Pancho Villa, from a portion of the huge mural at the Palacio de Gobierno, Chihuahua. Villa used the city as a base during the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1913.

Travel and teaching resumed on January 18.  Driving to DFW Airport, I was excited to be heading back to the classroom, and to a new place.  That evening I flew 620 miles southwest to Chihuahua, Mexico.  Waiting outside the customs hall was a wonderful young friend, Alejandro Moreno, and his buddy Javier Ortega.  I met Alejandro at last year’s South American Business Forum in Buenos Aires, and he suggested a visit to his school, Tecnológico de Monterrey en Chihuahua, one of some 35 campuses of the school known more commonly as Tec de Monterrey.  A private university, Tec is arguably the premier engineering and business school in the country, and offers many other disciplines.

Alejandro Moreno, from his Facebook page

The chatter in the car from the airport to hotel covered a bunch of stuff, but most interesting and wonderful was the news that Alejandro had secured an appointment to work overseas for two years for ProMéxico, the nation’s investment and export promotion agency.  About 1,000 young people applied for 30 positions.  He was to begin a month of training in three days, then would learn where he would be posted.  Way cool.

Was up at 5:30, up and into the hotel restaurant for the kind of breakfast that has sustained Mexican people for centuries: chilaquiles, tortilla chips mixed with sauce and cheese, and a big helping of refritos, refried beans.  Had a nice chat with the waiter, an early chance to use a bit of Spanish.  Was into Javier’s car before 6:30, driving a few kilometers to the campus.  First class ran from 7:00 to 8:00, my “Ten Pieces of Advice” talk to kids in their last year of Tec’s high school, called Prepa.  They were young and enthusiastic, and I did my best to pump them up.  We grabbed a coffee and went back to the classroom from 9:00 to 10:30.  A good start.

Part of my first class at Tec, the youngest and the most enthusiastic!

Alejandro’s friend Salvador arrived with a Toyota pickup and we zipped into the center (Chihuahua, population 850,000, is the capital of the state of the same name).  The U.S. news media would have you believe that most cities in northern Mexico are in state of permanent mayhem, but the scene on every street was tranquilo.  We parked the car across from a wonderfully ornate theater and cinema from the 1920s, the Colonial, which had been recycled as a cultural center for the city.  A kindly guy near the door unlocked it and allowed us a quick look inside.  Next stop, the cathedral, begun in 1725 and finished 101 years later.  We then ambled a few blocks to Quinta Gameros, a mansion built 1907-08 and now a museum with permanent and temporary art collections.  The interior was stunning, mostly Art Nouveau but with some neo-Gothic and other styles.  In the basement and on the first floor was a temporary exhibition of a contemporary Mexico artist known as Kin Kin, who paints in a distinctive folk-art style.

The former Colonial theater, now a cultural center

Chihuahua Cathedral

Interior of the Cathedral

Quinta Gameros

Art Nouveau bed and nightstand, Quinta Gameros

Artisan, Quinta Gameros

One of KinKin's many powerful and evocative works, depicting the violence and sadness in Ciudad Juarez, the city most in the crosshairs of drug violence, 200 miles north of Chihuahua

We headed back across downtown to a museum in the former post office that mainly focused on Hidalgo, a priest who was one of the many fathers of Mexican independence, and who was executed in Chihuahua in 1811.  Last stop was the ornate Palacio de Gobierno, state offices completed in 1892.  Walls facing the large courtyard were a series of murals depicting the long fight for Mexican independence.  When we Americans think that our 1776-81 war was a major struggle, we would do well to look south, where it took more than a century for Mexico to be fully free.  They are a persistent people!

Palacio de Gobierno

Benito Juarez, one of my heroes and five-time president of the republic, depicted in the large mural at the Palacio; he is often compared to Lincoln, depicted at left.

Miguel Hidalgo, from the same mural

At two it was time for lunch (late by my standards but on time in Mexico!).  A group of Tec faculty and students gathered at El Retablo, a wonderful restaurant.  I won some major cred by ordering tacos made from barbecued beef tongue; they were seriously yummy.   My hosts were also delighted to see me scooping plenty of the several salsas on the table, and I explained that I was well accustomed to spice north of the Rio Grande.

Back at Tec I worked my e-mail (the school has a free, open wi-fi network, totally great) and prepared for the big event, a two-hour presentation on leadership, open to the school and the wider community.  I began the talk en Español, a few paragraphs that I worked up with Google Translate and polished by Ann Hathaway, daughter of my first Spanish teacher Don Miguel, and her brother-in-law, a native Mexican.  I think the audience appreciated the effort.  Here’s the text in English:

Good day, ladies and gentlemen.  I will begin in Spanish, not to be a “show off,” but to express my deep respect for and my long friendship with your great ation and your people.  I first visited Mexico more than four decades ago, and have been back many times since – but not often enough.

Forty years ago, I studied just a little about Mexican history, but enough to come to appreciate the many struggles that have swept over this land.  And I learned what remains my favorite quotation of all time, from the great Benito Juarez, a man of justice and compassion, who said, “respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz” (“the respect of the rights of others is the peace”).  Simply brilliant words, and as relevant today as they were when your president first spoke them in 1867.

I have a presentation to make, and I could probably continue in this direction for the entire time allotted.  But permit me one more anecdote as introduction.  Some people back home were astonished when I told them I was coming here.  “My God,” they said, “it’s a war zone in Northern Mexico.  Don’t you watch TV?  Read the newspapers?”  Well, no, I don’t watch much TV, and certainly not for the news, but I do read a lot.  And my 42 years of international travel have taught me to look past headlines.  I understand tragedy and am deeply worried about the situation here.  But I live my life without fear, because if I give in to fear, than all who wish to terrorize – the Zetas, the Taliban, and others – will have won.  And one more thing: your state and your city would not be so dangerous if there was no demand for drugs in my country.  And for that, I apologize deeply, and pray that working together, we find a way to solve this huge problem for all of us.

===================================================================================

The talk was well received, and by eight I was worn out.  My young hosts, ever hospitable, offered to take me to dinner, but I opted to go back to the hotel, have a couple of beers and a light dinner, and head to sleep.

I was back at it early Friday, three back-to-back lectures from 7:30 to noon.  Toward the end of the middle one, a smiling, middle-aged fellow entered the classroom and sat down next to me, at the desk in front.  I asked him if I should stop, and he waved me on.  During question time, he introduced himself, Joaquín Guerra, and he was president!  In the early afternoon I did a bit more work-work, we grabbed a quick burrito at 1:30, and from 3:00 to 4:00 I gave the seventh and last lecture of the visit, to a group of mechanical engineering students interested in aerospace.  I learned that Tec and the state government of Chihuahua were developing an “aerospace cluster” to manufacture aviation components there, taking advantage of labor cost and proximity to the U.S. market.  Very smart.  Indeed, on the visit I saw lots of positive economic development, which contrasted markedly with the simplistic televised narrative of chaos.

