with drugs. He’s a lot more than that. “A Time for Heroes” includes these wonderful lines: “There is no more distressing sight than that of an Englishman in a baseball cap, and we’ll all die in the class we were born. . .”. If he was going to be Tom’s English hero, I was fine with that.

Alban skateboarding, his favorite hobby, on this occasion wearing his helmet (thanks Alban!) in the Felton skate park.

Over the phone in February, Tom was telling me about his night before in an Irish pub on the Left Bank, “The Galway.” He had gone, as he does regularly, to play at an open mike. But he wasn’t feeling it this particular evening. The other players were playing like crap, he said, and the other singers were singing badly. It wasn’t working and he didn’t want to be a part of it. He got up to leave. Much to the surprise of his friend sitting opposite, he sat right back down again with a bump. To his friend’s questioning glance, he replied, “I think Pete Doherty just walked in.”  The friend looked around in disbelief, and then announced wide-eyed that the very same was at a table behind them drinking a coke.  It took Tom a while, but he figured out that he had to play, even if he wasn’t feeling it, and he stood up at the open mike and sang one of his own songs. He said that he could barely breathe when he was up there, that he felt a pain in his chest. Telling me this over the phone the next day, he was again barely able to breathe.

This was taken in St Malo the morning that Tom (standing on the right) dropped Alex (jumping from the three-meter board) and Charlie (standing on the far right with his towel on) back with their mother and Alban (standing on the five-meter board) after our week's vacation in England. This pool is on the beach, and fills up (and the water circulates) with every tide.

“So what happened?” I asked. “At the end of the song,” he replied, “he caught my eye, and acknowledged me.” I could hear the pride in his voice. “So did you speak to him?” I continued. “No, people were asking for his autograph, and so he got pissed off and left.” “But before he left he acknowledged you, your song?” “Yep.” He was breathing okay now. “He raised his glass to me!”

Yep. Imagine that. Did you ever meet your John Lennon? I saw mine with three friends of his (now on iTunes) in concert, but never got any closer to him than that. Before turning 21, Tom has had his time for heroes. It inspired him. He has worked like a dog this whole year, fitting in rehearsals and his own recording around a schedule of courses and paying work that is already demanding and then some.  He’s writing and performing some beautiful songs, some his own. This was Tom’s year.

Charlie's graduation from Junior High. From the left, Nick, yours truly, Charlie, Marie-Hélène, Alex and Daphné. Alban was at work, and Tom in Paris.

Not ours, I’m afraid. Marie-Hélène and I separated, and the divorce is pending.  Most of the time each of us feels relieved, I think. We had been locked into the nastiest patterns together, and for the most part avoid them now. There’s more to say of course, about the length of a novel, but not here.  She’s still in the family home for now, and I’m in a nearby condo. I don’t know about her, but I’m not dating. That wasn’t it.

I heard the music from West Side Story playing the other day, and remembered how for years before we got together, literally, whenever I heard “Somewhere” I thought only of her. “There’s a place for us, somewhere, a place for us, peace and quiet and open air wait for us somewhere.” Beautiful song. Somehow, and without attaching any blame, I’m not sure that we ever quite found that place.

We went to visit his cousin Antony in San Diego, and Alex played with Ava, Antony's daughter, while the latter took a well-earned rest.

But neither has the separation been the kind of hell that both of us have lived through before. Our mediator regularly makes comments on our joint humor and in our most recent session (ndlr: that was the last session before the end of 2010: Things have deteriorated since. Blame her!) told us that we were both charming.

I was picking Alex up the other day for one of his days with me, and Marie-Hélène waved good-bye with a “have fun!” Turning to me, she added with a smile, “not you: I mean Alex!” This kind of hostility we can all put up with!

The reason that Antony needed a rest was because Charlie had jumped at the chance to get a little coaching on running. Antony ran cross country all through high school in San Mateo, and had some definite tips for Charlie, who was just delighted to receive a little guidance.

