SOML

President Obama is about to deliver his first speech to Congress, an appearance they’re not calling a State of the Union address -- or SOTU, as headline writers sometimes abbreviate it -- but that will feel like one. Last month, here in Washington state, Gov. Christine Gregoire gave the first State of the State (SOTS) of her second term, and a week ago today Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels offered his own State of the City (SOTC) address.

It’s that time of year. So, in the spirit of the season I’m pausing a minute for a personal assessment: the SOML, or State of My Life. Ahem. Lapel pin adjusted. Ready the teleprompters!

Although the SOTUs themselves can drone on, presidential speechwriters often include one line that cuts to the chase. Something like: Tonight, the state of the union is ... sound, challenged, hopeful, whatever the case may be.

Tonight, the state of my life is ... a mix of chaos and stasis. Staos?

In some senses very little has changed, or changes. Approaching two and a half years now since I left work to deal with my health, I remain unemployed, on medical disability, seeing doctors, popping pills, checking months off my chemo calendar. At the same time life feels like it’s changing crazily. The Seattle P-I, where I used to work and Michelle still does, is likely to close in a few weeks. But we have no official word about whether an online version of the paper will survive as rumored or, if so, whether Michelle will grab one of the few musical-chair jobs left to be had.

It’s impossible to say with any certainty what we’ll be doing three months from now or even where we’ll be living. We’re both looking for work here in Seattle, where I have family and prefer to stay, but we agree that this is no time to insist on a specific job in a specific city. As cool as the Excellent Element is, neither of us wants to live in it. So we’re looking elsewhere as well. Turbulence creates downdrafts, and I wouldn’t be surprised if M&M winds up relocating, maybe back to Los Angeles, as early as this summer.

All that’s enough to give a guy a case of the chaotics.

Partly to brace for the financial hit, and in recognition that the various federal bailouts will bail out every sector except that of dopes like us who bought a house we could afford on a loan we were qualified to receive, Michelle and I have reassessed our household budget and made significant cuts in our lifestyle. Again stupidly responsible, no doubt. To be clear, I don’t mean to whine, as we’ve merely ratcheted down to moderately conservative from comfortably affluent. I mean, we are the rock’n’rollers who spent two Pie in the Sky months on the road last year, just a couple of months after spending two weeks in Paris and Rome. We’ve had it pretty good. Ew, did you drop your caviar in my champagne? But we have made adjustments. We’re not taking any trips this year that weren’t already planned, like the April pilgrimage to New Orleans for Freda’s 70th birthday. We’re limiting ourselves to one movie outing a month. We cut back to basic cable. We’ve stopped dining out. We’re making each gin bottle last twice as long (ouch). And I’ve stopped playing poker, on the theory that you should never bet what you can’t afford to lose. That one really hurts.

In support of the new budget plan we’ve combined finances more fully than ever before. That’s a net financial gain for me but a change that makes me cringe. I’ve been financially independent now for more than 30 years and hate to surrender the feeling. Ving Rhames tells Bruce Willis in “Pulp Fiction,” “That’s pride fuckin’ with ya,” and I know that’s true. Still.

I could go on. There are indignities on the job-search front, worries on the family front, frustrations on the medical front.

A friend asked the other day about my health, and I described how at this point the effects of brain cancer feel less physical and more psychological and emotional. I struggle sometimes to think of myself as the same capable, confident person who 17 months ago spazzed out of one familiar life and into this new weird one.

Even so, as I’m sure the president is saying right about now (we’re Tivo’ing the non-SOTU), out of hardship comes opportunity. Hope and recovery are ahead. Trite as these pat lines are, I believe there is truth in them, for the individual as well as the nation.

Personally, I have much to give me strength and hope. Despite some growing pains of adolescence Gina and Franny are awesome, inspiring kids and actually fun to be around. Lovergirl Michelle and I remain totally solid, in spite of the understandable stress we both face.

I don’t know where we’ll be this time next year -- or next month for that matter. But we’ll be here. M&M abides, and the SOML is, staotic though it may be, still pretty good.

OK. Off to watch the speech. Good night, and God bless America! Please comment on Obama’s address here.

Photo credit: Top photo via whitehouse.gov on Creative Commons license.

My vicarious life

I know the feeling. My friend Stuart Pfeifer got in his car in Los Angeles and headed toward Las Vegas, $1,500 in his pocket ("money that could be spent on something useful") and dreams of the World Series of Poker dancing in his head.

"The odds were so bad," Stuart writes, "that I might as well roll my window down and toss my hard-earned money into the blazing desert."

