Every town has a mainstay, that person everyone recognizes, but never knows by name; that person who is seemingly seen everywhere, yet at the same time never seen.
For me, it’s Randy. He’s the ever-present kid on the bicycle, working the bags at the Doylestown Genuardi’s, tooling around town. He’s the kid who life threw a thousand challenges at; challenges you and I will never know.
I ran into him this afternoon at the local burrito joint. He had a new shirt, a new name tag. No longer stuffing bags and sparking up conversation at the recently-sold supermarket; now slinging burritos at the recently-revamped California Tortilla.
He noticed the shirt I was wearing. I got it after riding last year’s tour of the county’s covered bridges. Randy asked me about it and we ended up talking about bicycles while I waited for my burrito. It was mid-conversation when something he said almost made me tear-up in the middle of the restaurant. He casually mentioned that we should go riding someday. He promised to take it easy on my much older legs. He said I should meet him “where the buses pick up the normal kids.”
Where the buses pick up the normal kids.
It was that moment – that single. microscopic blip in the fabric of the cosmos – where I saw the world through his eyes. Eyes that have been taught that different is normal and normal is different. Eyes that have seen everything despite never being seen themselves. Eyes that somehow still manage to look on the world with a sense of adventure and fun, enough to invite a neighbor to go riding. Eyes that see the fun in a Saturday bike ride for no particular reason.
This tavern (taberna in Catalan) is where our team has met each February for the past three years. It is where many of us have met for the first time.
Mikel Etxea 1 is just off La Ramblas in Barcelona. Small and lively with great tapas, great service, big Estrella and powerful fruity sangria – all fuel for day-long sessions of animated debate and discussion.
We stumbled upon it back in 2010 during our team’s first visit to Mobile World Congress. We return each year, commandeering the long table to the right of the bar. This year, we didn’t even need to order…the waitress remembered us from each of the previous years.
Last week, I had the honor of meeting a number of Bell Labs researchers who worked alongside the man responsible for the connected world we today live. His name was Dennis Ritchie.
I, clearly, am no big-brained Bell Labs scientist, but back in 1995 I, too, had the opportunity to work with Dennis. He and his team were launching a new operating system called Plan 9 and I was the PR guy responsible for getting it noticed.
Unfortunately, I was too young, too early in my tech career to realize what a unique moment that would be. Which is why I didn’t hesitate to ask the researchers I met in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress if I could capture their remembrances of Dennis on my Flip while I had the chance. The video quality is rough (Spielberg’s job is safe), the sound is more Dummy than Dolby, but the words are important entries into the historical record of one of the most important humans since Edison.
In a couple of weeks, I’ll be heading to London’s Conway Hall to participate in Monki Gras, the other-side-of-the-pond follow-up to 2011’s wildly successful Monktoberfest. The conferences grew out of a single tweet by Redmonk’s Steve O’Grady and are now on my (and many others’) Lanyard must-attend lists. And the venue choice couldn’t be better: Conway Hall was named after Moncure Daniel Conway anti-slavery advocate, out-spoken supporter of free thought & biographer of Thomas Paine — an appropriate location for a gathering of open-minded people having spirited discussion about how technology is changing the way we socialize and how the way we socialize is influencing the way we build and use technology.
It’s like old home week here at ManeyDigital. Yesterday, someone I led PR for back in 2003 was named the 2011 Black Corporate Executive of the Year by Black Enterprise Magazine. Today, I see on Hacker News that someone found a way to run Inferno on Android.
For the non-geeks who read the blog, Inferno is an outgrowth of a distributed operating system I helped launch in the 1990s. It was called Plan 9 (yes, that Plan 9…Paul Fillinich was the marketing lead who made that magic happen) and was created by members of the Computing Science Research Center at Bell Labs — the same group that created UNIX: Rob Pike, Ken Thompson, Dave Presotto, Phil Winterbottom and Dennis Ritchie.
Many of you will read this story about Louis Giaccardo and call him lucky or a hero or a survivor. To me he’s simply brother. Because Louie not only taught me what it means to be a Phi Kappa Tau fraternity man, he lived what he taught. And never more so than on that bluebird sky day in September.
The Phi Kappa Tau Creed
Phi Kappa Tau, by admitting me to membership, has conferred upon me a mark of distinction in which I take just pride. I believe in the spirit of brotherhood for which it stands. I shall strive to attain its ideals, and by so doing to bring to it honor and credit. I shall be loyal to my college and my chapter and shall keep strong my ties to them that I may ever retain the spirit of youth. I shall be a good and loyal citizen. I shall try always to discharge the obligation to others which arises from the fact that I am a fraternity man.
