Summer 2018
06/02/18
Our 2018 summer adventure began on 5/23/18 when Melissa and the kids flew to Cincinnati. All of the kids had a special day at school that morning: Everett had his celebration of life while Teddy and Gwen graduated from pre-scshool.
Chris stayed and worked for about 10 more days and joined everyone in Cincinnati on 06/02/18 so that we could all fly overseas together. He recently described this trip, and other prior trips, to a colleague who has four children a bit older than ours. He replied that he would never try what we are doing with his kids because it would be a madhouse. Chris told him that it IS a madhouse, but that Melissa and I feel it’s important and we are both completely committed to it. Also, it’s going to be a madhouse whether we stay home or travel, so we might as well do something we love together.
The original motivation for this trip is Melissa’s high school reunion in Paris. We are scheduled to be there for two weeks starting June 5. We are staying in an Airbnb which was listed as having air conditioning but upon further inspection we found out this meant French air conditioning, i.e. a fan. Fortunately we just realized that during our time in Paris the temperature is predicted to be below 80F (no idea what this is in metric). None of us have scarves, but no doubt these are on sale year round in Europe.
06/03/18
Today Chris was in Cincinnati. We spend the morning getting organized, then rented a boat a Winton Woods to have some outside time. All three kids got to drive the boat. Is that legal? It must be under maritime law, an international coalition that extends to bodies of water as small as a creek deep in the interior of any sovereign country.
We had dinner at El Rancho Grande for Matt’s birthday, then went to Trader Joe’s to get plane snacks and meet the store mascot (a tree frog named Wart).
Big Rig
The kids have now started the new school year. Everett started last week.
He and Chris have been riding the tandem to his school most days since then. Teddy and Gwen started preschool this week on Wednesday morning.
Today Chris started taking all three kids to school again on the bike. It’s been a while since we did this, partly because the brakes on the Bakfiets needed to be upgraded (again). Chris put a new hydraulic brake caliper on the front with an extra thick brake disc that was custom made by Aaron at http://rideyourbike.com/. He was a tremendous help and resource for this process. The bike now has a Tektro Dorado hydraulic disc brake on the front and a Shimano IM-80 roller brake on the rear. Still, Aaron and Chris agreed that there is no braking system available that can provide the power needed to stop the Bakfiets on the hills where we live. Instead, Chris has to be careful not to get going too fast on hills, trim the speed over longer distances, and walk the bike down steep descents when it is fully loaded.
One change we are making this year is for Everett to ride his bike part of the way to school. He isn’t quite ready for the canyon road, but he would be fine on the neighborhood roads in the city. Anyway, this morning Chris was getting the bike ready when Everett said “So we are taking the Bakfiets, which will have an attached trailer with my bike, and we are going to load that onto the car trailer. Then we will drive down to the canyon road, bike to the twin’s school and I will ride my bike to school. Then you will drop off the bike trailer and my bike at my school, take the twins to school, and bike to your office?”
Chris replied “It sounds complicated when you say it that way.”
Here is how it worked out:
- We left our house at 7:50am
- We were rolling on the Bakfiets down the canyon road at 8:05am
- Sometime later we stopped and Everett got on his bike to ride to school
- There is a steep hill on 2000 E where it goes under Interstate-80. Somehow Everett beat Chris to the top of the hill!
- We arrived at Everett’s school at 8:45.
- We arrived at the twin’s preschool at 9:05.
- Chris got to work before 9:30.
There are lots of ways to speed this up, among them getting a new bike for Everett that has multiple speeds (his current bike is a single speed). And this does sound very complicated, so we will likely think of new ways to simplify and streamline the whole operation.
Summer 2017 Travel: Friday Harbor Day 8
It was windy and rainy most of the day yesterday. Nonetheless, Everett said it was great bike riding weather and he came by the Whiteley Center a few times to see Chris working. During one of his visits we saw a bald eagle fly by. In the afternoon everyone went to the Whale Museum.
Chris came home around 4pm to see Gabby and Grandaddy off. They were scheduled to fly out on a sea plane at 6pm. Around 4:30 Cress got a call asking if we could fly out of Roche Harbor instead because Friday Harbor was too windy. So we loaded everyone in the car and went to the dock at Roche Harbor to wait for the plane. After a few minutes we decided to get a table at Madrona, and the adults had drinks and shared a Dungeness crab while the kids played in the garden. Then we received a call saying that the sea plane hadn’t left Seattle yet because of a storm, so we ordered more drinks and dinner for the kids. A while later we received another call saying that the plane had landed in Roche Harbor. Fortunately the kids were done eating and we had already paid the bill, but it was still a bit of a scramble to get to the end of the dock and get everyone loaded on the plane. It was raining, and everyone got pretty wet while tromping around, so we decided to give the kids a shower when we got home to get them clean and warm. Then we put them down for an “early” bedtime at 9pm while we ate dinner and watched two episodes of Catastrophe.