Except that he doesn't do that. He goes through with it, as I did last summer, entering a World Series event and taking his chances against 2,700 players including some of the pastime's biggest names. Happily, he fared much better than I did. He not only lived to tell about it, in an excellent first-person story in Saturday's LA Times, but he finished in the money, for a profit of about $7,000. Awesome.

I'm happy for him, and also unaccountably proud. I had nothing to do with his success, of course, but Michelle and I played with Stu in a home game a couple of times, and introduced him and another LAT colleague and friend, Joel Rubin, to the addictive, stressful (at first) fun of playing poker in a casino.

Safe to say they've both gotten over those early-days jitters. Stu and I played at the Commerce in April on an early Pie-in-the-Sky stop (he cleaned my clock; I snapped the above photo moments later), and Joel recently sent a hilarious recounting of his bad-beat exit from a tournament at Hollywood Park in LA. "My nemesis?," he said in an email. "I am told later his name in Sam Simon -- one of the creators of 'The Simpsons.' Worth, literally, a billion dollars. He cashed at the 2007 WSOP and was married to Miss January."

Anyway, I'm happy for Stuart. Great finish, great story.

Maybe next year Michelle and I and Stahlberg and McCumber and Sam Skolnik (our P-I friend now working and winning in Vegas) will meet Stu and Joel at the final table.

Flash from the past: II

Here's a few photos from our visit to see my sister Renee on our way home on Pie in the Sky II:

Allison and Allex, behind the Green Glass Door.

The attraction of stuff

One thing Michelle and I share is a geeky fascination with cool gadgets. We don't spend a lot of money on nice furniture or fashionable clothes, but dangle a new computer or the latest tech wizardry and we're both likely to feel a burning sensation in our pockets. Michelle refers to the Best Buy circular in the Sunday paper as "the porno."

And so, despite our better judgment, we both find ourselves pulled with Newtonian force toward the new iPhone 3G. You've seen the ads and heard the hype, I'm sure. It's a cell phone! It's an iPod! It's the Internet at your fingertips! It's a mini TV in your pocket! Your calendar, a camera, instant messaging, games, even a GPS system to tell you exactly where you are right now! (Aisle 2 of the Best Buy, no doubt.)

How can anyone resist? This is a device that would have come in quite handy on Pie in the Sky II, and we talked about it often. We're in the middle of Kansas; where's the nearest cup of coffee? What's the deal with these "Purple Heart Memorial Highway" signs everywhere? OK then, where's the largest cross in the Eastern Hemishphere?

Look it up, look it up, look it up, that's what you could do with the cool new iPhone!

Except, back at home, in rare moments of clear thinking, we've both noted the many reasons to resist. Such as, if you're not on the road, how often would you really need to look something up on your phone? Maybe to check a movie time or settle an argument, but not all the time. Also, iPhones are expensive, both to purchase and to operate over the life of the required two-year contract. We already have cell phones that work just fine, and in fact the quality of our Verizon service is excellent. The AT&T service required for the iPhone is spotty, and last time we had that carrier we couldn't get a signal at our house, which is why we switched to Verizon. If we switched to an iPhone and then had to switch again we'd have to pay twice for the privilege.

Another problem with the attraction of stuff is that you end up with more stuff. We've already got a basement full of old network routers, Tivos, computer parts, power cords and formerly cutting edge cell phones that we don't use anymore. I'm not one of those back-to-nature, live-off-the-land freaks, but even I see that piling up so much plastic and silicon is ridiculous and wasteful.

Also, I'm not sure I want the extra level of connectivity that the iPhone offers. As it is I don't want to answer my phone half the time, and I delete plenty of email without even reading it. If anything, I'd like to be less available to most of the world, not more.

And then there are questions about the iPhone device itself. It's gotten terrific reviews, but already there's some backlash out there among people disappointed with the service, or with Apple's bungled rollout, or with the relatively feeble battery life. Some iPhone fans are boasting on message boards that they're able to get through an entire day without charging the battery -- if they turn off the wireless, the GPS, the enhanced "3G" network and they don't play any music ... all the stuff that makes this thing better than a regular old cell phone.

Some are having a tough time reconciling their tech love and their tech snootery. "I just noticed today that the buzz is gone," said one poster on Gizmodo. "Almost makes the instability and constant call-dropping worth it."

I stopped by the AT&T store the other day (my car was parked right next to it) and asked about the cell coverage problem. The service has been upgraded, the guy said, and you always have 30 days to return the phone if it doesn't work, but if you're worried about it you could borrow the phone of a friend with AT&T and check it at your house.

Hmm.