A corner tower of a former hospital across the street from Tec, and in the background a solar-powered building in the high-tech business park linked to the university

The main engineering building at Tec

Back to the hotel, a bit of a break, and at six Alejandro and I drove across town (stopping briefly to meet his mother).  The day before, he promised beer and dinner at “a cowboy bar,” and I was looking forward to rubbing shoulders with some grizzled vaqueros (the north of Mexico has a lot in common with the American West).  The cowboy bar turned out to be La Cabaña Smokehouse, a U.S.-style barbecue place with country-music videos, but it was a lotta fun.  Alejandro, Javier, Yvon, a friend of Alejandro, and I ate ribs, drank beer, and laughed a lot.  They wanted to head to a bar after dinner, but I was plumb wore out.  Back at the hotel, I hugged Alejandro, thanked him, and wished him well in his new job.

The guys would not let me take a taxi to the airport at 5:45 the next morning.  Javier picked me up, and drove me out, the last kindness in a trip filled with them.   Indeed, I could not recall a school that treated me as well as Tec in Chihuahua.  I look forward to returning.

This was the first teaching that was self-funded – you may recall that as part of its bankruptcy restructuring, late in 2011 American ended its decades of reimbursement of travel expenses not covered by the schools.  I’ve created a “teaching fund” to enable my lecturing, and will deposit miscellaneous income into it.  The new approach brings another benefit: complete freedom to offer critical analysis and comment.  Independence is good!

Dulles Airport, Virginia, four miles from Robin's new place

Two days later, on the 26^th, the last trip of the year, up to Northern Virginia with Robin and her daughters.  Unhappily, her marriage of four years had dissolved.  Time to move forward, with resolve.  My task was to help her move into a new apartment.  In 2007, when Linda and I moved into our swell bungalow, I vowed that the next move would see me carried out horizontally.  Well, not yet!  Nope, time for a strong back and swift but sure foot.  I was cranky when we pulled out of the driveway, but my attitude brightened on the way to the airport.  Gear up, Rob.

We landed in a cold, pelting rain, and worried that it would still be wet the next day, when the movers would arrive.  We got back to their old house, Brett took charge of Dylan and Carson, and Robin and I started loading boxes into her capacious (but soon to depart) Volvo SUV.  We got quite a bit moved in late afternoon and early evening.  Walking down the corridor of her new apartment building in Herndon (just three miles from the old place), it occurred to me that what she was doing was very brave.  Even with emotional and financial support from Linda and me, taking that big step took courage.  At dinner an hour later, I told her that.  And before going to sleep, I thought of all the moms who say “Enough,” and against big odds choose a new way rather than the joyless status quo.  But hold the stirring music: it’s still damned hard.

Wednesday dawned clear and windy.  Streets were dry.  Hooray.  Carlos and Freddy, movers that Robin found on Craigslist, showed up with a big former U-Haul truck, and with backs that made me marvel (and smiles and banter that made me smile), got all the big stuff loaded up and moved into the new place.  My guess was that at least one of them was in our republic illegally, and I was reminded of how so many people take their will for granted.  We did not, do not, will not.

Meanwhile, Robin and I schlepped boxes and tubs of clothes, toys, dishes, the stuff of life.  The gas man arrived to turn on the main for heat, hot water, and a warm stove.  We started the task of making a home.  Our daughter inherited our work ethic, and she swiftly brought order from chaos.  Tony Carter, an affable technician for the telecoms provider Cox arrived to take charge of setting up phone, cable, and Internet.  He ran into some troubles with the phone wiring, but he got it done (the next day I wrote his supervisor with a commendation).  I liked him a great deal, in part because he touched me, I mean physically, and I responded.  Touch is an interesting interaction with strangers.  While Tony was wrangling with the wires, I was in a tiny closet trying to get the pilot lit inside the water heater (under Virginia or local law, the technician who visited earlier was not permitted to light it, and he failed to tell Robin that he closed the gas supply valve; aieeeeeeeeeeee).

We were dead tired by the time he left, close to eight, but I needed to pick up my backpack at the old place, which had my toothbrush and netbook and stuff.  From there we headed to Reston Town Center and a plate of pasta and celebratory glass of vino at Vapiano.  I was asleep before 9:30.  Hard, into dreamland (I’ve been dreaming travel for more than four decades, so it wasn’t surprising that a travelogue ensued, that night riding the London Underground).

The original plan was to fly home at 9:50 Thursday morning.  But my work was not done, and it was not right to bail, so I shifted my flight to nine hours later, pulled on jeans, and got back to work.  Ate a bowl of cereal and connected the DVD player, a crucial task.  We then did two more trips back to the old place; at the end of the second I hopped on my trusty Dahon Helios folding bike, rode to the new place, folded it into its case, and put it on the balcony.  Nice!

Zipped out to Home Depot to buy Robin some tools and some other stuff.  First, a detour to Best Buy, where your scribe enjoyed a nice T-t-S moment with a returns clerk.  He asked for photo ID, saw the Texas driver’s license, and told me he had moved north from Houston.  I replied with a comment about cold eather, but he said the biggest loss was the lack of Whataburger, a Texas fast-food institution.  “Man, I miss those big cheeseburgers, some onion, mustard,” he said wistfully.  I shook his hand and wished him a Happy New Year.

Zoomed back for lunch and an afternoon of mopping up, mostly hanging pictures on walls – the tried and true way to create a sense of home.  Most of what I put up were pictures of the girls that Robin so dearly loves, and that made me smile.

The stalwart moving crew in front of a fabric castle that Santa Claus brought Dylan and Carson

As we say in Texas, we got ‘er done, so Robin drove me to Dulles Airport at 5:30.  I had not seen the main terminal building at night for years, and the scene was stunning.  I hugged and kissed Robin, then ambled west a few hundred yards to capture the grace of Finnish-American Eero Saarinen’s 1962 design.  “Soaring” is a word often used to describe it, and indeed it lifted my spirits heavenward.  Flew home, done.

In recent years, the sacred views of economists have increasingly come under attack.  Psychologists have led the charge, and they have pretty much shot holes through the notion that we behave in “economically rational” ways that economists for decades said we did.  I was thinking about these things a couple of weeks ago, as I contemplated the rubber duck in the bathroom of my hotel in St. Gallen, Switzerland.  More specifically, I was thinking about the “Made in Switzerland” stamp on the bottom of the cute plastic creature (by the way, the room had no tub, only a shower, which begs a question, but that’s for another post!).

Can you imagine an American hotel that would specifically order rubber ducks stamped “Made in USA”?  One wonders if there is a company left in our republic that still makes rubber ducks.  No, that manufacturing has, like so much else, moved to China.

But the people responsible for provisioning the City Hotel Weissenstein had chosen Swiss-made ducks, probably because they believed that their ducks were better.  In previous posts about travels in Helvetia, I have often observed that the country is filled with small- and medium-sized manufacturers, little plants churning out all matter of stuff.  I see them from the cars of the superb Schweizerische Bundesbahnen, the Swiss Federal Railways, and from there you see the backsides of industry all over the country – my German is good enough to figure out what the various plants make.

Some output is exported, and the Swiss have built a fine reputation for all sorts of stuff beyond what we usually think of, the watches and the chocolate.  But all those factories aren’t in the export trade; many (likely including the rubber-duck works) do a thriving business supplying a local market of fewer than 8 million.  Swiss stuff, whether sent abroad or sold within the confederation, is expensive.  I am wholly unaware of the nature of Swiss tariffs, but knowing what I do about their political-economic views, I suspect that they are quite open, so I doubt that the duck plant hides behind a steep wall of protectionism.

