Greetings from San Diego

A few days after Nan returned from her visit home to Manitowoc, Wisconsin to see her mother, I left Isla Mujeres, Mexico (after two more trips to Immigration for the necessary paperwork) to travel to San Diego for a family get-together celebrating my father's eightieth birthday. Nan graciously stayed behind to look after the boat, and it's good that she did because she has reported daily rain and high winds.

My sisters Susan and Jane coordinated the rental of a large home in the hills of La Jolla, with great views to the north toward the San Bernardino Mountains. We have been mostly hanging out at the house because it has been difficult to coordinate twelve people going anywhere in three small rental cars, especially when nobody can agree on where to go. We did all agree to go to the La Jolla Cove beach area on Monday to see the surfers and the sea lions. Brother Stuart was the only one to take a swim and he reported that the water was a brisk 72 degrees or so.

On Wednesday, a group of us went to the San Diego Zoo. Growing up in Milwaukee, I always thought Milwaukee's zoo was the best, but it doesn't compare to San Diego's, partly because of the difference in climates. Milwaukee's harsh winters prevent the growth of the lush tropical vegetation that is so abundant at the San Diego Zoo. We were there in the late afternoon, at feeding time, and the animals were active. We watched the big cats and the rhinoceros pace around in anticipation of dinner. The koalas woke from their naps and munched on the eucalyptus shoots that were waiting for them. We would have seen the pandas and their new cub but the line was a half-hour long. Some in our group were able to spot them later from the aerial tram we took at the end of the day.

On Thursday, Independence Day, another group of us went to Old Town San Diego. I had not realized that it even existed, but the people of San Diego have done a remarkable job in preserving the original site of the city's settlement. We toured the buildings that housed the first settlers but are now excellent museums. We watched the Fourth of July parade around the Old Town square featuring descendants in period clothing. And we jumped at the boom of an historic cannon firing.

Friday, our last full day, was another beach day. We all drove up to Encinitas and spent the afternoon at Sea Cliff County Park. The nephews tried to body surf in the small waves, and Stuart again went for a long swim. The rest of us were content to sit in the sand and watch the surfers.

I took advantage of being in the United States and had a bunch of boat stuff drop-shipped to the La Jolla house for personal transport back to Isla Mujeres, Mexico. In addition to getting the delaminated skeg fixed, I now have what I need to complete a long list of additional boat projects. More on that later...

The Odyssey: Research

To prepare for our upcoming Odyssey sailing trip, I thought it would be a good idea to refamiliarize myself with Homer's epic tale. I already knew that the Odyssey was the second of Homer's two epic tales, the first being the Iliad, his story of the Trojan War, as symbolized by the Trojan horse.

Tim Severin's book The Ulysses Voyage: Sea Search for the Odyssey provided excellent background, much of it based on E. V. Rieu's translation of the Odyssey, which was first published by Penguin Books in 1946. But at 448 pages, I wasn't prepared to spend the time it would take to even muddle through what is considered the most accessible of the translations. Heck, it took me almost a year to read Moby-Dick. I gave the Cliff Notes version a thought, but that seemed like cheating, just like it did in high school and college.

Then I remembered that when we were growing up, my brother Stuart and I used to have a copy of the Classics Illustrated comic book The Odyssey by Homer. I jumped on eBay and there it was. Of course, it's a collector's item now, so I paid quite a bit more for it than its 15-cent cover price. I think the copy Stuart and I had dated from the mid-1960s. The version that arrived in the mail had a copyright of 1951. Fortunately, it was packaged in a cellophane envelope with a cardboard backing, which made me hesitant to take it out and actually read it. It seemed like it might crumble into dust if I dared to turn the pages.

I sat down one evening a few weeks after the Odyssey comic book arrived and read it straight through, which only took about a half-hour. It was just the way I remembered it: rough artwork, primary colors, and stilted dialogue, but it touched on all the high points of the original story and held my interest to the end. To the right are the panels telling the story of Ulysses's encounter with the Sirens. Click the image for a larger view.

What became evident to me in reading the Odyssey story as an adult was how the mix of adventure and fantasy, real-life situations and purely imaginary ones, could be linked together in the context of a journey home from war to create a story that would hold up through the ages, from the time of Homer almost 2700 years ago to the present.