Wednesday, between doctor appointments, I poked my head in at the University Village Apple Store. A line of people out the door waiting to buy from the limited supply of iPhones, with the average wait time two hours. Whenever a customer emerged from the store with that little rectangular bag in hand, the people in line would cheer. It was kind of sick.

And still, I keep surfing back to the Apple review sites to check the latest news. The porno has its pull. I can't decide.

Michelle and I are heading out to the movies this afternoon -- the new "Batman" -- and we'll probably stop at the Southcenter Apple Store. The force will be strong, I'm sure.

Somebody, quick, talk me out of it. Or, alternatively, if you happen to have AT&T, can I borrow your phone?

In lieu of the World Series

Somewhere out there on the road, the Pie in the Sky tour took the wind out of the M&M poker sails. Still not sure what happened -- some bad cards, some bad beats, some bad play -- but we didn't exactly set the world on fire. That's not the only reason we cut our trip a bit short without a return to Las Vegas, but let's just say our vision of capturing the World Series of Poker was requiring rosier glasses than we had packed in the Excellent Element.

When we got home though, Michelle set to work on a screenplay idea she's been kicking around that involves a poker tournament. As part of her research she began reading the three volumes of "Harrington on Hold 'em," the bibles of tournament poker. It all must have rekindled an interest, or maybe she just needed some color for her story, but a few weeks ago Michelle suggested we drive down to the Muck to play in one of their Tuesday night tournaments.

Supportive guy that I am, I agreed to go play.

Michelle has always been a good tournament player -- better in tourneys than in live cash games -- and I wasn't at all surprised when she began building a formidable chip stack and scaring the bejezus out of her opponents, me included, with her ice-cold staredown from behind and under big black sunglasses and that shock of crazy hair. Also the giant raises.

Before too long I busted out, in about 20th place, and went to play in my normal $4/8 cash game. But hours passed and still Michelle was in the tournament. Finally I went back to check on her and she had made the final table, where she played like one of those cancer patients you read about in the newspaper (she fought courageously, battled tenaciously, blah blah blah) before eventually finishing in fifth place, good for $125. Nice little return on the $65 buy-in, and an excellent showing against the 50-player field.

At the casino we heard about a larger promotional tournament scheduled for later this month, July 20, with a $500 buy-in and a $100,000 prize pool including $30,000 for first place and $20,000 for second.

We also began to catch wind of some friends' recent success in tournaments. David McCumber, who has been on fire all year, consistently has been making the money at Diamond Lil's here in Seattle, and my pal Joel Rubin in L.A. has made a couple tasty little scores against the degenerates there. Best of all, our former P-I reporter colleague Sam Skolnik, who now works at the Las Vegas Sun, has broken through with several final-table finishes at Caesars, Bellagio and elsewhere, taking down wins in the five figures and barely missing six figures or more. He even has an official ranking now in Card Player Magazine's "Player of the Year" contest.

Michelle and I looked at each other. Sammy's pretty good -- we've both played with him plenty -- but he's not that good. If he and Joel and David can consistently beat these games maybe, with a little practice, we can do the same.

So we decided to try again a couple of nights later, at one of the Muck's $70 buy-in events, this time with 97 entrants. It would be like practice. And who knows, if we felt confident and made a few bucks, maybe we'd take a shot at the July 20 event.

We both did well again, with me outlasting Michelle this time and making the final table myself. I finished in eighth place, with a payout of about $180.

Fast-forward a couple of weeks to last night. The big July 20 event is approaching -- that's this Sunday -- and we wanted one more practice session at the lower stakes. When we got there and were assigned our seats I gave Michelle a little fist bump and said, "See you at the final table."

Lo, as players busted out to the left and right of us, every time I looked over my shoulder Michelle was stacking chips. And I got off to a great start, more than doubling up on the first hand of the tournament with pocket aces. A few hours later, as six tables were combined to five, and then to four, three, two, we found ourselves still in the game. Before long we were drawing for seats at the final table, just as we had "predicted."

Michelle, unfortunately, came in with a short stack among those 10 players and finished in ninth, good enough to get her buy-in back but not to make a profit. I had a healthier chip stack but played poorly in the final few rounds and felt almost lucky to exit in sixth place, with a $160 payout.

We didn't pull down giant wins -- and in fact we both could have made a larger profit if I had agreed to a proposal to "chop" the total prize pool 10 ways (stubbornness, greed) -- but we feel like we're playing in a different universe than we did out on the road.

Who knows what this weekend will bring. My good friend Mike Stahlberg, who taught me this stupid game, is planning to come up from Eugene to play on Sunday, and I think McCumber's going to give it a shot too.

