Merry Go Round
Hello World,
To the untrained observer, it would appear to be some sort of competition afoot in the local area as to which week can produce the world's worst weather. I admit that I am biased, but my vote goes to the week I came back from vacation, when it was almost 100 degrees and we had no electricity for two days. Although since then, the weather has certainly not improved, in fact in some ways it has deteriorated considerably, but I find that anything is easier to take once you've got electricity going for you. And once you get it back, I can tell you that you certainly don't take it for granted, like you did beforehand, when it was just always there, like gravity, and you didn't even have to think about it. No indeed not, you treat it like the precious commodity that it is, and glad of it, especially in this horrible weather. As I said to Bill, while there's no good time to have a blackout, there's many ways that you can make heat, but there's only one way you can make cold, so without the juice, you're just plain out of luck. Then we found out that thousands of other households had been without electricity for a week or more, so I suppose we had reason to be grateful, although it certainly didn't seem like it at the time.
That same week on Friday, the thunder and lightning were so bad that I believe every car alarm went off in a six-block radius around the hospital, and to top it all off, the hospital got struck by lightning as well. (Meanwhile, the 40-story Trump Tower that's under construction around the corner, and along with its crane is the tallest structure for miles in any direction, remained untouched, so that should tell you something right there about who The Donald has in his pocket.) Obviously the hospital is protected against that and has plenty of emergency power, so we didn't lose our lights or computers during the storm. But the lightning proved too much for the telephone system, which keeled right over, taking the automated attendant, voice mail, overhead paging, and a variety of other features along with it. I heard later that the elevators also stopped working, so that must have been a long weekend at the employer of last resort, because I know that many of the problems weren't corrected until late on Sunday or even Monday. This may be the only time that we all thought it was a good thing that we work in one of the squatty little out-buildings of the campus, and not the main hospital, since our building is so old that it pre-dates the invention of elevators, and is constructed entirely of straw and mud, and couldn't attract lightning if it tried.
Here's another story from my vacation. Back when the dinosaurs roamed the unformed land masses, and my family first began camping at Wildwood Park (actually it was in 1958) there were four camping sections (A, B, C and D) in a sort of four-leaf clover pattern, with a traffic circle in the center. Inside the traffic circle was a dark wood building with the bathrooms, which the park maps referred to as the "comfort station," but which everyone else called "The Roundy" because although the building was square, it was on a round plot of land and had a stocky post-and-rail fence all the way around it that served to accentuate its roundness. Of course, it was good to have bathrooms, but as to comforts, that would have been an exaggeration of epic proportions that not even the loosest interpretation of the term could support. The building was small, dark and damp, all raw wood, cement and cinder block, with what was probably Army surplus latrine supplies, and a single bare light bulb in the rafters that did little to dispel the gloom. On one side were four wooden shower cubicles with rickety half-doors and silver pull-chains, and since the light bulb couldn't shine that far, this area had no roof, just bare rafters open to the sky, so you could use the natural light of the outdoors to see what you were washing. Of course, you couldn't take a shower if it was raining, but back then, the shower idea was reserved for the utmost necessity, and not the recreational experience it has since become. This was because the park piped in their shower water directly from the Antarctic, and pumped it into a special building where they froze it before sending it to the showers, so that when you pulled the chain, what actually came out were tiny slivers of ice, like sleet, and felt like hundreds of tiny frozen needles all over your body. These were not showers for the faint-hearted, and even among campers who prided themselves on their resilience, they would admit that they were taking the fastest showers of their lives.
As the park became more popular, and more people were camping in what was supposed to be the "overflow" area above Sections A and C, they turned it into E Section for regular camping, and decided that they needed another comfort station so people in the new section didn't have so far to walk for the bathrooms. This newer building was much nicer, cleaner and brighter with more amenities, and everyone called it the New Roundy, although it lacked personality and had no fence around it. Because it wasn't in a circle, but rather squeezed between three different sections on a triangle-shaped piece of land, we considered it the height of wit to refer to it as "The Triangulary" and fancied ourselves the camping equivalent of Noel Coward for coming up with this play on words. For many campsites in A and C, the New Roundy was actually closer than what was becoming known as the Old Roundy, and although the building and fixtures were newer, the water was just as cold, so the advantages were limited to distance only. Years later, when they added on the Trailer Section at the other side of the park, over the bitter protests of the purists and hide-bound traditionalists, and built their comfort station with WARM WATER, we thought it was the end of the world as we knew it.