Alex (12) and Charlie (15) don’t really appreciate the turn of events, but have already adjusted in many ways.  Alex’s straight “A”s continue like clockwork, and he is the only child who actually seems to enjoy his schoolwork the way his maman and I remember doing. He’s a scream when he gets going. For some reason, my taking baths troubles him: “so dad, you like to sit in your own juices for all that time?!”  “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare” takes up much of his leisure time when he’s not with buddies as well, of course, as when he’s with his buddies. That’s pretty much all they do together these colder winter months. Last night, he was very proud of obtaining six “nukes” that day, six! When I asked him what that meant, he first gave the technical details (principally in terms of number of kills). Then in response to further probing he added, in a rare moment of self praise, I’m a “master.”  Yeah Alex!

Nick (top left) with his then roommates at a party. FaceBook is just about the only way to find candids of the older offspring, and one doesn’t want to look there too carefully!

Charlie has been dating. He recently celebrated his three-month anniversary with Taylor, whose mother celebrated by calling to ask if the respective parents were “aligned.” Oh yes, I’m aligned! Lock ‘em up, separately, and throw away the keys! Because they had each been up half the night in their respective homes, about half a mile apart, texting and calling each other, they were very tired on the anniversary itself, which obliged them to “rest” on the sofa in my office half the morning. Good grief! “I’m trying to work, guys.” “We’re not doing anything wrong.” This was a true statement. “Yes, but . . . ”. I never thought that I’d be in this position!

It rained in Santa Cruz for Christmas: very bad form. Here are Tom and Alban demonstrating equally bad form, by smoking on my balcony. Okay, okay, so I smoked for 25 years, but they know better, especially Tom who needs to preserve his voice. As a parent, what can you do?

Alban (21) doesn’t necessarily tell the parents what he’s doing in any global sense, but this year he seems to have settled down at home and be concentrating on reading and work. This represents a significant transition after a couple of years serious partying, and is I think a deliberate and considered change in his life. He’s started making amusing comments on FaceBook:  “it’s nice to have a keyboard with all the keys on it. . . ,” with the follow-on comment: “another stupid useless update from my ever so thrilling life.”  Another day:  ”You know your life is dull when you get overly excited about new windshield wipers.” And another: “you know it’s gonna be a long day when you open your eyes in the morning and you’re already pissed off.”

Daphné on the snow at Tahoe, again from FaceBook. She has been a bit different since her mother and I moved apart, and says that she doesn't have any recent photographs for me. Oh well. More pics please!!

Daphné (23) spent last season in Lake Tahoe, living her life for the skiing. At the end of the season, she needed a little help to get her car started (it had been immobile for months, apparently) and move her things back to Santa Cruz, and so I was dispatched. First we had a wonderful evening dining together and on to a club in one of the casinos, where I propped up the bar feeling my age and she danced and danced with this boy and that boy on the dance floor. Then I drove her back to her house, to find in the beam of the headlights garbage strewn all over the driveway. I braked and Daphné squealed her head off and jumped out of the passenger seat, literally. I was wondering why she was reverting to age 13 when she breathlessly pointed through the windscreen: “look up the tree, look up the tree!” An adolescent black bear was clinging for dear life about ten foot up the trunk of the pine just to the side of the driveway! After a few minutes of being stared at he decided that we were not in fact a threat, slid carefully down and ambled off over the fence.  Upon reflection, the dispersed garbage now made sense. It took me an hour the next morning to clean it up while Daphné slept. Nothing like a weekend helping out!

At work, as ever: way to go, Nico! Recipe for a rewarding life! This one too I found on FaceBook.

Nick (24) worked his butt off coding all year long, proving yet again that the eMachines PC he received for his 13^th birthday was indeed a great investment. Way to go, Nico! At some point during the year, he had had his fill of the corporate politics and rigidity at Apple (wonder where he got that from!), where he had been helping Apple Stores manage inventory. He moved easily into a start-up for musicians called GrooveZoo. Here are a few of his recent FaceBook posts: “for the next 6-7 days 99% of non sleep time will be dedicated to my laptop screen. Bring it;” “GrooveZoo.com launching right around finals week (dec 15th). Just my luck. To code?  To write?  To read?  This is the question;” and his own personal summary of the year: “it was pizza, beer, and code in the office tonight – u gotta love the startup life!”

Scott was a great office mate. He moved on: ya bum!! Here he is in our office in NextSpace, trees outside the windows, a big desk and sofa. It's a great place to work.