We'll see each other at the final table, I'm sure. And if the subject comes up, I'll vote in favor of the chop.

Wheeeeee!

So distracting we've hardly missed the Internet.

Ever since we got home from Pie in the Sky Michelle and I -- and now Gina and Franny too -- have been junkies for Wii, the awesome video game system Ronelle and her family gave us when we visited in New Jersey. We've all stayed up way too late, bowling and playing baseball and tennis until our eyes blurred and our elbows burned.

For those who haven't played the game or seen the ads, the Wii, by Nintendo, is a game system in which you don't just push buttons but actually move the game controller to control your player. So, to swing a virtual tennis racquet you swing your arm, forehand or backhand, timing it so your racquet hits the ball in the direction and with the speed you want. Same for baseball, bowling, golf and the rest. And we all spent some time creating our own personalized "Miis" to represent us on the screen. It's surprisingly, ridiculously fun. Gina and Franny even stopped by unannounced last week -- twice! -- to squeeze in a game.

Based on Wii Tennis alone, Gina and Franny have now expressed interest in playing real tennis, and Fran and I went out the other day for her first lesson.


One of the games is helping Franny in the other. I'm not sure which, but in another couple of weeks I don't expect to be able to beat her in either.

In honor of Ronelle's daughter Christin (above left, with her cousin Holley, right) we try to remember not to call the game Wii, but "Wheeee!," which really is more fitting.

(Speaking of which: Ronelle, If we send each other our Wii console numbers we should be able to exchange Miis and messages and maybe even play against each other. Hit me up by e-mail.)

The game really does make your arm sore though. We're already thinking we'll need to go buy the new "Wii Fit" program to get us into shape to play regular Wii.

Nice to be home

We left Renee's comfy house in Denver on Tuesday morning and after two very long days of driving arrived back in Seattle late Wednesday night. Great trip, great memories, but we both agree it's great to be home too.

Although we cut Pie in the Sky II a little shorter than planned -- maybe it really was pie-in-the-sky, Mom -- we still spent two very full months on the road. We got tired, I'll admit it, and maybe a little over-saturated too. At some point it gets hard to take in any more sights and experiences and really appreciate them, no matter how cool.

One down side of returning early is that we're without Internet access until the middle of next week, when they can reconnect our DSL. That's why we've been out of touch since returning. (I'm writing now from the library up the street.)

Thanks to all for following along, for hosting or meeting us along the route and for sharing in our fun adventure.

Here are a couple of pics from the drive home, beginning with the nice Rocky Mountain view from Renee's neighborhood. We drove north to Wyoming, stopped in beautiful downtown Laramie for lunch, then cut west into Utah, up to Idaho, through a slice of Eastern Oregon, where there was still snow on the ground, then into Eastern Washington and across the Snoqualmie Pass to Seattle, viewed above from a freeway underpass and below from the West Seattle Bridge to our house.

We're not in Kansas anymore

... but it took a while. That's a wide state and -- sorry, Dorothy, Bob Dole and other famous Kansans -- it's boring as hell. It took all day Sunday to drive from Kansas City, where we stopped after leaving Janice's house in Louisville, across Kansas and then through a smidge of Colorado to Michelle's sister Renee's place in suburban Denver.

We've had a great day-plus here, playing softball and going swimming with Allison and Alex (Renee and James' kids), going out to eat and then, tonight, all watching "School of Rock" on the AppleTV. Fun. That's Allison with Michelle, above.

As cool as this trip has been, Michelle and I are both getting a little horse-to-barn syndrome. After seven-plus weeks on the road, and at 30 states and counting, we're thinking now of amending our earlier plans of returning to Vegas and heading instead directly back toward Seattle. Pretty much blown the poker bankroll anyway.

Here are a few pics from the past couple of days.

Janice and Michelle in front of Janice and Andy's awesome old Victorian house:

Janice took Friday afternoon off and took us to what she calls "the oval office" -- the famous Churchill Downs -- where we bet a few races and managed almost uniformly to pick the losers. Michelle and Janice even put down a bet on Saturday's Belmont Stakes, pairing the sure-thing winner, Big Brown, with a couple other leading contenders in a "boxed Exacta" bet. Free money! Except Big Brown came in last place.

Then, on Friday night, we took in a minor league game between the Louisville Bats (the famous Louisville Slugger bats are made in this town ) against the Toledo Mud Hens at the retro cool Slugger Field.

After Louisville, though, as I said, it's a long slog between points of civilization. At one point in Kansas we checked the Garmin for the nearest cup of coffee. The options were all miles behind us:


Pretty sunset heading into Colorado:


Michelle's nephew, Alex, who is 8 years old, makes a mean hot air balloon out of paper. Kid's got skills.