When Bill and I went to Wildwood in the 1980's, we found that the Roundy had been renovated to include a real roof, actual overhead lighting, and wall outlets for people to use their hair dryers and electric razors, plus both the Old and New Roundy had warm water in the sinks and showers. This was camping for sissies, as far as I was concerned, but it was a welcome change after years of braving the icicle torture of those frigid showers. Suddenly, you found people in the showers at all hours of the day and night, or middle of the night, from little old ladies to infants in arms, that would never have set foot in the old showers. I thought they had gone as far as they could go with these enhanced comforts, until last year, when the New Roundy unexpectedly got a make-over, where they replaced all of the showers with lovely "motel-type" shower stalls in a sparkling finish and real hot and cold water controls instead of a pull chain. If this was my tax dollars at work, I considered it money well spent indeed!
But they didn't stop there. This year, when we first arrived and were on our way to the beach, we came up the hill from the campsite, and where the Old Roundy should have been, there was instead this miraculous new structure looming in the traffic circle, all blindingly new and shiny, with windows, skylights, doors, sidewalks and decorative landscape elements all over itself. I gasped. I couldn't believe that they actually tore down the Old Roundy and built a whole new building in its place. And what a building! It's like the public restrooms in a fancy hotel, all pretty tile and embellished surfaces, with the new-fangled automatic flush toilets, sinks and hand dryers that you find in highway rest stops. The showers have been expanded and couldn't be lovelier, with plenty of room and many other enhancements. I was really looking forward to trying the place on for size, and I got my chance on Monday when I came back from the beach. This was the first I discovered that the new shower controls, which Bill and I both couldn't figure out after seeing them on Saturday, consisted of a solitary push button (rather than a pull chain) which would give you a single 30-second burst of warm water. Anyone who's ever lived with me can tell you that I'm one of those people who can easily spend an hour in the shower, just letting the hot water pour over me while my mind wanders, so you can imagine what kind of a workout I was giving that darned push button when I was trying to wash off all of the sand and seaweed from the beach. As much as I was amazed and astounded by this new building, I realized these new push button showers were not for me, and I was relieved when I went back to the New Roundy the next day and found they still had their lovely motel showers from last year, where I could indulge myself in a bathing sensation that can only be described as camping for sissies in spades.
Of course, anyone could see what the biggest problem is here. What do you call the Old Roundy, now that it's newer than the New Roundy? The New Old Roundy? Does that make the New Roundy, the Old New Roundy? All week long, when I was trying to explain to Bill the differences between the buildings, I found myself saying things like, "Well, in the new Roundy, I don't mean the New Roundy, but the new building they built where the Old Roundy was ... " or "Of course, in the other Roundy, I mean, the New Roundy, not the "new" new one that they just built, but the ORIGINAL New Roundy ... " It was actually funny how confusing it was, especially after 40 years of making perfect sense, to see how the concept of "old" and "new" were just turned completely on their heads with one simple construction project. I was finally reduced to calling it "the rebuilt Old Roundy" just to save time and aggravation, because everything else just made a bad situation even worse.
So that was the biggest surprise of camping this year, where I don't mind saying, I don't expect a lot in the way of surprises after several decades of going to the same place, year in and year out. They've really moved right into the 21st Century at Wildwood, and I never thought I'd see the day, especially knocking down the Old Roundy and everything. I guess it just goes to prove that time marches on, and we simply have to march along with it, even out in the wilderness, where it seems that nothing ever changes until one day you realize that everything is different. Of course, I'm in favor of progress as much as the next fellow, although I noticed that Bill has had this funny look on his face since we got back, and keeps mumbling something about replacing our shower with one of those 30-second push button models, but I'm sure I must have misunderstood that part.