As I do too. EntrepreLaw plods on, enjoying the commercial transactions for public companies that pay the bills, but getting real satisfaction out of helping the entrepreneurs who inspired the firm’s name.  They are not a great source of revenue, obviously, but as the country’s major economic actors leap like lemmings to the cultural slaughter of off-shoring everything that the country needs to be done, its future depends more on more on these individuals and their ideas and their dreams. I have been working among them for several years now, the most recent two in NextSpace, our agreeable co-working space in beautiful downtown Santa Cruz. Dozens of dreamers and their collaborators hang their hats here and work together to create a small and independent future. I’m happy to help.

Jeremy Neuner co-founded and runs NextSpace. He is a fun guy, and we share a tendency to banter, with an emphasis on mutual teasing. Nick too works at NextSpace some of the time.  Jeremy has unfortunately discovered that Nick can be counted on to back him up.  The three of us were standing around the collective kitchen one day when Jeremy asks Nick, “so what was it like being raised by this guy anyway?”

Charlie had the good fortune to be invited by Synclaire to be a member of her court at her Quinceañera. Here is Synclaire surrounded by the boys on the dance floor. Very cool!

Without a pause, Nick responds, with a definite emphasis on the word completely, “well, I’m not completely emotionally screwed up!”  Jeremy walked off with a satisfied smile on his face, and I thought again about the pleasures of parenthood.

“The kids are alright,” as the Who sang. They are tougher than you think, and more loyal than you can fairly hope for, to both of their parents and then some. They are doing fine.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all!

Bucket List Birthday!

It's half time, and the people in the seats around us had all ran off for a hot dog and a beer. It was about 30 degrees Fahrenheit, below freezing, and 75,000 of us sat out in the bitter cold for two hours on average to watch this game on a Tuesday night. The same thing was happening all over Europe as the EUFA Champions League 2010-11 season progressed.

The background to this photo is the “Theater of Dreams,” named by Sir Bobby Charlton, who has spent enough time there during his fortunate life to know what it’s about. Well okay, in mere physical terms, it’s a football ground nestled between a canal and a railroad line on the outskirts of Manchester. In name, it’s Old Trafford, in age, it celebrated its centenary in 2010, and in function, it’s the home ground of Manchester United Football Club.

That’s where the dreaming starts. This occasion was a EUFA Champions League game between Manchester United and Valencia of Spain. I’ve been wanting to go and see them play at Old Trafford for quite a while now. Never did go as a boy living in England. Living in California doesn’t facilitate matters, but neither does it make it impossible in the modern world.

Wayne Rooney taking a free kick, with Dimitar Berbatov (9) close to being offside. The latter had scored five goals in one game the previous week, and celebrated during this game by spending half the game off-side. Rooney hit the bar with a shot at one point, and the entire North stand next to David and me chanted "Rooney," the way that Springsteen fans chant "Bruce" in a concert. You can't hear that when you watch the games on TV.

This year, I checked during the summer whether there would be a game on my birthday. There was going to be a EUFA Champions League game on either the Tuesday or Wednesday, and it would either be a home game at Old Trafford or an away game somewhere else. I put the plans on hold, and left it to fate.

In October, fate decreed that the game would be on the Tuesday, my birthday, at Old Trafford. I had the airline ticket within three days. David Milsom, 44 years a friend, took on the task of arranging the tickets at Old Trafford, including a dinner with the game. He made it so easy.

And it all went so smoothly. David booked us into an old Victorian hotel walking distance from the Stadium, and drove us both up there, arriving in time for drinks at the pub before we walked across to the ground.

The English have long known that global warming would inevitably pass England by, however real the phenomenon is in the rest of the world. The worst snow in years fell all over the UK this November and December, and here is some of it viewed from the Trans-Pennine train going from Manchester to Newcastle.

I found a shirt in ManU’s colors from the 1960s and ’70s with a picture of George Best on the front and his number 7 on the back. Snapped that up! It sported one of George’s best-known quotes: “I spent my money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered!” He was one of the first rock star football players, and the sublime member of the team’s holy trinity of that era, Denis Law, Bobby Charlton and George Best. They’ve cut out the word “holy” nowadays when referring to that threesome, for obvious reasons, but that’s how I remember them.