So the reason that the hotelier chose a Swiss rubber duck was that he or she believed that it was better.  Better quality.  Better because it helped the Swiss economy, which is really an abstract way of saying “I helped my neighbor stay employed.”  Isn’t that a powerful cultural value?  And maybe the hotelier knew more – and I am speculating here – perhaps knew that it was made in a plastics plant that was managed cleanly, unlike virtually every one of its counterparts in the PRC (the relative judgment about environmental responsibility would be a safe assumption).

We don’t think like that in the U.S.  We want it cheaper, so we can have more.  Maybe we should start thinking more like the Swiss, whose culture clearly values local support, even at the expense of conventional economics.

At the Hanoi Foreign Trade University, Vietnam, November 2010

Regular readers know that milestones are important to me.  One occurred today, and it merits a post.  Unhappily, American Airlines confirmed that as a result of their Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, they will no longer be able to support my classroom teaching.  They have done so for almost 23 years, since I first stepped forward in Professor Noden’s airline management class at Cornell University in April 1989.  It has been a remarkable ride.

With certainty, the journey to the classroom will continue, because it is important to me in several ways.  First, as an element of my volunteerism; together with work building wheelchair ramps for Dallas citizens who cannot afford them, it is a small expression of giving back.  Second, the airline industry needs people who can explain it clearly and convincingly, to combat nonsense in the media and elsewhere.  Third, my guest lecturing is after two decades woven into my identity and my sense of purpose.   And fourth, it is simply a great deal of fun.

At dinner with MBA students, University of Cambridge, October 2007

This teaching year has been typical of those of the past decade.  By the numbers, in 2011 I visited 25 schools, including three new ones: the University of Cologne, the Technical University of Delft (Netherlands), and the University of Maryland.   And I was fortunate to return more than once to some favorite places: the University of Cambridge (numero uno on my list), the Instituto Tecnologico de Buenos Aires (ITBA), and McGill University in Montreal.  As always, I’ve had memorable informal discussions with students and faculty hosts, especially at ITBA and with my great friend Jan Heide at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  The 73 classroom hours approached the teaching load of some of my faculty hosts.

But it’s never been about volume, only about the opportunity to connect with students.  My teaching style is almost always different from what they usually experience.  I see each lecture as a performance.  And beyond conveying perspectives on my chosen industry, the business of getting people together, my presence in classrooms outside the U.S. gives students and hosts an opportunity to see an American unlike those in the movies or on the news – not some Hollywood star or Washington politician, but a regular guy from the heartland (though one with views on the world and his nation different from what they expect).

In previous years, American’s Silver Birds and its purse propelled me to fascinating places afar, like the American University of Armenia, the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, the Australian Graduate School of Management in Sydney, and the Hanoi Foreign Trade University.

It’s unclear how much teaching I’ll be able to do with a combination of my own resources and increased support from the host institutions.  Anticipating this change, in the past fortnight I have reached out to schools and several have agreed to increase their expense support.  I’m very much hoping that my work with Intelligent Avionics will bear fruit in 2012 and beyond, and that some commission checks can be deposited into the teaching fund.  But in the end, if pressed, I’ll shake my piggy bank, because on some levels it’s an avocation; in their later years, some people spend more time on the golf course or on a mountain.  I head to the classroom.

I am determined to continue.

Finally, a word of thanks to everyone at American Airlines who made my teaching possible: the executives who supported it, people like Arnold Grossman and Bob Crandall; workmates like Steve Schlachter who stepped in when I was away; and people like Debbie Shanks who made sure I got reimbursed.  I like to think that my classroom presence also reflected well on that airline, which has struggled so greatly in the past decade.

One on one with a German Ph.D. student, St. Gallen, Switzerland, November 2008

At the American University of Armenia, Yerevan, September 2007

The end product: students from all over Latin America and the wider world after a presentation at the South American Business Forum, August 2011

Brandenburg Gate, Berlin

On December 1, I flew to Frankfurt for the last teaching trip of the year, and my 150^th journey to Europe.  I raised a glass to my good fortune, to the blessing of mobility, to widened Old World horizons for 40 years.  Landed in Germany, ambled across the airport to the train station (stopping outside Starbucks to pick up a free wi-fi signal), and onto the 9:43 ICE (really speedy) train to Düsseldorf, then onto a slower one to Münster.  It was my 2^nd trip of 2011 and 11^th to that pleasant old university town.  So I know my way around, and was at the hotel in no time.  My performance wasn’t until six, so I headed out for lunch, then to buy Robin and the girls a small handmade Christmas ornament from a little workshop in the former East Germany (this made four I’ve gotten at a nice little shop in Münster).  Normal conditions in early Deccember are what North Germans call schmudelwetter¸ which translates roughly to awful, wet, cold, windy, but the sun was out and it was lovely.  The town has a bunch of the traditional Christmas markets, and attracts thousands of tourists in Advent, so it was busy.  The afternoon light was really good, and I snapped some pictures, then headed back to the hotel for a short nap and shower.

Prinzipalmarkt, the main shopping street

Shop windows in Germany tend to be excellent, but never better than in Advent; here, as every year, a pastry shop on Prinzipalmarkt creates a mama pig and piglets entirely from marzipan!

Further reconstruction of Münster Cathedral (Dom)

Town Hall (Rathaus)

At five I met my longtime host, the great Manfred Krafft, one of Germany’s leading marketing professors and a good friend.  We yakked a bit, I spent 40 minutes offering some advice to one of his Ph.D. students, and at six I conducted an informal talk on career and life to undergrad students who are members of an honors program called Circle of Excellence in Marketing.  After the talk we visited one of the markets for a glass of glühwein (hot spiced wine) and a bit more talk, including a splendid chat with Sophia, who had been an au pair in White Plains, New York, and who really liked the U.S.  Am always happy to meet people like that, who can see and enjoy the best of our country.

Manfred and I then peeled off for dinner.  The plan was to return to my favorite eatery in town the Altes Leve (open 404 years, so they know their way around the kitchen), but it was packed, so we repaired to a Spanish place for a tasty plate of paella.  Long live the European Union!  Was asleep by 10:30.

But up around two.  I must have jinxed my sleep pattern by telling Manfred that I seemed to be over the time-zone woes that had been afflicting me in recent years.  Flopped around for a couple of hours, then back to Z-land until seven.  Big breakfast, out the door in pelting rain, to the train station and onto a packed local train to Hamm, then an ICE fast one east to Berlin, also crowded.  In fact, I didn’t get a seat; ever resourceful, I plopped onto the floor in the carpeted entry area and read The New York Times on my iPhone.  At Bielefeld, 25 minutes east, I got a seat, and did some work.  On my last trip on that line, in 2009, I slept through Wolfsburg, the Volkswagen headquarters, but was wide awake that day, to marvel at their huge presence: many big factory buildings, an office building a mile long, a power plant emblazoned with the VW logo, the Volkswagen Arena.

As I rode through the former East Germany, listening to local composers (Handel, Haydn, Mahler), I read The Warmth of Other Suns, a wonderful books that chronicles the Great Migration of African-Americans from the South to the North between 1915 and 1975; the book is filled with awful inhumanity (more in the South than the North, but plenty there, too), and as I looked out the window I thought about the inhumanity in that land, too – 50 years of woe, first the Nazis, then the Soviets, then the Stasi, the awful secret police described in a posts from December 2009 and December 2010.