To the untrained observer, it would appear to be some sort of competition afoot in the local area as to which week can produce the world's worst weather. I admit that I am biased, but my vote goes to the week I came back from vacation, when it was almost 100 degrees and we had no electricity for two days. Although since then, the weather has certainly not improved, in fact in some ways it has deteriorated considerably, but I find that anything is easier to take once you've got electricity going for you. And once you get it back, I can tell you that you certainly don't take it for granted, like you did beforehand, when it was just always there, like gravity, and you didn't even have to think about it. No indeed not, you treat it like the precious commodity that it is, and glad of it, especially in this horrible weather. As I said to Bill, while there's no good time to have a blackout, there's many ways that you can make heat, but there's only one way you can make cold, so without the juice, you're just plain out of luck. Then we found out that thousands of other households had been without electricity for a week or more, so I suppose we had reason to be grateful, although it certainly didn't seem like it at the time.
That same week on Friday, the thunder and lightning were so bad that I believe every car alarm went off in a six-block radius around the hospital, and to top it all off, the hospital got struck by lightning as well. (Meanwhile, the 40-story Trump Tower that's under construction around the corner, and along with its crane is the tallest structure for miles in any direction, remained untouched, so that should tell you something right there about who The Donald has in his pocket.) Obviously the hospital is protected against that and has plenty of emergency power, so we didn't lose our lights or computers during the storm. But the lightning proved too much for the telephone system, which keeled right over, taking the automated attendant, voice mail, overhead paging, and a variety of other features along with it. I heard later that the elevators also stopped working, so that must have been a long weekend at the employer of last resort, because I know that many of the problems weren't corrected until late on Sunday or even Monday. This may be the only time that we all thought it was a good thing that we work in one of the squatty little out-buildings of the campus, and not the main hospital, since our building is so old that it pre-dates the invention of elevators, and is constructed entirely of straw and mud, and couldn't attract lightning if it tried.
Here's another story from my vacation. Back when the dinosaurs roamed the unformed land masses, and my family first began camping at Wildwood Park (actually it was in 1958) there were four camping sections (A, B, C and D) in a sort of four-leaf clover pattern, with a traffic circle in the center. Inside the traffic circle was a dark wood building with the bathrooms, which the park maps referred to as the "comfort station," but which everyone else called "The Roundy" because although the building was square, it was on a round plot of land and had a stocky post-and-rail fence all the way around it that served to accentuate its roundness. Of course, it was good to have bathrooms, but as to comforts, that would have been an exaggeration of epic proportions that not even the loosest interpretation of the term could support. The building was small, dark and damp, all raw wood, cement and cinder block, with what was probably Army surplus latrine supplies, and a single bare light bulb in the rafters that did little to dispel the gloom. On one side were four wooden shower cubicles with rickety half-doors and silver pull-chains, and since the light bulb couldn't shine that far, this area had no roof, just bare rafters open to the sky, so you could use the natural light of the outdoors to see what you were washing. Of course, you couldn't take a shower if it was raining, but back then, the shower idea was reserved for the utmost necessity, and not the recreational experience it has since become. This was because the park piped in their shower water directly from the Antarctic, and pumped it into a special building where they froze it before sending it to the showers, so that when you pulled the chain, what actually came out were tiny slivers of ice, like sleet, and felt like hundreds of tiny frozen needles all over your body. These were not showers for the faint-hearted, and even among campers who prided themselves on their resilience, they would admit that they were taking the fastest showers of their lives.
As the park became more popular, and more people were camping in what was supposed to be the "overflow" area above Sections A and C, they turned it into E Section for regular camping, and decided that they needed another comfort station so people in the new section didn't have so far to walk for the bathrooms. This newer building was much nicer, cleaner and brighter with more amenities, and everyone called it the New Roundy, although it lacked personality and had no fence around it. Because it wasn't in a circle, but rather squeezed between three different sections on a triangle-shaped piece of land, we considered it the height of wit to refer to it as "The Triangulary" and fancied ourselves the camping equivalent of Noel Coward for coming up with this play on words. For many campsites in A and C, the New Roundy was actually closer than what was becoming known as the Old Roundy, and although the building and fixtures were newer, the water was just as cold, so the advantages were limited to distance only. Years later, when they added on the Trailer Section at the other side of the park, over the bitter protests of the purists and hide-bound traditionalists, and built their comfort station with WARM WATER, we thought it was the end of the world as we knew it.