The game was total entertainment. The TV gives you what feels like a grandstand view, but that’s an illusion. You do have a great view on TV, but only of one or two players at any one time. Football is the quintessential team game, and in a good game 12 to 15 players are moving at any one time. In the stadium, you see all this movement, or if not all because things happen very fast, a whole lot more than you see on TV.

After Manchester, I did a little genealogical research in Newcastle, one of the cities where mum's family originated. This sulking snowman was outside of the City Registry Office, where I located the birth certificate of Walter Duggan, one of my maternal grandmother's brothers, born in 1895. Very satisfying.

Plus there’s the sound of 75,000 pairs of lungs, over 70,000 of them supporting the home team, sounds that the TV engineers put all their energy into suppressing so that the commentators can be heard. And they sing together, those lungs, and chant together and howl together. Everyone in the stadium felt a part of something bigger.

Viewed from the stands, this game was oddly messy at times, as messy as some of the games my sons play in, and simply beautiful at others. These players typically earn a fortune for good reason. Ryan Giggs came on for the last few minutes, proving yet again that old guys rule. He has been playing for Manchester United since 1990, a total of 850 games for the team, more than any other player ever. He turned 37 a week before this match. His hamstring has been weighing on him this season, but Sir Alex Ferguson, the club’s coach, still plays him, which he would never do for old time’s sake. That’s not in Sir Alex’s vocabulary, “for old time’s sake!”

From Newcastle down to Leeds. Adrian and Carol and moose bathing in the lights at the Frankfurter Weinachtsmarkt in Leeds. This Christmas extravaganza, called the Leeds Christkindelmarkt locally, brought German products and foods to industrial England, not forgetting German drinks. We spent an hour or two there.

A bucket list birthday. A couple of people asked if at 58 I wasn’t a bit young for that (thanks a bunch!!), and that’s a fair comment. What made this birthday a little foreboding was that dad died only seven weeks after his 58th birthday. I’ve lived more cautiously than he did: for example, I gave up smoking almost 13 years ago, and dad never could quit. I enjoy regular exercise: he enjoyed a good, heavy meal.  But still, same genes, same possible health problems.

Over the last year or so, I’ve been letting myself go and do the things that always get put off until next year, and am almost grateful that the juxtaposition of my age and dad’s give me some sort of justification. In the ultimate scheme of things, letting yourself live a little extra before you can’t do so any more makes nothing but sense.

Not a great photo, but it's surprising that I was able to point the camera at all after three mulled wines! Carol wanted to take a turn on the market's carousel, and Adrian's health did not permit him to accompany her. So I volunteered. You can get a feel for the market lights in the photo. Going round and round in the chill night air under all those lights, it felt like Christmas had arrived early. What a feeling!

Adrian Wynne was the friend at school whom my parents wished had attended school somewhere else. He arrived at Sir William Borlase’s School, Marlow, in the Sixth Form when I was 15, and was the friend who turned me on to Led Zeppelin, playing “Whole Lotta Love” and the rest of Led Zeppelin II very loudly on his stereo at home. I used to ask him to turn it down at first, until I got it. Every teenager needs a friend like Adrian.

I met him on the concourse of Leeds station at 5 on the Wednesday evening, and we immediately went into a pub for a drink. He filled me in on his health (not good). We moved on to meet Carol, his lovely wife, an Irish woman from Liverpool with a great Irish sense of humour, in a nearby pub filled with old dark wood and warm liquor. We toasted John Lennon, another Liverpudlian with Irish ancestry on the thirtieth anniversary of his death. It was freezing out, literally, and so I was a little surprised when they suggested an open-air market as the next stop.

Jumping ahead a little, I met Tom at St Pancras International station in London, where he arrived on a Eurostar train from Paris through the Channel Tunnel, on Friday afternoon. We were going to visit the friends of his where he was staying that weekend (his dad's B&B in Marlow apparently lacked appeal!), but first he wanted to ride on a double decker London Transport bus. So we jumped on one toward Knightsbridge, and sat at the front of the top deck. Here are department store Christmas lights on Oxford Street.