Michelle and Renee at the local pool:


We're not sure of our exact route from here, but our tentative plan is to get up in the morning and then head north to Wyoming and Montana and then turn west toward Seattle. Probably a few more days on the road. Maybe more posts and pics to come.

Louisville!

After beginning yesterday at Niagara Falls, we arrived late last night in Louisville, Kentucky, visiting the awesome house of Janice and her husband Andy in a cool old Victorian neighborhood in this pretty city.

Janice is planning to take the afternoon off, and then maybe we'll go to the horse races at Churchill Downs or catch a minor league baseball game -- the famous Louisville Slugger bats are made here and the team shares the name.

It's great to see Janice and Andy again. We'll have pictures later.

Eddie

Today would have been my dad's 85th birthday, so I'm thinking of him.

I thought of him yesterday too at the Hall of Fame, which he would have loved. Dad, Eddie to his friends, was born in New York in 1923, the same year as Yankee Stadium, and he grew up rooting for the Yanks of Ruth and Gehrig and later, his favorite, Joe DiMaggio. He turned me on to baseball as a kid, playing catch in the backyard, taking me to my first baseball game, the Mays-McCovey-Marichal Giants at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. When the A's moved from Kansas City in 1968 to Oakland, much closer to our East Bay home, he and I went to many games there, watching Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando, Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue, Joe Rudi -- the beginning of the great A's teams that went on to win three consecutive World Series in the 1970s after we moved to Oregon.

We had a pretty typical father-son relationship, I think, meaning much love and respect buried under some layers of annoyance or misunderstanding. A lot of my least favorite qualities -- I can be quick-tempered, argumentative, shrill -- I think I got from him. Also, lately, my gut. But I also see him in my own ease in varied social situations, my ability to make a friend, an affinity for numbers, my deep love of family.

My Aunt Chickie back in New Jersey, who wasn't related to Dad by blood, knows of our sometimes strained relationship. She found several opportunities on this visit, as she always does, to say nice things about him, and she brought out some cool old family photos that I hadn't seen, including of Mom and Dad with Jersey clan. That was nice.

As I was reminded yesterday, this will be the last year at Yankee Stadium, meaning it lasted four seasons longer than Dad did. But also that they both had good, long, full lives.

Happy 85th, Eddie. We miss you.

Say Hey

By mutual agreement, this is the last time I can tell this story.

Seven years ago, on the first Pie in the Sky tour, Michelle and I were heading east from Niagara Falls across upstate New York toward Boston. I took a break from driving (this was back in the day when I was allowed behind the wheel) and put the chair back for a little nap while Michelle drove.

One thing, I requested: When we get to the Cooperstown exit wake me up and get off the freeway. I've always wanted to see the Baseball Hall of Fame. OK, she said. But when I woke up, half an hour later or so, I realized we were past Cooperstown already. Crazy bitch had blown off the Hall of Fame! She had some lame excuse about it being too late in the day, but we've been arguing about that ever since. Fact is, she drove by the exit.

Fast forward to Pie in the Sky II. Michelle's doing all the driving, but Cooperstown has become our jokey can't-miss destination. I vowed to snort lines of coke off the dashboard to stay awake if necessary.

Today, after six weeks of dawdling through 25 states and the District of Columbia, after losing countless poker chips to uncounted suckout artists across America, after downing clam chowdah on Cape Cod and steamer clams on the Jersey Shore, spending one terrific afternoon at the best hospital in Maine (just ask 'em) and another at the formerly peaceful Walden Pond, we set the Garmin for Cooperstown and waited to "acquire satellites."

The Garmin has its own sense-of-humor way of getting there, but that's another story. It was a pretty drive anyway.

Seventy-eight miles from our morning departure point of Albany, N.Y., but somehow three hours away, the Hall of Fame finally appeared. ("Arriving at destination!" chirped the Garmin.) After lunch at the Doubleday Cafe (Abner Doubleday is erroneously credited with inventing baseball, as I would learn later), I took my two-hour tour. Michelle waited outside.

It was full of cool stuff for a lifelong baseball fan like me. I especially liked seeing how the gloves, bats and other equipment have changed over the years, and looking at the uniforms, balls and other mementos from signature games, like Nolan Ryan's seven no-hitters. It was fun to see that pitcher Bob Gibson's glove, during his historic 1968 season, was a Spalding "Carl Yastrzemski Personal Model." And there were cool exhibits featuring my hero, Willie Mays, as well as many other greats. I thought of my brother-in-law Manuel when I got to the Tony Gwynn display, and of my friend Mike Stahlberg when I spied ol' Shoeless Joe Jackson.