We arrived in Berlin’s shiny new main station, the Hauptbahnhof¸ at 1:10.  I bought a day ticket on Berlin’s awesome transit system, the BVG, and hopped on an S-Bahn train up to my hotel, a Holiday Inn I booked online, relatively way cheap.  So I didn’t expect much, but it was a really nice place, and a superb location, a block from S-Bahn and U-Bahn (subway) stations.  Washed my face, unpacked a bit, and headed out, first destination the Berlin Wall Memorial not far away.

Restored portion of the wall and watchtower, Bernauer Strasse

My friend Michael Beckmann (who I would see the following day) and I made a flying visit to the memorial in 2008, but I had more time on this visit.  The weather was just awful, but that really fit the gloomy story of the Berlin Wall from its beginnings in 1961.  As I have written, those days scared the hell out of me back then, at age ten, and the emotions of a half-century ago are still with me.  That’s why I cried when I saw a black-and-white picture of an older lady crying because she could not attend a wedding of family who were now across the wall in the West.  Just heart-rending.  I walked into a small chapel, built on the site of the 1894 Church of the Reconciliation.  It had long been a thorn in the side of the East Germans, so they blew it up just four years before the wall fell in 1989.  There was a superb “documentation center” that included a database of dozens of people who were killed trying to escape.  I focused on several of the (few) women who were profiled.   The interpretive panels outside and in were full of grim facts, but some happy ones too: nearly 200,000 people escaped through secret tunnels and by other means.  People need to be free.

Marker for a 1962 escape tunnel, which ran beneath Bernauer Strasse

An wall-size example of the emotive black-and-white photos throughout the memorial

Sculpture entitled "Reconciliation," Bernauer Strasse

I headed back to the Friedrichstrasse train station, and to an adjacent museum call the “Palace of Tears,” which chronicled the sadness both of those who were permitted to leave the GDR legally (about 400,000) and those who escaped.  Very well done.  It was already dark, so I hopped on the U-Bahn and headed south.  If you Google “microbreweries in Berlin,” you might end up at BKK, the Bier-Kombinat Kreuzberg, a cool little bar in the fairly rough working-class district (discarded mattresses on the sidewalk, police sirens, ambulance around the corner) of Kreuzberg, in the former West Berlin, southeast of the center.

Walking in, the regulars stared hard.  Who was the American guy in the green raincoat?  It reminded me of a visit fellow geographers Tom Baerwald, Tom Harvey, and I made to a bar in the Over the Rhine neighborhood of Cincinnati in April 1980.  We walked in, and two dozen black faces stared at me.  Three decades later, the faces were white, but the effect was the same.  What to do?  Turn around?  We didn’t in 1980 and I didn’t that night.  I ambled to the end of the bar, where a friendly young woman welcomed me and drew samples of three of their homemade brews.  All were nice, but I settled on an IPA made with organic barley and took my place on a chair that once was in a movie theater, and turned my attention to the focus of everyone in the bar: the Bundesliga (top pro league) soccer match between FC Bayern from Munich and Bremen.  The second half was just underway when I arrived, and it was 1-0 Bayern.  Unlike the rest of the bar, I chose to cheer for the underdogs, for the team from the north, but the Bayern club was far better, and the match ended 4-1.  It was fun to watch, and fun to be there.

An hour later, I thanked the bartender, said Auf Wiedersehen, and headed out.  At the nearby U-Bahn station I called Linda from the platform, then fell into my first TtS of the trip with Yves, about 20, a third-generation Berliner.  We had a nice chat on the train, and both got off at the Warschauerstrasse station.  I headed back toward the center, then north on the U2 subway line.  Enroute, I tried to discreetly snap a photo of two fare-checkers (almost all transit systems in Germany use the honor system) who were writing up an offender (who, with identity details captured, had already left the train).  But one of the checkers, a young woman, spotted me, and asked me, in German, to delete the pictures.  I moved across the aisle, sat next to her, and showed her as I dumped each of the iPhone snaps.  I got off at the next station, and it occurred to me that the cheater got lighter treatment than I did!

Berlin is a green place, and it may not be cool to have a car; so when you bring home the Christmas tree, you ride the U-Bahn!

The bear is the symbol of Berlin, and he shows up in various places, here in an S-Bahn station clothed in a map of the excellent public transit system.

It was a short walk to the small restaurant called Jungeschuster (literally the Young Shoemaker), at Danzigerstrasse 9, in the former East Berlin.  The kindly owner or manager offered me a table for an hour, but I replied that I’d like to spend a bit more time, so I took a seat at the bar, just by the entrance, ordered a Märkischer Landmann, a dark and chewy beer with the distinct taste of a German (soft) pretzel.  My perch was much like one eight months earlier at a similar place, Anno 1905, in Hamburg.  The place filled up, mainly with younger people – singles, families with young kids, and only a couple of tourists.  You learn a lot sitting at the bar and watching the bartender: for example, some Berliners like a combination of Coke and Fanta, which they call Spezial.

Time for dinner, and in serviceable German I order gänsekeule (leg of goose), grünkohl, und klöpse, dumplings.  Oh my, that was good.  After dinner, I hopped the M10 tram to Nordbahnhof station and an exhibit on “ghost stations” and border stations; during the 28 years of the Berlin Wall, two U-Bahn and one S-Bahn line ran from the west through the east, and back into the west, which prompted the East Germans to close stations in “their” territory (the ghost stations).  The GDR made West Berlin pay dearly for the privilege of transecting East Berlin, some eight million Deutschmarks (about $3 million at the time) to operate the one S-Bahn line.  The West paid, but their citizens boycotted those lines under the rallying cry “Not a single pfennig (cent) for Ulbricht [the East German dictator]!”  The exhibit panels were, like those at the Wall memorial earlier in the day, well done and somewhat personal, telling, for example, the story of Dieter Wendt, an East Berlin S-Bahn employee, who planned and executed a daring escape with his family in March 1980.  People need to be free.

I slept better Saturday night, but still woke up about 5:30.  And I then did something I had not done in a long time.  Ten or twenty years ago, when I had less free time on business trips, I would get up really early to have a look at a town.  It helped if it was spring through fall, with morning light.  But the late sunrise in Berlin afforded a great opportunity: to photograph the icon of Berlin, Brandenburg Gate, in full night lighting.  So I drank a couple of cups of hotel-room instant coffee and peeled onto the S-Bahn at 6:50, a straight shot to the center.  And I got a great picture of the gate, and of the Bundestag (Parliament) a couple of blocks north.  The city was deserted, but was most remarkable was how open it was.  No barricades, no overarching police presence.

The German Parliament (Bundestag)

Paul Löbe Haus, offices for members of the Bundestag

I headed back to the hotel, read for a bit, and at 8:36 hopped on the S-Bahn out of the city, riding north to suburban Hermsdorff and onto the #107 bus, which dropped me a couple of blocks from Michael and Susan Beckmann’s new house.  Visiting them the first weekend of December has become a tradition (in its fourth year), but Susan was full with child, five days overdue, and her mom was up to help, which was why I stayed in the Holiday Inn the night before.