The Leeds Christkindelmarkt turned out to be a gem of a place on a frosty winter’s evening, in particular because of the mulled wine, which was flavored (in my case with cherry, raspberry and something else which I forgot fairly quickly, in that order). Adrian said that the mulled wine also included schnapps. By the end of the mulled wine the evening no longer felt so cold, and Carol and I even took a ride on the market’s carousel!

The next morning, I was in pretty bad shape sitting on the couch in Adrian and Carol’s living room, after my morning bath. Adrian looked down on me benevolently, nodding his head: “you,” he announced, “are clearly out of practice!” This is true, Adr. I never have been able to keep up with you!

Here's Tom where the bus dropped us off, outside Harrods, London's premier department store. We had a fabulous time browsing, although our purchases were limited to two discounted boxes of Christmas cards. I had been looking for Christmas crackers, but the cheapest on display were $125 the dozen. When I asked the cashier if he had any others stashed away, he pointed at boxes lined up behind him, for $1,800 the dozen!

Thursday was a train marathon, which I needed because there was ton of work to do that whole week. I was delighted, of course. Working alone requires weeks like that, to cover the other weeks that are not like that. With email access at every Starbucks and on some trains, I kept on top of it, almost. The trains definitely helped. I had a Britrail pass, and so additional miles added no cost, and could plug in and work on all the trains.

First stop was Exeter in Devon, quite a jaunt from Leeds, where I had a coffee in St David’s station buffet with Ian Summers, a good friend from Solihull School starting in 1964. Ian is a physics professor at Exeter University, and filled me in on the disgraceful state of finance of higher education in modern England. The new government has pulled the plug, leaving the universities to call on their students to pay for themselves. In short, it sounds a lot like California!

I asked Ian if, looking back on his life, he would have done anything differently. As he is the person I have known for a long time who has kept closest to the passions (an overused word nowadays: in his case, it is accurate) of his childhood, I expected a simple “no” in response. Ian loved music, maths and physics when we were at school together, and has spent his career pursuing all three, with sound one of the central foci of his research and a continuing hobby of building obscure musical instruments.

Ian Summers, already teaching physics at Exeter University, at home with one of his home-made musical instruments in 1978. Yes, that is a used milk carton!

But I didn’t get a simple “no,” suggesting that Ian himself has been considering this issue recently, as I have. What he actually had to say was quite a lot, along the lines of: “even if I had made different choices, I’m not sure that the final outcome would have been any different. I am who I am, when all is said and done, and nothing that I decided differently along the way would have materially changed the final outcome.”  This is the continuation of a dialog that we have shared over the years. Need I say that his point of view here horrifies me! But rather than responding now, let me do what Ian did as our coffee drew to a close, refer you to the film “Sliding Doors,” starring Gwyneth Paltrow and John Hannah. The film is a wonderful illustration of parallel lives separated by something as banal as whether she actually caught that tube train, or was stopped by its sliding doors.

Tom wanted to see the Gaugin Exhibition at the Tate Modern on the South bank, and so off we went. It was fabulous. Philosophy meets art, "aware that ‘we are not everything’; . . . even the philosopher does not inhabit the whole of his language like a secret and perfectly fluent god."

From Exeter on to other trains along the Great Western main line to Reading, Maidenhead and then Marlow, where I was booked into a warm and comfortable B&B 100 yards from the station. More work done on the way. One regrettable impact of the work was that I was obliged to put off visiting Aunt Angela on Friday morning to get more done before meeting up with Tom in London.

After touring Harrods and the West End with him, I took him and his friends out for a good dinner in Ladbroke Grove, and then avoided overstaying my welcome by rushing off to catch the last train from Paddington back to Marlow.

A billboard on Holborn tube station.

On Saturday, after more work in Marlow, Tom and I went to the Tate Modern, the relatively new art museum built in a disused power station on the South bank of the Thames just upstream from the rebuilt Globe Theater. We regaled in the Gauguin exhibit in progress, and then strolled off across the Thames and past St Paul’s Cathedral on our way to Tom’s friends’ house, where we were invited to dinner. If I could invite them, then they were going to invite me. Great deal, guys, and thanks a bunch!

Not a week after leaving, and having completed as much or more work as in the average week, I flew back to San Francisco refreshed and invigorated. There’s nothing like a little traveling to give you a new lease on life!