When I returned to reading the Severin book, it was with renewed interest, as I visualized the story as it may have taken place in the locations Tim Severin determined to be the most logical real-world landings for an actual sailing journey home from Troy to Ithaca.

Family Reunion

My family held a weeklong reunion back in August to celebrate my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. Except for Nan, who couldn't leave work, we all agreed to meet at my sister Jane's family's weekend house on Whidbey Island, north of Seattle. I figured my family would want to see Charlie, too, since he is part of the family, so he and I made a roadtrip of it, staying overnight in Sun Valley, Idaho on the way out and back.

The usually depressing weather in the Pacific Northwest cooperated for the most part, so we were able to get outside for a few days to see the island's sights. Toward the end of the week, we spent a few more days in Seattle at Jane's family's house just south of Green Lake, taking in the culture and celebrating Jane and Josh's twin sons Max and Ben's birthdays. On one of the Seattle days, Charlie and I bombed around downtown Seattle with a friend from high school, Paul Snyder, who lives in nearby Bellevue.

Before Charlie and I headed home, I promised to get pictures to everybody but I haven't yet. In the last few weeks, since we discovered Charlie's illness, I have been reviewing digital pictures of him on my computer. Many of them are from the family reunion, which reminded me of my promise, so family, I hope you're OK with this blog version of the pictures (click to see full-size views):

The Lichty Kriesberg residence on Whidbey Island. Note the foggy weather and the moss growing on the roof. Puget Sound is visible from the house (on a clear day), across the street and down the hill. Brother Stuart, Charlie and I bunked in the little cabin out back.

The back of the house, showing the nautical flair of the previous owner, a talented carpenter. Morning fog still hangs in the air. Weather permitting, cocktail hours were spent on the patio.

Flying kites at Fort Casey State Park. Fort Casey is an abandoned World War II post intended to protect Puget Sound from naval invasion. Left to right are Dad, Jane (in the distance), sister Susan and John's son Peter, and Max.

Visitors are allowed to climb around on the old fort, which still has some of its massive guns in place. This one looks capable of hitting Port Townsend, about three miles away across the Sound.

Susan, Charlie and me on top of the Fort Casey ramparts, with Puget Sound in the background.


The ladies, plus Charlie, on top of the Fort Casey ramparts: Mom, Susan's daughter Kirsten, Susan and Jane. The land across the Sound is Port Townsend. That's Ben in mid-stride.

Walking toward the stairs to the beach: Dad, Mom, Ben, Kirsten with Charlie, and Josh.


Kirsten trying to keep Charlie from dragging her into the water. Note the hazy view of the Cascade Mountains in the distance.


Charlie experiences sea water for the first time. Of course, he thinks all water is drinkable so he drank enough that he puked it all up later in the back of Jane's van.

Josh sitting on a driftwood log on the beach, which is covered in so much driftwood that Peter sees if he can walk without touching the ground.


The next day, most of us, including John and Susan, went to the Coupeville Wharf to see the classic square-rigger ships, The Lady Washington and The Hawaiian Chieftain, which were on display there for a short while. The Lady Washington was used in all three Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

Max walking the rail down the center of the wharf toward the ships just visible over the building at the end. To the right is a good view of the public dock and Penn Cove.

View of The Hawaiian Chieftain and The Lady Washington from the end of the public dock.


Susan and Kirsten aboard The Lady Washington.


As seen from The Lady Washington, a MacGregor 26X approaches the public dock. (They're everywhere! They're everywhere!)


Kirsten and me on the poop deck of The Lady Washington.


John on the wharf in front of the Hawaiian Chieftain.


The next day, at the Smugglers Cove beach at the north end of South Whidbey Island State Park. Dad tries to talk Charlie out of his tennis ball while Mom, Stuart and John enjoy the view.

Mom, Kirsten and Jane at the north end of the Smugglers Cove beach.


The Lichty men: me, Dad, Stuart and Charlie.





Mom and Dad on the beach.













A very relaxed John has a conversation in German with a German couple he met at the Smugglers Cove beach while the rest of the group, in the background, examines a driftwood fort built by Peter, Max and Ben.