Susan Beckmann; Annika Elisabeth was born 4 days later, on December 8

Story time with Niklas Beckmann

It was great to see them, and to meet Eleanor.  Their young son Niklas jumped into my arms when he saw me – we tried to figure out whether he remembered me from the year before.  We had a leisurely and filling breakfast, with whole-grain breads, interesting cheeses, and some seriously good liverwurst (the Germans invented the stuff!).  Caught up on news from our families.  At 1:00, Niklas took a nap and Susan and her mom headed to the doctor to make sure all was well with the little girl who seemed to prefer the warm and dark inside.  Michael and I yakked the afternoon away.  At five I hugged Susan, and Eleanor, Michael, Niklas, and I headed to Tegel Airport (Michael tore ligaments in his ankle a month earlier, and could not drive).  Happily, I had not trouble getting on the Swiss flight to Zurich (a year earlier, I was in the cabin-crew jumpseat in the back of the jet), zipped through the seriously-efficient ZRH, and onto the 8:52 train to St. Gallen, and a lecture the next morning at the 25^th school of 2011.  Got to my hotel room at ten, clocked out, and finally slept hard.

Up Monday morning and out into the cold rain; first stop, daily prayers at the magnificent baroque Stiftskirche (built 1755-1766) attached to the monastery that was an early anchor in this small city in far-northeast Switzerland.  First gaze, up to the ceiling above the altar to see the beautiful angel who has offered protective wings since I first saw her in November 2001 (two months after September 11 and just a day after American lost an Airbus A300 on takeoff from Kennedy).  She makes me smile and give thanks every time I see her.

It was my 11^th visit to the B-school at the University of St. Gallen, and I normally walk a mile or so up a hill to campus, but a cold rain was falling, so I hopped on the bus.  At nine I met my new host Benjamin Berghaus, a pleasant German Ph.D. student.  We yakked for a while, then he, my academic host Sven Reinecke, and I processed to a master’s in marketing class, where I delivered a talk on airline pricing.  I was rather more animated than usual, which I ascribed to a bit too much strong Swiss coffee, and it was hard to see how the young, mainly Swiss, audience was receiving my words.  But at the end, the applause was loud, and I concluded that I had delivered the goods.

At noon, Sven, Ben, and I headed to the Mensa, the student cafeteria, for a big lunch, then back to their offices, where I worked until 4:30.  The weather had cleared and cooled off, and the walk down the hill felt good.  Bought Carson and Dylan a postcard (the third of the trip, with two more to go), fetched my suitcase at the hotel, got a can of local Schützengarten beer, and hopped on the 5:48 train back to Zurich.

But not the airport this time.  I was bound for London, but earlier in the autumn the plan after St. Gallen was to teach in the Netherlands, then across to the UK, so I booked a single room on the CityNightLine train from Zurich to Rotterdam.  I did not focus on the fare rules, and when plans changed, I discovered that the ticket was 100% nonrefundable.  So the journey to London was an adventure.  First the overnight train, then a flight from Cologne to London.  The worry was a fairly close connection in Cologne – less than 90 minutes from getting off the train to scheduled flight departure.  But let’s take things in sequence . . .

The Limmat River and spires

I arrived Zurich about seven.  The weather was nice and I had almost two hours before the sleeper train, so I went for a walk along the Limmat River, took a couple of nice snaps, and headed back to the Hauptbahnhof.  At 8:20 I found bed 22 on car 177, and settled in.  I mentioned my tight connection to the train steward, and I think I overloaded him with information, because I told him I had a contingency plan: if the train was running late I would get off at 3:39 a.m. at Frankfurt Airport, rather than 5:42 in Cologne.  After he caught up with my planning, he hit on a good idea: decision time would be 3:40.  Made sense to me.  He also said we’d be in good shape if we departed Mannheim at 3:04.

The restaurant car beckoned, but I put on my pajamas, brushed teeth, and was asleep before we were out of the Zurich suburbs.  Woke up at Mannheim, and was delighted that we departed two minutes ahead of schedule.  Things were working.  Indeed, we were right on time into Cologne, a quick S-Bahn ride to the airport, zipped through the airport and onto the flight to London.  It was a breeze.

At Stansted Airport I copped the first tangible benefits of turning 60, when I bought a UK Senior Railcard, which gives 1/3 off most train tickets just for being a geezer.  How cool is that?  Hopped on the Stansted Express train (new cars with free wi-fi), and was in central London a little after nine, and enjoying a coffee with a former AA colleague, Matthew Hall, at 9:45.  Matthew headed back to work – he’s the chief commercial officer at the close-in London City Airport – and I took the Tube across town, west to the district called Hammersmith.

Royal Exchange, London

Checked into a small hotel, the Seraphine, and walked another half-mile west to Factorydesign, the industrial-design firm that is doing splendid work for AURA.  They were hosting a team meeting; the core group was there, save for our friend Tina, and we had Colin and Ian, two fellows from our Scotland-based development team, plus Peter Tennent, a new friend from Factorydesign.  It was a good meeting, mainly technical and engineering stuff, which exercised my mind and helped me learn.

After six, we headed down King Street, the main drag in Hammersmith.  I had not been there before, and it was interesting, mainly for its great diversity (magnified, no doubt, from a day in the mostly monocultural Switzerland).  We repaired to the Stonemason’s Arms, a gastropub just down the street from the hotel, for some pints, some laughs, and a good dinner.  A bit after nine, I peeled off, plumb wore out.

Wednesday morning was bright and cold.  After breakfast I went for a good walk, south to the Thames, across the fine old Hammersmith Bridge, green and gold, downstream a bit, then back to the hotel.  Some scenes form a pleasant amble:

I then headed back toward to center, across the river again, and to 103 Bermondsey Street, to a shop called Holly & Lil, that makes beautiful (albeit pricey) dog collars.  I wanted to get MacKenzie a Christmas present, but, alas, they didn’t open on time, and after 15 minutes I got tired of waiting.  Headed north and at 11:20 I met Geoffrey Owen, my longtime host at the London School of Economics.  We yakked a bit in his office, then headed across the urban campus to meet 2011-12 American Airlines team (Geoffrey teaches a class in management strategy, focused on cases from a handful of companies, including BMW, Glaxo Smith Kline, and Akzo Nobel).  The team, a diverse group from China, India, Germany, Lebanon, Korea, and Turkey, asked questions for an hour in an effort to define a topic to research.  At one, we headed back across campus and I delivered an hour lecture to the entire class.

In Sir Geoffrey Owen's Strategy class at the London School of Economics

Lunch with Geoffrey would have been good, but I said goodbye and headed north a mile to St. Pancras station and met my boss Martin Cunnison.  I grabbed a sandwich and drink, and we hopped on the train to Luton Airport, where his zippy Mini Cooper was parked.  We headed east to a meeting in Biggleswade, which ran long.  We were running out of time: it was 5:40, I was due in Cambridge (40 miles away) at 7:30, and I still had to complete by far the most important task of the day: to read two Christmas books to Martin’s twin daughters, Beatrice and Henrietta.  Martin devised a brilliant plan: head back to their house, visit briefly, pile the kids and wife Tara in their bigger car, and we’d have story time as we sped north to Cambridge.  The Chief rang Tara (a totally flexible mom) and the deal was done.  So it was that I read The Polar Express (long a favorite) and Fancy Nancy’s Splendiferous Christmas (I read them a Fancy Nancy book when I visited seven months earlier) en route.  It all worked splendidly, and at 7:39 I gave everyone kisses and hugs in front of the Eagle pub, my tippling home in Cambridge (Isaac Newton liked it, too).