“So I’m Going Back to Canada . . ..”

. . . on a Journey Through the Past.” Neil Young wrote that. Perhaps he was living in Topanga Canyon at the time, outside of Los Angeles. Canada can look pretty nice from urban California.

A Canadian Pacific Railway freight, between Kamloops and Golden, BC, heading East. Each of those locomotives produces over 3,000 horsepower, and there are others further back in the train.

It’s been 38 years since my amazing summer job in Banff, Alberta, and I’ve been itching to get back there for a long, long time. Never made it, for one reason or another. For $70 per week, I kept the books for one of the transient summer youth hostels that then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau set up to encourage young Canadians to explore their massive country, a continent in every sense of the word, almost two-thirds of North America. The hostel was located just off the traffic circle where the main road into Banff left the Trans-Canada Highway. It was the perfect job, young people travelling, campfires every evening in the middle of the Rocky Mountains, millions of stars in the crisp night air and a bed in a staff trailer to fight off the cold.

Between Golden and Kamloops, heading East. The average length of a Canadian Pacific train in 2004 was around 4,000 feet!

Banff is a long way from Santa Cruz, and although I brought up a trip there regularly as a possibility, somehow we never made the journey as a family. But I had to go to Vancouver on a business trip in September, and Vancouver is a mere 572 miles from Banff. So with the business done I rented a car in Vancouver and drove and drove and drove.

I love to do that. Just keep driving. Few people share that desire, and so I typically end up doing it by myself. So be it. Not a problem. Driving beautiful highways is best done alone, if not with others who love to do it too, which excludes most children, including mine.

A coal train heading West. CP hauls hundreds of thousands of tons of coal on their way to Japan.

It was a trip of connections, and not just with the past. Vancouver had been very hospitable with me, for instance, as a teenager forty years ago. Forty years: count ‘em!

I was only there two days this time, but that same hospitality was still in the air. The company that I was visiting treated me as a guest rather then an imposition, although they could have easily seen me as the latter. The morning desk clerk in the hotel asked to be remembered to a colleague when he saw that my client had made the reservation, and his evening counterpart sent me to a lovely cheap fish and chip shop for dinner.

Here's a piece of the CP line further from the highway, between Golden and Field, BC. . . .

As a teenager, Vancouver was the first city that welcomed an independent Ian. And I have to admit that I was not yet entirely independent. Dave Warrington, an older cousin from Birmingham lived there with his wife Pam, and my month in the city started at their apartment.

But they were immersed in the problems of making their newlywed way in the world, finding jobs and the like, and I moved out of their place and in with a household of kids like me, travelers, unattached, exploring being young and alone. I remember discovering Nutella, that tasty French hazelnut spread that looks like creamy chocolate icing, at the supermarket down the street from our shared house. I remember exploring the numerous coasts around and in the city on foot, English Bay, the Lion’s Gate Bridge. It’s a lovely city to explore.

. . . and here's the same piece of railway line cutting through the trees, complete with all the magnificent scenery.

I remember walking across the city to Gastown on those rare occasions when we could afford a drink or two, and drinking Molsoms and Labatts in groups, both us and the beers, that is! I remember hitchhiking in and out, from Montreal the first time I arrived, and to Calgary and back when I got the twitch during that stay. The twitch and I have had a long relationship. Wherever I went, around Vancouver or on the road, I remember how easy it was to meet people there.

The positive connections continued to flow this trip as I drove East off the Vancouver flatlands in Hope, BC and began climbing the Frazer River Canyon on the Trans-Canada Highway. I’d hitchhiked up or down the canyon maybe six or eight times as a young man, living the wanderlust of youth. That canyon was the first culmination of my urge to go West, young man, go West, in that case with the help of my thumb.

Here it is, the painted memorial to the moment when the East and West coasts of Canada were first joined, in 1885. The moment was immortalized in a photo at the time, reproduced full size here.

This trip, I was driving my own car, already a very different status, the key advantage of which was that I traveled at my own pace,  on my own itinerary. And the first thing I did was quickly find the trains that crawl up and down the walls on each side of the canyon, sharing what flat and open space there is with the highway, the Canadian National on one side, the Canadian Pacific on the other, criss-crossing their respective ways up and down the canyon.