Summer 2017 Travel: Friday Harbor Day 7
First, let me acknowledge the obvious: this blog and website have been languishing for some time. It is important to us to keep it up to date for many reasons. The problem is that that our lives have been so busy that there hasn’t been time to write what we have been up to. Ironically, if we did fewer things and had less to write about on this blog then there would be more time to write. But this isn’t likely to happen any time soon. Another problem is that we now have a big backlog of blog entries and photos to publish. This will get done in time, but the best thing to do now is just start writing now.
We are currently staying at Friday Harbor Laboratories for 10 days. It is a privilege to be here for many reasons. First, simply to be a part of FHL. This is our third time here. Chris came here for a month in 2004, during which Melissa visited for a long weekend. We returned for a month in October, 2011 with Everett, who attended Alphabet Soup preschool while Melissa worked on her dissertation and Chris worked at the Whiteley Center. Now we are here with Teddy & Gwen. Second, to have the opportunity to work in the Whitely Center, which is where Chris is working while we are here. Third, to be able to spend time on San Juan Island. This place is heaven for us, though not necessarily in ways that we can articulate or that would make immediate sense to people outside our family. It is reminiscent of the line from Which Way Does That Old Pony Run by Lyle Lovett: “What’s riches to you just ain’t riches to me.â€
Gabby and Grandaddy arrived on Monday and are leaving this afternoon. It has been great to have them here with us, taking part in our adventures. Last night all of us had a fantastic dinner at Downriggers. We recalled having dinner with Grandaddy somewhere downtown in 2011 but couldn’t find the restaurant on this trip. Then we checked the blog and realized that it was the same place, but looked different because it burned down in 2013 and reopened in 2016. Particularly memorable were the Dungeness crab tater tots and a charcuterie plate as appetizers. And the fact that the kids got to go the restaurant with Chris in the rowboat.
Photos of the trip so far are here:Â http://gallery.dromomania.net/Travel/2017/Friday-Harbor-2017
Disgrace
In Charge
Finally Chris asked “Who is in charge here?!?”
Voles
Work
This week we had a special treat: Ms. Tierra visited us for dinner one night during her visit to Salt Lake City for a convention. She was Everett’s teacher at Wauwatosa Montessori for two years in Children’s House. Everett loves Ms. Tierra and we do as well – in many ways she had a huge positive impact on him. She visited us with Ms. Tracy, another Wauwatosa Montessori teacher who teaches Upper Elementary. One thing that we learned as Montessori parents is how children are intrinsically motivated to do work, and even young children will concentrate for long periods of time given the right task and setting. On a related subject, our dinner with Tierra and Tracy was surprisingly relaxing because Teddy and Gwen found engaging work. This first happened for Gwen a couple months ago when we were at the beach – she was playing with sand and told Melissa “Momma, I’m so busy. I’m so busy Momma.” Tonight during dinner the children were playing with colored macaroni. Teddy told Chris “I’m working so hard.” Also in the midst of this Gwen told Melissa “Sit down with me and don’t hold your phone.” Later, Teddy said “This is nice, Momma.” This may be the most relaxing family dinner we have had for a couple years. Both of them love playing with the macaroni, so much so that it has become a distraction from eating.
Everett is now in Lower Elementary (second grade) and he is getting used to a different approach when it comes to work and time management. When he was in Children’s House the students were almost completely self-directed and did not have deadlines. That is changing now – he is given more specific tasks for his lessons, and he is given a deadline to finish them. He can be very focused. On Tuesday this week he was sick and home from school. One of his self-directed activities was to create an entire book of watercolor paintings for the family.
All of the children now have chores. Everett sets the table and takes out the trash on Sunday nights. Teddy & Gwen are expected to help with cleanup of toys. Gwen has taken it upon herself to make sure everyone has a napkin at dinner. Chris has a reputation for being a messy eater; Gwen seems to have picked up on this and decided to give Dad a couple extra napkins.
This afternoon Everett helped Chris with another kind of work: dealing with the voles in our yard. This has been an issue since we moved in but we didn’t really care because our yard has been abandoned since the house was built about 20 years ago. However, we are nearing completion on a huge landscaping project and now that we have a nice patch of grass outside the back door we do not like to see it destroyed by vole mounds and tunnels. We have researched several ways to get rid of them. None seem particularly effective – these rodents are so fertile and prolific that the best we can probably do is keep them in check.
We are averse to traps and poison because of the age of the children. Instead we are focusing our energy on repelling them, perhaps into the neighbors yards. So Chris and Everett mixed up a batch of vole repellent out of castor oil and dishwashing soap. Then we carefully scraped away all the vole mounds and sprayed the solution into each hole, as well as all over the surviving grass. Within an hour there was a vole poking his head through the grass and making a new mound. And in the afternoon there was another new mound. It seems clear that this is just the beginning of a process in which we may not prevail.