Ambled inside to meet Paul Tracey, a research partner of my Wisconsin host Jan Heide and Simon Bell, my original host at Cambridge’s Judge Business School.  Paul suggested I wheel my suitcase a few blocks to my usual and splendid digs, Sidney Sussex College.  It was good to be back.  Checked in, changed clothes quickly, and was back at the Eagle with a pint of Old Speckled Hen Ale before eight.  Paul and I got to know each other a bit, then headed to dinner at a Thai restaurant.  A really interesting fellow, he had just begin a two-year, mid-career fellowship, studying social entrepreneurship in a real-world setting of a depressed town east of Cambridge.

Detail, dining hall, Sidney Sussex College

At breakfast in the college dining hall Thursday morning, I had a couple of nice Talking to Strangers encounters, one with a mother and daughter, the latter interviewing for admission to Sidney Sussex in the autumn of 2012 (she was nervous, and I counseled relaxation!); the other, longer chat was with Rini, a young Indian woman in Cambridge to look at a Ph.D. program in chemistry.  She moved to the U.S. after her Master’s, working in San Francisco and State College, Pennsylvania, and was currently in a lab at Columbia in New York – and not liking the city very much.  Rini asked if she could attend one of my afternoon lectures; I replied that it would be an honor for me, and sent a quick text to my host, Jochen, who telegraphed back a thumbs up.

Ropes to ring the bells, St. Botolph's

After a splendid and caloric English breakfast (sausage, bacon, baked beans, hash browns, but no eggs) I walked across town to the B-school, pausing at St. Botolph’s, a small 14^th Century church, for daily prayers.  I worked for a couple of hours, then met Jochen to start the briefing on the afternoon lectures.  My task was a little larger than normal: as part of his research on emotional components of leadership and management, I was to present the same lecture, “Why Is It So Hard for Airlines to Make Money?”, in two different ways, one “charismatic,” and the other not.  The first would be easy, it would be my normal mode of delivery.  The second would be hard: I was to remain behind the lectern, not inflect my voice, make no eye contact, tell no stories – in short, be boring.  I really wanted to do good: I had a role in Jochen’s research, which would in a couple of years determine if the university granted tenure.  A lot riding on it.  Session one went well.  I doubted my performance in session two, which included rebooting the PC toward the end (“keep calm, hands on the wheel, stay on script,” whispered the voice inside), but Jochen was delighted.  After the second group of 40 completed their questionnaires (and collected their £10), they were invited to stay for a Q&A, when I finally could shed my costume and return to being the Real Rob.  Whew, that was a relief!  After questions in the lecture theater, we repaired to the school’s common room for more conversation.  The University of Cambridge has become a very diverse place, and the kids firing questions at me were from Singapore, China, Malaysia, Germany, and the U.S.  Great fun.

I peeled off after six.  It was windy and pelting rain, the hardest rain of the week (that day winds of up to 80 mph were howling in Scotland, so I guess it was not too bad).  Splish, splash through puddles – drainage in a town nearly a century old was not always the best – and back to the Eagle for a quick pint, then back to Sidney to wash my face.  At seven, I met Jochen and we walked a few blocks north and east to Jesus College, founded 1496.  He arranged an invitation for me to attend a dinner to thank corporate participants in an MBA project.  I had some doubts about fitting in, but there were warm welcomes from the start, as well as opportunities to do some networking – as I have written, the school is my favorite overseas teaching venue, it’s Numero Uno, and I’d like for more people there to know me.  Setting for the dinner was the Upper Hall, a marvelous room that dates to the founding of the college.  The art was contemporary, but above us was a ceiling with massive crossbeams, carved at the intersections.  Way cool.  We enjoyed a huge dinner and great conversation – seated across from me was a MBA student I met on my first Cambridge visit in 2011, who worked on a project at Air Asia, the hugely successful low-cost airline based in Kuala Lumpur.  Great discussion in our corner of the room.  After a fine meal I peeled off, got a bit of sleep, took the train to London and out to Heathrow, and flew home.  The 150^th trip to Europe, though super busy, was a great success.

Crossbeams, Upper Hall (late 15th Century), Jesus College, Cambridge

Loudoun County Courthouse, Leesburg, Virginia

On Monday the 21^st I flew up to New York.  Despite its importance, it’s a place I seldom visit, usually just once a year.  It was a detour – actual destination was Washington, DC, for Thanksgiving with Robin and our cutie-pie granddaughters.  The original plan, followed since 2005, was to head up to The Big Apple the day before and present a seminar at Business Today conference organized by Princeton students, but this time they canceled my gig, citing budget woes (I’ve always worked that one for free, so it wasn’t me that was costing!).  I had set up a (overdue) chat in New York with a longtime friend, Pete Pappas, so I kept that one.

Foliage, Central Park

As always, hopped in a cab for a short, cheap ride from LaGuardia to Jackson Heights, then the express subway into Manhattan – way cheaper and almost always faster than a taxi all the way.  It was a nice day and I had an hour, so I grabbed a sandwich, chips, and a bottled mango smoothie at a deli, and found a park bench on Central Park South, facing that marvelous green space.  Over my left shoulder was the huge bronze of José San Martín, riding horseback, bound to liberate Argentina, Peru, and Chile; he had my back.  In front of me was a swell mix of tourists and locals: visitors riding the horse-drawn carriages, skateboarding youth, kids climbing one of those enormous igneous boulders that bulge everywhere in the park (and add a splendid wildness), and the last bright hues of fall foliage.  It was a nice place, in a place I generally don’t like.

The view from my picnic spot on Central Park South

A little after one I walked into Pete and Ivy Pappas’ apartment, right on Central Park South.  Gave them hugs and remarked that in 40+ years of travel to New York, I had only been in three or four Manhattan apartments – dwellings widely reckoned to be at the apex of urban life.  It was a pretty cool pad.  We had a great yak, and just after three I left the building, walked less than 40 feet to a the Columbus Circle subway station, rode four stops south to Penn Station, then the Long Island Rail Road to Jamaica, Queens, then the AirTrain to Kennedy Airport ($13.75 and 40 minutes, vs. $50 in a taxi and traffic jams).

American Eagle flies JFK to Washington National.  I fully expected the huge delays that are so typical of that route, but we boarded on time, pushed back from the gate, and were airborne within ten minutes – I have flown out of JFK more than 30 times in four decades, and had never escaped so quickly.  Landed at National, hopped on the Metro, and was at friend Carl Nelson’s house in Capitol Hill just after seven (he and wife Mary had gone to the Capitals hockey game, so I used the secret way in).

Mary and I had a good yak the next morning, and I headed out.  My corner office for the morning was to be the main reading room of the Library of Congress, a mile west.  I had not been there since 1976, when I was doing dissertation research and was looking forward to it.  (There was some nice symmetry between then and now: in both cases, research and writing about the travel and tourism industry.)