These are the railroad lines that fired my imagination as a boy reading dad’s “Railway Wonders of the World,” a four-volume set that his family had given him when he was a boy. The author described the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, at a time when nothing crossed Canada apart from an intrepid trapper or two. There were black and white photos of the monster steam locomotives in the mountains and on the trestles and surrounded by the navvies who built this extraordinary railroad. As a boy, I pored over it all for hours and hours.

Another shot of Craigellachie, British Columbia, this time with the memorial tableau of Sir Donald Smith driving the spike dwarfed by a passing freight. The spikes attached the rails to sleepers, and the last one was the final real connection in Canada's first transcontinental railroad.

They have never disappointed, these railroads across the mountains. The Canadian Pacific, the older of them, celebrated its 125th year crossing the country in 2010. No steam locomotives any longer, of course, but the powerful diesels of General Electric and General Motors (at least 3,000 HP each) which now power these monster freights up and down the canyon, and up and over the Selkirks and Rockies, have their own particular appeal. I found several to admire during this trip.

The trains run much more frequently now than in the 1970s when I last traveled here, and you’re not disappointed if trains are what you want to see. After returning home to Santa Cruz, I discovered why there were so many more trains. The CP now handles East-bound traffic up the Canyon, and the West-bound traffic uses the old CN (Canadian National) rails. So they don’t have to spend all their time waiting for trains going in the other direction. A kind of one-way system for trains: sensible and efficient.

Here it is, the Breton "camping car" (RV) built by its Breton driver on a MAN chassis. He told me that it could go anywhere, and had already been in South and Central America, Africa, across Asia, you name it. The family have been on the road for seven years!!

On to connections. Driving up the Frazer River Canyon, I passed through the small town of Lytton, half way up the canyon. The local radio station was playing the intriguing story of a World War II German sailor who had made his life in Canada after the war. He had always sought the Allied sailor who had helped him out of the water after his U-boat was sunk by an Allied warship in the North Atlantic. He had been the only survivor from the U-boat, and had always wondered about that friendly sailor in a sea of enemies. He’d found the Allied sailor, finally, in Santa Cruz of all places, and this hero was being interviewed by the Lytton radio announcer as I drove through town! Sweet home Santa Cruz!

Here they are, Oded and Daphna, the happy couple, just before our stroll around Lake Louise. The hotel is behind the camera. They told me that it had already snowed in Banff, hard enough to make them considering pulling off the highway. Since their children left the nest, they vacation regularly and explore the world with fervor.

The next day, up in the Rockies now, I stopped to admire the spiral tunnels that the Canadian Pacific had built into the mountains on a particularly steep portion of its route, right around the Alberta – British Columbia border. They used the same kind of trick in the Alps. The spiral increases the length of the descent, which makes it less steep for the trains. There was an odd-looking motor home parked at the tunnels, and I duly checked it out. Amazingly enough, the license plate was from the Morbihan, the Breton department where my children’s French grandfather lives and where they have passed some of the best vacations of their youth. Astonishing! You rarely see license plates from that predominantly rural area in England, let alone on the Trans-Canada Highway!

Old friends. We've been friends for 27 years, since shortly after graduating law school. Oded returned to Tel Aviv in 1986, and I moved to Paris in 1987, but we've kept in touch over the years, over the miles. He's a big fellow, as you can see, and one of the easier people I know to get along with. Daphna took this one.

Oded and Daphna, friends since Oded’s and my years working together in a New York law firm with the improbable name of Kronish, Lieb, Shainswit, Weiner & Hellman, were touring the Canadian Rockies this same week. This was already quite a coincidence, especially considering that they live a seriously long way away, outside of Tel Aviv!

Planning out the rest of my week in the Vancouver hotel room, I decided that it was time to spend a night at the Chateau Lake Louise. I’d coveted this hotel, built by the Canadian Pacific Railroad, since the summer I worked at the Banff hostel, 1972.  This trip, I was finally going to do it. It would be more expensive than other local hotels, but not that much more expensive: this was right between seasons, after the summer and before the ski. We’re talking bucket list here.

Dusk mirrored in Lake Louise.

