New York (up)state of mind

I write this on a flight from Buffalo to Nashville where we have a connection before we head home to Austin. Amy and I just finished up a long weekend with friends in a ski town called Ellicottville, about an hour outside of Buffalo. Ski towns in the summer are nice. Mountains with cool and crisp mornings contrasted with the sharpness of the midday sun. Scenery abounds. The weekends always have something going on to try to lure people to go to their vacation homes outside of the busy season. 

Amy and I beat the rest of our crew here as I was able to sneak in some work in Rochester on Thursday. It meant a nice dinner by ourselves Wednesday night at this legit Italian place. It also gave us a chance to go to Niagara Falls on Friday as well. Neither of us had ever been. I think my Parents honeymooned there, but I'll have to confirm with my Mom next time we talk. 

The Falls did not disappoint. We skipped the boat ride, but did take the long elevator down to where we could be a the base of the Falls. They have a makeshift platform and with stairs and ramps with plenty of areas to roam around. I say makeshift, because they take it down before winter each year to prevent the freezing water from the Falls destroying the structure.

You wear a poncho and still get wet. I went up to the edge where you feel the power of the Falls. We learned about Nikola Tesla and hydropower. We ate ice cream. It was a good day.

And then the party started. Tracy, Allen, and Alison arrived Friday night. We were all there to celebrate our friend Sarah's birthday.  She's a part of the NYC crew that Amy has become good friends with. Her husband, Jeff, planned a great weekend, filled with mountain golf that had some breathtaking (and challenging) holes, some pool time, good food, and better company. It was great to get to know Sarah and Jeff a bit better, as well as their extended group of friends and family.

It was really great to spend time with Alison, Tracy, and Allen. John apparently had something more important to do. It was the right balance between them asking about how I'm doing, showing that they care, and then moving on to making jokes that I'm not going to share here about the weird restaurant/club in Ellicottville called "Balloons". We made fun of people, each other, and everything was light and easy.

How I’m feeling

There's an expression: "No matter where you go, there you are". But that wasn't the case on this trip. The weight of the cancer diagnosis, the upcoming treatments, the symptoms I've had, the uncertainty of everything…It wasn't the main thing and it wasn't top of mind. Most of the time. There were moments, but they passed. I did cough up blood again Friday night, and then again Saturday morning. But not after that.  

Today, I feel like I normally feel after a long weekend away with friends. A little worn out from the late nights, lack of sleep, and one too many drinks. Aside from that, I'm good. I'm looking forward to getting home and seeing Cleo. 

What I'm thankful for

It's been super humbling to share the news of my condition with so many friends, family, and colleagues. I shared my diagnosis and treatment plan with a lot more people last week, and so many people reached out to let me know that they care – that they are in my corner as Amy and I fight this thing.

I'm fortunate to have my Mom, my sister Amy, her husband Andy, and their kids Natalie and Peter in my corner, as well as the extended family that I was lucky enough to marry into. To have my childhood friends, my Manayunk friends, the Taster's crew, the NYC crew, the team I lead at work, and the leadership team I'm a part of at work. And others. I'm super thankful for that.

A Memory

Driving all around western New York brought back memories of all of the trips I've made to the Finger Lakes region over the years. The summer in this region really shines – everything is green and lush with lots of water everywhere. And there is distance between places. I've made more trips than I can count to this area. First, I came with Brendan, Diana, and Christine to visit our friend John Urcioli in Syracuse. We stayed at John's Dad's place in Syracuse, listened to good music, and spent a day doing a limo tour of the wineries in the Finger Lakes.

From there, I did a couple of trips with the Shatts, Trevor, Dave, Jen, and others to visit Eric Shatt who was a vintner at one of the wineries. We barbequed ribs one day and then E-Shatt let his giant half wolf/half dog eat all of the rib bones. Fortunately, it survived, though there were piles of evidence spread around his yard. Again, more wineries, and long drives around the lakes. I was hooked.