Row houses, Capitol Hill neighborhood, Washington

A few things had changed since then, notably security and ease of access – I needed to get a library card, but that was fast, and I opened my laptop about 9:15 in that fabulous hall.  It had been beautifully renovated sometime between ’76 and ’11, and was much fancier than I remembered it.  Above me was the giant rotunda of the main library, now called the Jefferson Building, stunning painted plaster detail, cherubs, gods and goddesses of varied knowledge.  Around me in radiating circles were oak desks.  Above me were seraphim holding a tablet that read “The inquiry, knowledge, and belief of truth is the sovereign good of human nature.”  Whew!  Nice inspiration!

I had to leave my backpack in a cloakroom, and honestly did not see the signs strictly prohibiting photos, so I snapped a couple.  Way cool.  Mostly, though, I put my head down and worked hard for a few hours.  They had free wireless, but like many libraries it was impossible (for me, at least) to send e-mails, so after a huge lunchtime burrito I repaired to a more familiar “corner office,” the Starbucks at 3^rd Street and Pennsylvania Avenue SE.  Sat in the front window and worked, out of the cold rain.  Atop a bank across the street, I spotted a some words that made me nod and wish for older values; carved into the stone on the cornice molding were the words “Dedicated to Thrift.”  Indeed, for in addition to refocusing on the common good, we need to save more.  And, yes, we can do both.

When I headed to lunch on Tuesday, the capitol seemed to be in lockdown, including police on bikes!

I got a lot more done in a couple hours, and about 3:30 I walked back to Carl’s and Mary’s.  Worked and yakked with Mary, telling stories, laughing.  Carl arrived home after seven, we had a nice dinner of spaghetti and (IKEA) meatballs, I cleaned up the kitchen, and clocked out.

Next day, same drill, into the reading room a bit earlier, banging away on the keys.  Head down, got a lot done.  At noon I met daughter Robin for lunch at Georgia Brown’s, one of my favorite restaurants, specializing in cooking from the “Low Country” of coastal Carolina and Georgia.  Yum!  We motored out to Reston, I checked into the Hyatt at Reston Town Center, and we zipped out to Leesburg, 20 miles west, where Robin had a meeting.  I peeled off to King Street Coffee for a cup and a wi-fi connection, and went back to work.  Leesburg is the seat of Loudoun County, once rural and now suburbanizing rapidly, but the downtown is a nice mix of buildings going back to the early 19^th Century.  Admired the old courthouse and some solid commercial buildings on King Street.

Main Street, Leesburg

At 4:30 we drove back to Reston.  Granddaughters Dylan and Carson arrived with their dad a few minutes later.  It was so good to see them, and a new arrival, Henry the West Highland Terrier, an energetic (aren’t all terriers?) puppy.  We bonded instantly, and I gave him middle name, Angus, a true Scot.  Linda arrived a couple hours later, the kids went to sleep, and we peeled off to the hotel.

Thanksgiving morning dawned fair and cool.  We motored back to the house, and played with the kids.  At 1:30 we drove to the East Falls Church Metro station.  Dylan likes to ride the train, and so does her gramps (Pots, that’s me), so this was a great way to get to dinner at Founding Farmers, a great restaurant in downtown Washington that specializes in locally-sourced comfort food.  We had a great meal (and no clean-up!).  Outside the restaurant were some cool fountains that kept the kids and me busy for quite a while – we got wet, but not that wet.  It was a lovely day.

Friday was busy and fun.  We saw the first 20 minutes of a holiday parade in Reston Town Center, then headed into the movies to see The Muppets.  Loved it, seeing Kermit, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, Janis (“fer sure”), and the others.  And the kids liked it, too.  Carson does not understand the need for silence in the cinema, which added to the fun; when Camilla and her brood started singing a number, Carson replied “Cock-a-doodle-doo”!  Too cute.  After the show, we headed back to the hotel room (conveniently just a block away) for some bed-jumping, then out for a bit of shopping and an early dinner.  Lots of fun.

Dylan and Henry playing Tug of War

Saturday morning was still warm and sunny, and Pots put the kids in the Radio Flyer wagon and Henry Angus on leash, and off on a wooded trail to a small playground.  The tots loved it, Henry loved it, and I was plumb wore out by the end – swinging swings, climbing the slide latter, making sure neither girl fell, chasing Henry when he pulled the leash away.  Whew!  But on the eve of my 60^th birthday, it made me feel alive.  We were sad to say goodbye when we flew home that afternoon.  “When are you coming again, Potsy?” asked Dylan.  Those girls are such a blessing.

Windmills new and old at the Wind Energy Museum, Lubbock, Texas

On Saturday morning, November 3, Linda and I flew to Lubbock, Texas, to celebrate an early Thanksgiving with Jack; he’s scheduled to work during the holiday, so west we flew.  Lubbock is the birthplace of the 1950s rock-and-roller Buddy Holly, so it fit that I cued a handful of his best hits “Rave On,” “It’s So Easy”) on the flight.  We landed and made fast for lunch at Montelongo, an old-school Mexican restaurant on the north edge of town.  After burritos and such, we drove south to the American Wind Energy Museum, a fabulous collection of windmills inside a big building and out in a big yard.  Towering over all of it was a 660-kilowatt wind turbine, the modern version of the old Aermotors and other windmills that brought water and motive power to much of pioneer America.  The collection was a fine reminder not to take the electrical grid or the water tap for granted – sprinkled throughout the building were stark black-and-white photographs of rural life in West Texas in decades past, always a windmill visible.  It was a Thanksgiving message.

A small part of the vast mural in the museum

After windmills, Jack drove us around Lubbock, mainly the newer suburban areas south of town.  We greatly enjoyed a ride through Vintage Township, a new development built on “new urbanism” principles of mixed architectural styles, house sizes, separation of cars and people, and design that fosters neighborly interaction (something we saw on the brief tour).  It was a really pleasant, visually interesting place.  After a brief break at our hotel, we headed out for our first Thanksgiving dinner, at a really nice place called Café J.  So good.  Headed back to the hotel to watch a little football and clocked out.

Not your typical suburb; "new urbanism" on the edge of Lubbock

Cotton field on the outskirts of Lubbock; the South Plains of Texas are one of the biggest sources of cotton production, grown with groundwater (that is slowly depleting).

Jack picked us up Sunday morning and we motored to an agreeable coffee house in his neighborhood, then to Home Café for brunch.  Huge.  I didn’t eat the rest of the day, which was spent at his nice little house then in flight back to Dallas.  At DFW, Linda headed home and I peeled off to Toronto, north for business and teaching.

The South Plains from above; circular patterns are from center-pivot irrigation systems; the group of buildings is The Ranch at Dove Tree, where Jack works.

We arrived late, 11:40.  Happily, the hotel was five minutes from the terminal, so head hit pillow a bit after 12:30.  Up Monday morning, down to the fitness center, worked some e-mail, a big breakfast (lunch would likely not work), and out the door, rolling my suitcase and backpack a few hundred meters for an AURA sales call on Sunwing, a small but plucky Canadian charter airline.  I first met the CEO, Mark Williams, in the 1990s when he was at Canadian Airlines.  We had a good meeting and they liked our product line.

Ambled back to the hotel and caught the shuttle back to the airport, then a quick Air Canada flight to Montreal.  Last time I flew standby on that route, in 2005, it took eight hours to get an open chair, but when I checked in for the 2 PM flight I got an assigned seat.  Woo hoo!  Arrived Montreal, bought a very cool three-day public transit ride card for $16 and hopped on the STM 747 Express Bus into downtown.  Unpacked, worked my e-mail.