Oded suggested in an email that we meet up for dinner on Wednesday. After making my reservation, I suggested the Chateau Lake Louise. He emailed me back, almost instantaneously: “guess where we are now?” Yep, the Chateau Lake Louise! Connections upon connections. So they ended up having dinner there two nights running, the second with me. After our stroll around the lake, the three of us sat watching the scenery dissolve into the dusk as we ate. This was not just a good view, this was a window on something magnificent that stays with you. This was the kind of memory that drew me back.

It was wonderful to see Daphna and Oded again. We always slot in together so easily, even 27 years after we first met. When was the last time? In San Francisco, maybe five years ago, during another of their vacations exploring the world. But Oded, if you wouldn’t mind aging just a little, those of us who already have would be very appreciative!

Hiding in the dark at its end of the lake, framed by the Rocky Mountains in the early evening sunshine, the Chateau Lake Louise evokes fairy tales as much as accommodation.

We swapped law firm stories over dinner, about the partners at the mid-town Manhattan law firm where we first met and worked together. We were associates then, and even though we’re not any more, it’s the stories about partners that we both enjoy. One was one hell of a lawyer, completely committed to his craft, very hard-working and equally successful. He was also just a teeny bit quirky. His work was his life, and that was that. So he occasionally did things which might strike less hard-working people as a little bit odd. He rebuked me sharply one day for chewing ice in his office while he worked. Then there was the time when a fire broke out in a building near 54th and Sixth Avenue, where we all worked on the 45th floor. The fire trucks responded, the ambulances and police responded and, this being New York, the sirens screamed and caterwauled.

This was taken from one of the paths leading to Emerald Lake Lodge cabins. This lodge too was initially built around the turn of the century by the Canadian Pacific to encourage rail tourism. All of the cabins have fabulous views, like this one.

Our brilliant partner was heavily involved in drafting a challenging contract, and the noise, worse than ice cracking a hundred times a second, infuriated him. So he sent his secretary down to the street to tell the emergency services to turn their sirens off so that he could work. My guess is that she got a coffee and took a break instead!

Another of our dinner stories concerned another equally brilliant, equally successful partner, who lived in a choice Manhattan coop where he was responsible for vetting applicants. It is not enough to have the minimum of several million dollars that any coop in the building costs. No, you also have to pass an interview, conducted by this partner. He was interviewing an applicant one day, a relatively young man, and asked him what he did for a living. “I’m Jerry Seinfeld,” replied the young man. “Yes, I can see that from your application form,” continued the partner, “but what do you do?” This was apparently around the time when Jerry was the most popular man on American television, and so one can imagine his feelings. “I have a TV show,” explained Jerry, helpfully.

“Oh,” responded the partner, perhaps suitably impressed. “What’s the show about?”

“Nothing!” replied Jerry, using his catchphrase, and probably throwing the partner for a loop.  Now wouldn’t that have been worth seeing! Great story: thanks to hard-working lawyers!

Not that far from Lake Louise, across the border in British Columbia, is Emerald Lake. Morning clouds shroud the mountain looming over the lake.

The three of us spent several hours exploring Canada’s little piece of heaven together. The weather played ball, especially the first evening before dinner as we walked around Lake Louise at dusk. The photos do the talking. The next morning Oded drove us up to Emerald Lake, another of the beautiful high country lakes, and one which he feels suffers from bad PR. Just across the provincial border in BC, it is so beautiful, and its namesake color so extraordinary, but so little known relative to Lake Louise. How did that happen? Who knows?

Oded and Daphna headed for their next stop, New York, and I drove back a different way to Vancouver airport, through Kelowna and the Okanagan Valley. There was a new freeway much of way, built since my youth to reduce the time of the climb up the Frazer River Canyon. With freeways now, British Columbia continues its historical pattern of building transportation routes to bring the people, this time to the inland regions. Long swathes of these new roads have almost nothing on them yet, but one day they will be dotted with civilization. I found myself starting to think about the obvious commercial opportunity that they represented. Yep, I was going home!

Come to think of it, I never did make it all the way to Banff. Lake Louise is only about 40 miles west, but I never did drive into town. Oh well, guess I’m just going to have to go back and finish the job . . .