When Bill and I went to Wildwood in the 1980's, we found that the Roundy had been renovated to include a real roof, actual overhead lighting, and wall outlets for people to use their hair dryers and electric razors, plus both the Old and New Roundy had warm water in the sinks and showers. This was camping for sissies, as far as I was concerned, but it was a welcome change after years of braving the icicle torture of those frigid showers. Suddenly, you found people in the showers at all hours of the day and night, or middle of the night, from little old ladies to infants in arms, that would never have set foot in the old showers. I thought they had gone as far as they could go with these enhanced comforts, until last year, when the New Roundy unexpectedly got a make-over, where they replaced all of the showers with lovely "motel-type" shower stalls in a sparkling finish and real hot and cold water controls instead of a pull chain. If this was my tax dollars at work, I considered it money well spent indeed!
But they didn't stop there. This year, when we first arrived and were on our way to the beach, we came up the hill from the campsite, and where the Old Roundy should have been, there was instead this miraculous new structure looming in the traffic circle, all blindingly new and shiny, with windows, skylights, doors, sidewalks and decorative landscape elements all over itself. I gasped. I couldn't believe that they actually tore down the Old Roundy and built a whole new building in its place. And what a building! It's like the public restrooms in a fancy hotel, all pretty tile and embellished surfaces, with the new-fangled automatic flush toilets, sinks and hand dryers that you find in highway rest stops. The showers have been expanded and couldn't be lovelier, with plenty of room and many other enhancements. I was really looking forward to trying the place on for size, and I got my chance on Monday when I came back from the beach. This was the first I discovered that the new shower controls, which Bill and I both couldn't figure out after seeing them on Saturday, consisted of a solitary push button (rather than a pull chain) which would give you a single 30-second burst of warm water. Anyone who's ever lived with me can tell you that I'm one of those people who can easily spend an hour in the shower, just letting the hot water pour over me while my mind wanders, so you can imagine what kind of a workout I was giving that darned push button when I was trying to wash off all of the sand and seaweed from the beach. As much as I was amazed and astounded by this new building, I realized these new push button showers were not for me, and I was relieved when I went back to the New Roundy the next day and found they still had their lovely motel showers from last year, where I could indulge myself in a bathing sensation that can only be described as camping for sissies in spades.
Of course, anyone could see what the biggest problem is here. What do you call the Old Roundy, now that it's newer than the New Roundy? The New Old Roundy? Does that make the New Roundy, the Old New Roundy? All week long, when I was trying to explain to Bill the differences between the buildings, I found myself saying things like, "Well, in the new Roundy, I don't mean the New Roundy, but the new building they built where the Old Roundy was ... " or "Of course, in the other Roundy, I mean, the New Roundy, not the "new" new one that they just built, but the ORIGINAL New Roundy ... " It was actually funny how confusing it was, especially after 40 years of making perfect sense, to see how the concept of "old" and "new" were just turned completely on their heads with one simple construction project. I was finally reduced to calling it "the rebuilt Old Roundy" just to save time and aggravation, because everything else just made a bad situation even worse.
So that was the biggest surprise of camping this year, where I don't mind saying, I don't expect a lot in the way of surprises after several decades of going to the same place, year in and year out. They've really moved right into the 21st Century at Wildwood, and I never thought I'd see the day, especially knocking down the Old Roundy and everything. I guess it just goes to prove that time marches on, and we simply have to march along with it, even out in the wilderness, where it seems that nothing ever changes until one day you realize that everything is different. Of course, I'm in favor of progress as much as the next fellow, although I noticed that Bill has had this funny look on his face since we got back, and keeps mumbling something about replacing our shower with one of those 30-second push button models, but I'm sure I must have misunderstood that part.
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 9:35 PM
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