No denying my nerdiness though. At one point I was bent over, reading some fine print in an exhibit featuring Ichiro Suzuki and the history of the Mariners, and I heard a camera flashing behind me. Doh! There I was, in my Ichiro replica jersey, craning to study the real Ichiro jersey. Somebody's showing that picture to relatives tonight and having a good laugh.

Still, I really enjoyed Cooperstown and felt lucky to be there on a quiet Tuesday afternoon before summer vacation. After school gets out, the Hall greeters told me, it'll be a zoo in there.

Baseball fans, it's worth a visit.

A Day at Walden

Yesterday we woke up, got ourselves some Starbucks, then headed on over to Walden Pond. We walked all around the pond, listened to the bullfrogs, observed the same ants that Thoreau wrote about so many years ago, collected a few mosquito bites and just generally marvelled at the beauty of Walden Pond -- when a lady also exploring the place informed us that, oh no, we weren't at Walden Pond. We were in Walden Wood (thank god it was Walden something, or else it would have been really ridiculous). Walden Pond was just down the way.

So we get in the car and punch Walden Pond in the Garmin. She directs us around -- I swear -- in a circle, then lands us a few hundred yards from where we were, at the real Walden Pond, entrance $5. Here, at a much bigger, less woodsy spot, bunches of people hung out a the beach in bathing suits with their kids and ate sandwiches they brought from home, and generally acted like it's not a Thoreauy place at all, but rather just nearest available beach. Though the first pond wasn't the real Walden Pond, it sure felt like it.


Up the way from the Real yet Fake Walden Pond, we wandered into Ye Olde Walden Pond Gift Shop, where a guy who plays Thoreau in reenactments helped me remember the details that have slipped from my brain since I last read Walden and Civil Disobedience. He has a web site called http://www.meethenrydavidthoreau.com/. He knew everything.

All in all, a fun trip.

Next, we stopped by to see my younger brother Steve and his wife and child, Sandy and Matthew, at their digs in Southbridge, Mass. Matthew is just two but already is heaving balls around like a linebacker.


Next stop, Cooperstown, and the Baseball Hall of Fame.

'Any unexpected weight loss?'

Michelle actually laughed out loud when the admitting clerk asked me that question today at the Maine Medical Center. No, I said over the cackling, if anything I've got the opposite problem.

We weren't there for my weight -- loss or gain -- but because at the Brunswick, Maine, Starbucks Michelle noticed some swelling over my right eye and got worried. It's true, I had noticed the same swelling, and also had experienced some dizziness and nausea Saturday night beyond what I would normally expect at this stage of my chemo round. So, over my objections that it wasn't worth a hospital visit, we turned around, blew off the search for Maine's perfect lobster roll, and headed to Portland's big freeway-side hospital.

Because it was Sunday our only option was going to the Emergency Ward, which seemed extra goofy. After being screened and admitted, I was put on a stretcher in a hallway marked "triage," which I found doubly embarrassing as a parade of Mainians with actual emergencies -- a baseball player who missed a pop fly and took it in the eye, an older woman who apparently had heat stroke on the tennis court, some bleeding kids -- cooled their heels.

At one point some EMTs brought in a guy on an ambulance gurney who didn't look good -- a drugged, vacant look and a fresh wrap of some kind on his arm -- and there wasn't a stretcher available. I offered to give mine up, but they wouldn't hear of it. The poor guy had to wait, and the EMTs with him, while I was there with, essentially, a hangnail.

When I was rolled into Emergency Room 5, Dr. Good (no joke) came in to see me and we explained the symptoms, such as they were. She made a concerned face and went to fetch a consulting doc, who chatted us up about primo lobster rolls and hiking in the Northwest ("I always say Washington is like Maine on steroids").

A nurse came in to draw some blood, but she couldn't seem to do it right, and she lectured me about traveling without my complete medical records and about the need to avoid salt and wine. Yeah, thanks, I said, I'll try to remember to talk to my real doctor about that when I get home. I think my sarcasm was lost on her.

The eyelid swelling could be this, it could be that, my new medical team said. Maybe we should do a CAT scan. Ok, we waited some more, and then they wheeled me in to radiology. After the machine did its thing the tech lady said, "Looks like you've had some brain work done." Yes. I explained about the surgeries and, blah blah blah, the tumors.

"Oooh, benign, I hope," she said. No, I told her. Malignant. I let that hang in the air for a minute. Not a glioma, I hope, she said.