Is it the amount of time you’ve known each other? (13 years)
Is it how quickly you went from being co-workers to your families being, well, like family? (~1 year)
Is it the number of marathons you’ve run together? (2, Chicago and NYC)
Is it the number of Punkin’ Chunkin’s you’ve witnessed? (1)
Is it the number of top IBM execs you’ve both supported? (2, Patrick and Adkins)
Is it the amount of sushi one can be served in a hot tub on the side of a Killington ski slope? (18 pieces)
Is it the number of bottles of red, Yards or Black Maple Hill you’ve shared over late-night debates about PR, politics and people? (let’s not go there)
Is it the number of laughs, brainstorms, conversations and memories you’ve experienced together? (too many to count)
In the case of Tim Blair, his wife, sons and dogs, friendship is defined as all of that…and more. The news this past week that Tim — one of the smartest and nicest human beings I’ve ever known — is returning to his beloved Chicago is but one more entry in the definition of our friendship. Because while I and my family are sad to see them move even just a timezone away, we know the unbreakable bond of friendship we’ve built over the past 13 years is defined not by distance, but by the sum of all that encompasses what it means to be called a friend.
(Awesome image by Art Gentile, Intelligencer staff photographer)
Every year, Jenn rallies the other mothers in the neighborhood to surprise the kids when they get off the bus on the last day of the school year. And by surprise, I mean soak them with as many water balloons and super soakers as she can find. The little aqua assassins ganged up on me this year, but I was able to return fire and drench a number of them.
The local paper, The Intelligencer, was also on hand to capture the festivities (thanks to our neighbor, Victoria, for tipping them off). Photographer Art Gentile captured me returning fire on one of the kids.
*As an aside, I have been really impressed with the quality of the photojournalism coming out of The Intelligencer over the past year or so. Not sure if they are doing anything differently, but the composition, sharpness and vividness of their images are some of the best I’ve seen. Way to go Art and crew!
Four passengers set sail that day for a seven day tour…okay, so my 1970s TV show theme rhyming isn’t quite laureate-worthy. But my recollection of my first cruise this past week and the tips and observations I’m about to impart on you, oh wayward blog visitor, are worth continuing.
The inaugural cruise occurred on the Disney Magic, sailing out of Florida’s Port Canaveral with scheduled stops in St. Maarten, St. Thomas and Disney’s private island in the Abaco’s, Castaway Cay.
The highlight of the trip was supposed to be Castaway Cay, however, two unexpected emergency stops to drop off passengers in need of immediate medical assistance and some equally unexpected rough weather kept us from the island. Bummer indeed. It may be the only real area where Disney’s impeccable customer service fell short over the entire week.
If there’s a book on the connection between service and brand, Disney is the only company worth studying. What should be a stressful vacation – close quarters, children, and did I mention close quarters and children? – is anything but. From the first step onto the dock to the last step back onto solid ground, Disney’s cast members not only took care of every single thing, but 99% of the time anticipated it. For example, the waiters grabbed knife and fork and cut up the kids’ dishes every evening so parents could enjoy their meals…and in the case of Tomislav and Lewellen (the dining team with us every breakfast and dinner) they actually fed them their first bite. You will not find a better crew dedicated to making your cruise as perfect as possible. On that, I put my word.
Below, for the benefit of the few readers I have and the almighty Google, are my random observations and tips from a virgin cruiser:
Plan early, plan often. My wife started the booking process at least a year in advance, giving us the opportunity to score an outside room with a veranda. There’s nothing like waking up each morning to sun and sea (or the occasional island), nor nothing like soaking in a sea of stars unimpeded by city lights.
Exercise early, exercise often. You might as well start putting calories in the bank when you start the booking process. You will eat, you will drink…you will pack on pounds.
Food and drink. I expected high gourmet vittles based on the reports I heard from more seasoned cruisers (and by more seasoned I mean those who had gone on at least one cruise). The food was good, but the foodie in me had higher expectations. Not Le Cirque, but not Cancun all-inclusive either. One of the things I enjoyed was the constant changing of menus between restaurants. Definitely an opportunity to try new dishes. Drinks were drinks. That said, I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the wine lists at dinner. Good grapes and not overly marked up (seemed to me like roughly 2x).
Entertainment. I’m told other cruises entertain guests with fairly campy shows (although I did hear rumor that one of the other ships in the harbor at St. Thomas had Cirque du Soleil and Blue Man Group on it). On the Magic, we had a different Broadway-level original show each night, plus very funny comedians and other performers. I thought it would get stale, but the entertainment was, well, entertaining.
Excursions. We booked two: a beach day on St. Maarten and a snorkeling catamaran cruise on St. John. I hate feeling like a tourist when I travel, so I’d book separately on a future cruise. That said, the excursions were well managed and painless (and the crew of the Jolly Mon catamaran was a blast).
We’ve booked our second cruise for 2013 already, so, to wrap up, yes, I’d go again (this from someone who steadfastly fought going on a cruise for years). I no longer think of a cruise as a floating hotel; they are more like floating resorts. I’d go with my expectations in check about the food and wearing the Scarlet T every time I stepped off the boat. And I’d exercise more. A lot more.
It’s been quite a few years since I’ve gone out for a proper run. This morning, after resting up from a weeklong trip to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress, I decided to see if the running jones was still coursing through my slow twitch muscle fibers. It was. Granted, the distance was short (3.5 miles) and the time was slow (acceptable for a marathon; unacceptable for a 5k), but muscles have memory and mine remembered what it was like 20 years ago to run competitively for the Trenton State College varsity cross country team. (Photo: Me crossing the line; high school 1600m)