As I started to have serious girlfriends, I thought…geez, the Finger Lakes seems like a great place for a couple to go. And I did. Multiple trips with Erin, prior Amy, and my wife, (current, future, and always) Amy. Though there were common themes, each trip was different and nice. There was blueberry picking, kayaking in the lake, farm to table restaurants, croquet, alpaca farms, hiking the Gorges, garlic festivals, and wine. Over the years, I learned the better wineries to stop at. The ones with half decent Reisling, good views, good cheese to pair with the wine, vineyards that you could walk through and see the grapes. The wine always tasted much better when you were there.

There were vacation rentals, weird hotels, bed and breakfasts with Corgis. But mostly, I remember the drives. The 30 minutes from place to place with a lake to one side, beautiful scenery all around, and good conversations. 

I didn't feel skeevy about taking more than one girlfriend to the Finger Lakes, because…I loved the area before I knew any of them, and wanted to share the area with each of them.

What I'm looking forward to

Our good friends in Austin, Louis and Ashley, are about to have a baby. Super happy for them, though they don't realize yet that they are going to be completely absorbed in the baby and not be able to be the same sort of childless friends that are game for anything.

But what I'm looking forward to is that they also have season tickets to Austin FC. Louis just let me know that Ashley's not going to be going to any games as her delivery date nears, so he's got some tickets ear marked for him and I to go to a game or two. I haven't been to one yet, and I'm sort of going through soccer withdrawal now that the World Cup is over. Really looking forward to catching a game.   

Something I recommend

Amy and I were really struggling to find something new to watch on TV, and somehow landed on this addictive procedural show on Netflix, called "The Last Ship". It stars Eric Dane (better known as McSteamy, I think – RIP) as the captain of a Navy ship while the world is in the throes of a pandemic. There's a doctor on board who is trying to develop a vaccine for the virus. It has Russians, monkeys, narco-terrorists, Al Qaeda…all the fun stuff.

It's hard for me to recommend this, because it's really kind of terrible. But trust me, it's addictive. If you find yourself in a bind, you'll start, and maybe not stop.

It's five seasons and started before COVID – I'm curious to see how they address the actual pandemic as this show continues. We're almost done with Season 1. Future seasons remain the great unknown – as such they are beyond the scope of this recommendation. Also, I think a good bit of the show is right wing propaganda.  

The good guys shoot good. The bad splay their bullets everywhere but their targets. 

What I ate

Thursday night, Amy and I went to this great little restaurant called West Rose, in Ellicottville. We had a delicious Ricotta Cheese with Focaccia Bread and a Calabrian chili jam. We learned that the Buffalo area is the largest producer of Ricotta Cheese in the US. We also drank one of Amy's favorite wines. A Zinfandel by Orin Swift called "8 years in the Desert". Normally, it's an expensive bottle, but it was a half off bottle night at the West Rose, so we made it happen. 

Random thought

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is that you can't know both the exact position and the exact momentum of a tiny particle at the same time. The more closely you measure one value, the less exact your knowledge of the other value becomes. Light cannot be observed as being a photon and a wave at the same time. By extension, the act of observation inherently changes that which is being observed. If you look at something to understand that something, your looking changes that which you are looking at. 

When I first started writing these blog posts, I thought that at some point I might share them with family and friends. I didn't (and still don't) know how far I would extend this, but I expected at some point to share it. But that was abstract because I hadn't shared it yet. I didn't know how that would feel. Now that I've shared it, writing it feels a little different as suddenly there is the act of observation changing that which is being observed. How will this be read? How will this be heard? What will so and so think? Will my Mom correct my grammar. 

Point is, I'd love to share the jokes we made up about this restaurant/night club, called Balloons, in Ellicottville, but I can't. They're too inappropriate. If this was just a journal for myself, I could capture it all down and remember it in the future, should I look back on all of this. 

But separately, there are so many jokes in life that are lost to the feebleness of memory. You remember the laughing, but not what made you laugh. Brendan and I laughed so hard in Mr. Irwin's class in 4th grade that we got Ds during the first marking period. But what did we laugh about? I have no idea. But I'm sure it was funny and would make me laugh now, if I could just remember it. 

Which has me drifting from Heisenberg and more to Milan Kundera. And all of this could actually just be the Observation Fallacy. Or perhaps Schrodinger's Cat. Is the cat in the box alive, or is it dead? Is it a photon or a wave? Is this actually what I'm feeling or is it what I want the reader to feel that I'm feeling?

The only answer is "Yes".