Anyway, six hours after we arrived, it turned out my brain isn't leaking into my eyeball or vice versa. I maybe, possibly, have cellulitis, which isn't something to be removed from your fat legs but a skin infection. They prescribed some antibiotics, which I may or may not take. I'm going to call my real doctor first.

Meantime, no lobster rolls today. We said poopy to Maine and skedaddled out of there, landing tonight at a Best Western near Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts.

Thoreau never visited Maine Medical Center, as far as I know. But he did write this: "I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude."

Tomorrow, for something totally different, we're planning on driving to Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The 2nd Most Awesome Lobster Roll in Maine

Mark picked up a magazine today that had a story on where to find the best lobster rolls in New England. The article was horribly written, but still we decided to follow the author's advice on where to get the best piece of bread stuffed with a half pound of lobster.

The number one place was too far away, so we decided to have lunch today at the number two spot, a place called The Fish Shack in Rockport, Mass.


If this was #2, I can't wait to try #1. Di-lish.

Tomorrow we're trying another lobster roll at this place:



We're going to get one roll to share there, then we're going to head further north to Wicasset, Maine, where the allegedly #1 lobster roll in Maine can be found at Red's Eats.

We shall see, my friends. We shall see.


Also today, we swung by the President's compound in Kenebunkport. The guard out front looked at me funny when I took a picture. We saw a lot of black cars in the driveway. Secret Service. Shh.

Pie in the Sky, Weeks 5 & 6

For a slideshow with larger images go here.

See earlier slideshows of weeks 3 & 4 and weeks 1 & 2.

Cancer on the road

One of the big question marks on this trip was how I'd be able to continue my monthly chemotherapy while on the road for two or three months.

It's difficult enough at home to make sure the doctor's office communicates with the mail-order pharmacy people and that the drugs then get delivered to my house. During Pie in the Sky, I'd not only have those regular hassles but need to arrange for weekly blood draws, with results faxed back to Seattle, and for my monthly dosage of chemo drugs to be mailed someplace where I'd be able to take delivery.

I spent quite a bit of time talking all this through with my doctors and pharmacist. The oncologist's office gave me weeks' worth of blood-lab slips that could be completed at any lab and faxed back. We'd talk by phone on certain dates and I'd report on my activities and condition; I could even go through the "squeeze my finger, stand on one foot" routine if that would help. Caremark, my doctor suggested, might be able to send me a triple-order of Temodar -- enough to cover all our time on the road -- to avoid the long-distance mail coordination. OK, great.

But then just before we left Seattle Caremark said it couldn't do that after all. The drugs are too expensive -- several thousand bucks per five-day dose -- and what if the drugs got lost or Dr. Spence wanted to change my standard 300 mg/day prescription?

So, fine, I left Seattle with one course of drugs, which I began taking in Los Angeles after dinner at Kaye and Val's. No problemo.

Weeks on the road came and went. I skipped one blood draw, which I'm supposed to get every week, but by our third week out -- two weeks after the chemo -- it was time to look for a lab.

Michelle and I were at a Starbucks in Savannah, Ga., one morning when we saw a bunch of 20-somethings wearing scrubs walk in to get some coffee. Michelle asked them whether there was a blood lab around and they directed us down the street to a little strip mall. I checked in at the front desk and waited with another dozen or so people for my name to be called. Half an hour later the woman called me up to the window.

"Where is this again," she asked. Seattle, I said. Dr. Spence asked that the lab slip be faxed back to his office; the number is right here.

"Well," she said, "we don't have an account with anyone there. The only one we have is an OB/GYN." I assured her my doctor wasn't a gynecologist and she sent me back to sit down. After another 20 minutes, just as I was ready to give up and find a real hospital, they miraculously solved the bookkeeping snafu and called me in for the blood draw. One down.

A week later, in Atlantic City, we resolved to stay away from mom-and-pop blood shops. Instead, we walked down to the big Atlantic City Medical Center, Frank Sinatra Wing -- "Taking You Well Into the Future" -- and looked forward to some professional medical care.


I don't know why it should be so difficult to get a blood draw. Inside the front door a guard directed us to the second floor, where another guard gave me a visitor's pass allowing me to walk 20 feet across a small atrium to a receptionist who walked me around the corner to a larger walk-in reception room. There we waited another 15 or 20 minutes to be called to a desk where a woman loudly asked for and recorded a lot of unnecessary personal information, including my Social Security number and employment status, while a second clerk grumbled aloud about having to wait to take her lunch break. It was 12:15.