The 50th anniversary celebration at the Edgecliff Bar & Grill in Langley, down the road from the Lichty-Kriesberg home on Whidbey Island.


The whole group, roughly left to right: me, Susan, Peter, John, Max, Dad, Mom, Ben, Stuart, Kirsten, Jane and Josh.


At the entrance to the Seattle Art Museum, before part of the group opted for the Seattle Aquarium instead.


My high school buddy Paul Snyder at the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks that connect Lake Union with Puget Sound on the west side of Seattle. Nice Catalina 320 behind him.

Charlie and me at the Sculpture Park near Myrtle Edwards Park.


Charlie wanting to cool off in the fountain at the Sculpture Park. He had to settle for a drink.

The Descending Spiral

About fifteen years ago on a weekend evening, I was having a drink at the Mother Lode bar in Aspen and talking with an acquaintance who also happened to be sitting there. The conversation had moved in the direction of what people do to eke out an existence in Aspen, which is undoubtedly the most expensive place to live in the United States. For example, I was probably drinking an Absolut on the rocks at that moment, at a per drink cost of about $5.00--and remember that this was fifteen years ago. Tim Cooney, my drinking buddy, was a good example of what it took to survive: he was a ski patrolman on Aspen Mountain during the ski season and a freelance writer the rest of the time. And he lived in a funky adobe house at the top of Original Street, which helped to keep expenses down.

Anyway, it must have been around election time because we were both marveling at one of the local candidates for public office. This guy had moved to town about three years before and landed a job as a dishwasher at one of Aspen's many restaurants. In his spare time, he went through the real estate classes at Colorado Mountain College, our local community college, and became a real estate broker. Now he was running for city council or something. Such ambition was a rarity, we both agreed. Aspen has a reputation as a "meat grinder," a place that chews people up and spits them out at a furious rate. It was much more common to see people fail--sometimes spectacularly, with accompanying articles in the daily newspapers--than it was to see them succeed. For what it's worth, this striver went on to lose his election. Badly.

Now we're talking about the real estate profession and I remark that a friend of mine used to say, "Every yutz with ears has a real estate license." Tim agrees, saying, "Yeah, there are way too many 'dirt pimps' in town." And we start to wonder why that is, other than the obvious lure of ridiculously high commissions on overpriced properties. I propose that real estate is what people do in Aspen when the thing they came here to do originally doesn't work out. Tim embellishes the idea, saying that selling real estate is just another step down on the descending spiral. Ahead of what, I ask. With very little effort, we reach a consensus: ahead of the military, prison and death.

So when Sen. Kerry botched his political joke this week, the one where he wanted Bush's decision to invade Iraq to be the butt of what happens if you aren't smart enough to study hard and do well in school, and instead it came out that ending up serving with the military in Iraq is what happens if you screw up in school, I had to cringe. It's one of those things that everyone knows is true but that nobody ever says out loud. The righteous indignation from Bush and the Republicans was to be expected since they exhibit righteous indignation over everything, including Michael J. Fox's display of Parkinson's Disease symptoms in his political ads for candidates who support stem cell research.

If you had asked anybody from my high school graduation class of 1976 if they planned to pursue a career in the military, they would have laughed at you. Vietnam had just ended, and most of us were just happy to have survived the possibility of being drafted. The only guys who ended up in the military were the guys who didn't have any better options or those whose families had a tradition of military service. My brother Stuart bounced around a few different career paths before ending up in the US Navy in his mid-thirties, hoping to get the training necessary to enter into the intelligence field. Here's a guy with a master's degree who is also a world-class athlete in cross-country ski racing. You'd think the military would put him in officers school. Instead they put him through boot camp at the Great Lakes Naval Academy with guys half his age. Now, twelve years later, he's with the Air Force Reserve and still largely underutilized and underappreciated. Stuart says most of the young men he has met in the military are "dead-enders," guys with nothing going for them who believe that going out in a blaze of glory in Iraq would at least give meaning to their lives and make their families proud.

I think it's tragic that a segment of our nation's young people believe death in Iraq is their best option. If that's not a step down on the descending spiral from what you or I would consider everyday life, then I don't know what is.