As for Mom & Dad, our work is never done. It feels like there are not enough hours in the day to keep up. Somehow we have to reconcile that feeling with the fact that these are likely the best years of our lives. Even when everyone is happy and healthy it’s not always easy to keep this in mind.
The Molly Show
Molly had some time off this summer and we feel fortunate that she decided to visit on her way to meet her family in Denver. She has been with us for about the past week. Since we moved to Utah she has been caring for some of our former neighbors in Wauwatosa who have an older child and younger twins. And she decided to take a vacation from this by visiting us :-).
It was great for everyone to see her again. The twins remembered her and called her by name right way. She and Everett had some special time together. She explained social media to Chris, and she and Melissa spent several evenings together. On Friday night she hosted the Molly Show: she watched all three children while Chris and Melissa went away for a night to Midway, Utah (also know as the Switzerland of the Rockies). That night the children asked for Molly water (a la Dada water), a sure sign of trust and affection.
Safe travels Molly! We hope to see you again soon. Perhaps next time you can visit for a year or two?
Not Ideal
Over the last few months a remarkable thing has happened: there has been a confluence of physics and football that has been reported by many popular newspapers in the wake of Deflategate (a.k.a. the unusual drop in air pressure in footballs used by the New England Patriots in the AFC championship game against the Indianapolis Colts).
One New York Times article tried to explain how this could have happened using goofy and contrived photos of someone in a lab coat writing equations on a white board. This was meant to show how the ideal gas law could provide quasi-scientific evidence that the pressure drop in New England Patriot’s footballs could have occurred naturally, and could have happened without any deliberate deflation, even though the footballs from the opposing team remained at normal pressure. This situation reminds Chris of the time he compared the incredible mess on the desk of a fellow grad student to the entropy of an ideal gas. The associate director of our research institute was walking by at the time and said “Oh there’s nothing ideal about it!†The same can be said about the events related to Deflategate and in the news reporting on the subject. Perhaps the best possible outcome from this is to take advantage of a teaching moment.
There are two broad possibilities with regard to the pressure drop in the Patriot footballs: the pressure dropped because of natural conditions such as a change in temperature; the balls were deliberately deflated (most news stories have created confusion by using the term deflation to describe both of these possible mechanisms, when in fact the former is a pressure drop without deflation). To put this in perspective, the ideal gas law is not some exotic equation that is used exclusively by physicists with advanced degrees. It’s a fundamental equation that is taught in high school chemistry (PV=nRT), and it doesn’t take any advanced education to perform your own analysis of the ball pressure. In fact, the hardest part about using this equation is making sure the units are correct. A quick glance at Wikipedia lists the gas constant R using 27 different combinations of units. Note that the analysis shown in the New York Times article above uses Rankine for temperature, a unit of measure that is so obscure that modern spell checkers don’t even recognize it. As we have pointed out many times before in this blog, it would be much more sensible to use metric units, but it is likely that the NFL would perceive this as being un-American. It probably doesn’t help that the most widely used system of measurement in the world has a French name (Le Système International d’Unités, more commonly known as SI Units).
Of course this is all pure hooey. If a football can drop 2 psi when moved from a 70 degree locker room to a 50 degree playing field, then why is the run up to Super Bowl XLIX the first time we are observing it? And why doesn’t it happen often in places like Green Bay or Minneapolis where the temperature differences between inside and outside are much greater? This is reminiscent of the scene in My Cousin Vinnie when Vinnie Gambini (Joe Pesche) is questioning a self-respecting southerner who claims to have cooked non-instant grits in about 5 minutes. He exclaims “Perhaps the laws of physics cease to exist on your stove?!?” Indeed we might be left with a similar conclusion with regard to the Patriots. Probably the best possible outcome from all of this is that children who watch professional sports will take a greater interest in science. Stories like this also create the incorrect perception that you need an advanced degree in physics from Columbia to perform basic scientific analysis. In fact, you do not need an advanced degree in anything from anywhere. What you do need is common sense, a basic degree of confidence with algebra and the ability to be a keen observer. Using these criteria almost anyone who has taken high school chemistry should be able to perform an analysis using the ideal gas law. And anyone with a football, a pump and a pressure gauge should be able to reproduce what happened during the Patriots-Colts game. In other words, this phenomenon should be reproducible by any football player who is old enough to read. In the United States this should be tens of millions of people as a conservative estimate.
We have been waiting until the news stories about Deflategate die down before we post this blog entry, but it appears that this may never happen. At this point several people have confessed to deflating the balls including Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Steven Tyler and many others. The NFL has decided that the balls were deliberately deflated and that Tom Brady knew about it. As a result he was suspended for several games, but this suspension was erased. There is almost certainly more to come.
Lastly, as DAVID WALDSTEIN at the New York Times recently pointed out, it is surprising that the NFL has decided to pay such close attention to ball pressure, while virtually ignoring issues like domestic violence, drug use and brain injury.