Eventually it was my turn and the grumbly clerk walked Michelle and me through a maze of halls to another office with a small waiting room and two staff ladies. "Take a seat," one of them said. "We won't be able to get to you until 1 o'clock."

Really? I said. Another 45 minutes just for a blood draw?

"Blood draw? This is endoscopy," she said. Without even knowing that that meant sticking a long tube down my throat, I knew it sounded like a procedure I didn't want or need. Argh. Finally we dismissed our grumbly, lame-ass tour guide and found the blood lab ourselves, where the phlebotomist poked my arm and sent us on our way. Sheesh.

Even then, I spent a full day playing phone tag with Jennifer, the nurse practitioner in Dr. Spence's office, before an assistant told me Jennifer had sent the prescription into Caremark. And then I spent a good half-hour on the phone with Caremark re-explaining the road trip thing and arranging to have the drugs delivered the following day -- last Friday -- to Ronelle and Aunt Chickie's house in New Jersey.

But when we got to Chck's on Friday night, no drugs. I checked my e-mail to find an urgent message from my sister Michele. She had driven by our house and noticed a package on my porch. The idiots sent the drugs to my home address!

How lucky that Mich happened to drive by. She FedExed the package to New Jersey, nice sister, but it didn't arrive until Monday morning. That meant another day of kicking everyone's butt there in the Wii Championship of the World and eating another meal of ziti and chicken parmigiana. So maybe the late delivery wasn't such a disaster after all, but still.

Fortunately, the drugs themselves have gone down pretty easy. Tonight's dose will be my fifth and final of this course. I've been tired as usual -- I slept in the car yesterday and took a nice nap today at Nauset Beach here on Cape Cod (above) -- but otherwise feel pretty good.

Who knows where we'll be when it's time to run the medical gauntlet again.

Next stop: Cape Cod

Two days at the Foxwoods behind us, and we're ready to move on. After battling with the rocks and the suck-out artists tonite, I ended up $1. I can take a hint.

Here's our plan for tomorrow: We're meeting the OTHER Nicolosis for lunch at (drumroll please) Mystic Pizza -- the OTHER location. My cousin Alison started to try explain to me about the restaurant and the movie on the phone today, and I was all, hello? We've had lunch there two days in a row! Why not make it three?

After that we're headed to Cape Cod, where we will camp for the night and perhaps two nights, if it's not too buggy -- at this place:
That'll give us time to check out Martha's Vinyard and all the coolness and richness down there.

This likely means we will miss a Freda rebound visit -- she's in Mass. visiting with Bro. #2, but she is leaving Saturday. If all falls into place, we may be able to meet Steve and Sandy somewhere for a late lunch on Saturday. Then we're headed up the coast to Kennebunkport and other points Maine ...

A slice of heaven

When we mentioned to Ronelle that we might stay in Mystic, Conn., since it's close to the giant Foxwoods Casino, she endorsed the idea, saying it's pretty there on the water. Yeah, and great pizza, I said. She laughed at the play on "Mystic Pizza," the movie, but said she wasn't sure that the film really was about this same Mystic.

Is it ever! The movie and the pizza joint that inspired it have practically taken over the town.

Well, that's an overstatement. It's still a quaint, picturesque little shipbuilding village on Connecticut's south shore, but Mystic Pizza the restaurant is a mini-shrine to "Mystic Pizza" the movie, which is 20 years old now, and in our short stay here we've seen several people out front taking pictures of the joint.

Cute story about the film's genesis. Amy Jones, an aspiring screenwriter, was summering here in Mystic in the mid-1980s and used to eat at the little pizza place. Back in LA, inspired by the lilt of the restaurant's name and the mix of tourists and locals, she set her story there and sold the film (take notes, Gina!).

Another story, in Mystic Country magazine, told of how an 18-year-old kid, a local, got the gig of location scout. She went to the Mystic Hilton, where the production crew was staying, and asked the manager where the movie people were. "He said, 'I can't tell you that,'" the woman, Bailey Pryor, told the magazine. "Then I put $5 on the table and he said, 'Room 103.' It was the best five bucks I ever spent." Pryor went on to become a documentary filmmaker herself.

Inside the restaurant, photos from the film shoot and of the stars line the walls ("Mystic Pizza" was Julia Roberts' first movie), and the flick plays nonstop on big TVs around the room. They still do a pretty good business on the "Slice of Heaven" t-shirts that the waitresses still wear.

The shocker -- and I sound exactly like one of the tourists quoted in one of the many newspaper stories framed on the restaurant's walls -- is that the pizza is really good. Like nearly four-glioma good, second on this trip only to the perfection of North Beach Pizza in San Francisco. We're planning on going back for lunch again today.