Stained glass, McGill Station, Montreal Metro; this is a city that cares about aesthetics, in a subway station and elsewhere.

At six I walked east and south to the headquarters of the International Air Transport Association and met their General Counsel and longtime friend Gary Doernhoefer.  We zipped into a Depanneur, a convenience store, I bought six bottles of Quebec microbrew, and we headed to his condo.  Had a brewski and walked across the street to an Asian fusion restaurant for a good catch-up and a nice meal.

Up early Tuesday, to the hotel gym for a bike ride, then out the door for breakfast at Tim Horton’s (where else?), then over to the law school at McGill University for a lecture on airline alliances to Prof. Dempsey’s class (I’ve known Paul for years).  Back to the hotel, worked a bit, then onto the bus to Westmount, a pleasant inner suburb, and lunch at an Indian restaurant (serviceable, but not quite spicy enough!).  Back to McGill, to the business school and an afternoon lecture to MBAs.

New sculpture, Rue Sherbrooke; Montreal's art museum has been expanding into adjacent buildings, including the former church in the background

Laboratory, McGill University

On the McGill campus

Took a quick nap, out the door and onto the Metro, riding north to a favored spot, Biéres et Compagnie, a pub with lots of nice local and global brews, and simple food.  Had a venison burger and fries, two Quebec beers, yum.  The local hockey team, les Canadiens, were playing Edmonton on the big screens.  All very local.

Even more local was a detour into Renaud-Bray, a large independent bookstore on Blvd. St.-Denis.  Roaming through the place, I got a mental poke about how remarkable Quebec is, a huge (1.36 million sq. km.) French cultural “island” of nearly 8 million.  The Steve Jobs biography was already available en Français, as were thousands of other titles.  Not a lot of English spoken there.  The historical, political, and economic forces that created that “island” are complex (one example: in 1759, British forces actually defeated the French in a battle at Quebec City, but what became the Province of Quebec remained French in outlook, language, and culture).  What a place.  It fascinated me on my first visit 44 years earlier, and it still does.  Every time.

Inside the Renaud-Bray bookstore

Sanctuary of the Blessed Sacrament, part of an historic monastic community; the Roman Catholic Church was once an enormous presence in Quebec, but has waned in recent decades. Ecclesiastical architecture is a central feature of the Montreal landscape.

Was up way early Wednesday morning, back to Texas on a nonstop, landing well before noon.  Picked up the car and detoured a couple of miles to the Crate and Barrel warehouse to pick up three stools for our kitchen counter.  After a bit of maneuvering, I had them all loaded in my Toyota (small trunk – hybrid batteries take a lot of space), and was home by 12:45, walking MacKenzie.  After lunch, I unloaded the new stools and moved the old ones to the garage for donation.  I bought the old ones in January 1988, in our first month in our Texas house, and I was a bit wistful about parting with them.  They served well, nearly 24 years, and they still looked good.  They were made in Italy, frames of a very hard wood, woven cane seat bottoms.   Moving them out, I thought back to all their service: Jack eating a bowl of Cheerios, me enjoying a plate of leftovers after a long day at American, Robin eating lunch after a high school cross-country meet, Linda hosting a party, friends laughing.  The new ones are nice, ivory leather, in the same style as the chairs at the kitchen table.  Not surprisingly, they were made in China.  And I wondered: would they still look good after two dozen years? 

I was home almost two weeks, which was really nice.  The high points of those days were two Saturday mornings well spent, building wheelchair ramps.  On the 12^th, my friend Ray and I build a ramp for a nice lady in East Dallas.  Arriving home from dialysis, she wept when she wheeled up the new ramp.  And my eyes welled up, too.  That’s why we build them. 

On the 19^th, Ray and I got some help from a handful of 9^th grade math students.  Before we left the ramp-project warehouse, he mentioned that one of his Kiwanis Club colleagues taught kids with development challenges, and asked if I wanted to do a bit of teaching that morning.  For sure, I replied, and off we went.  It was a great deal of fun – the kids were eager to learn, and Dr. Paula the instructor took every opportunity to turn ramp building into a geometry lesson.  Adding to the enjoyment was one of many street dogs who took a liking to our team, a real character, and a thief (at one point he had my iPhone between his jaws). 

Southern California: the view looking up. I snapped this while lying on my back in an oceanfront park in Santa Barbara; as I have often written, we don't look up enough when we travel!

I flew to Los Angeles seriously early on Wednesday, Octobere 26.  The AURA team has been curious about Red, Virgin America’s new inflight entertainment system (from Goliath-competitor Panasonic), so I bought a ticket and flew them for the first time.  When everything’s new, airlines are great, and it was a nice ride.  I spent most of it taking snaps of the screens and documenting the “user experience.”  It’s a good system.  But ours is much better, and far less expensive!

Landed LAX just after eight, hopped on the shuttle to the Green Line train, then the express bus up Harbor Freeway, and was on the edge of the USC campus (my destination) in no time.  Waiting for the “Walk” sign at 39^th and Figueroa, I looked at the young guy next to me toting basic law textbooks, and I said “looks like law school has just begun.”  He smiled and thus began a nice T-t-S walk of a few blocks, me listening to his laments about all the work, he hearing a summary of my life (prompted by my remark that he has it easy compared to Linda, who worked full time and studied law at night).  Shook his hand, wished him a great career, and ambled into Popovich Hall, then out onto a pleasant terrace to do some work and have a little more to eat.

My "corner office" on Wednesday

At 11:45, I met my host for the day, Kristin Diehl, and we headed into her undergrad consumer-behavior class.  Whoosh, the airline-advertising lecture done in a flash, whence we repaired to a new restaurant on campus for much-needed lunch.  I peeled off for a couple of hours, then repeated the lecture to the second section of her class.  Kristin drove me downtown to the rather fancy Marriott, an upgrade from my usual digs at a threadbare Radisson on campus.

Washed my face, changed clothes, ambled downstairs, and met my original USC host, Joe Nunes.  We motored across downtown to the Lazy Ox Canteen, a hip new place in Little Tokyo (but the cooking was California-local, not Japanese).  We had a meal of many yummy small dishes: Carpaccio, mixed salad, roasted shishito (Japanese green peppers), rabbit leg, and scallops, with a fabulous strawberry, rhubarb, and peach crumble for dessert.  Yum.  We had a good yak while eating – Joe is a good guy, always interesting.

Thursday was open until an evening MBA talk from 8:00 to 9:30.  After the hotel gym, I repaired to a nearby Starbucks “corner office” for breakfast and work.

Part of the view from my Thursday corner office, the Starbucks at 5th and Figueroa

Mid-morning I ambled back to the hotel, then walked a few blocks north to an even more agreeable corner office, in the State of California Community Park, a quiet, lushly green oasis on the west and south verges of Frank Gehry’s shiny and exuberant Walt Disney Concert Hall, the new home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic (or LA Phil as they now brand it).  I first visited the park in 2009 and thought “this would be a good place to work my laptop,” so was glad I remembered.  Work ended about one, headed for a spicy fish burrito, changed clothes, and at 2:41 jumped on the Big Blue Bus, Santa Monica’s transit system, and headed west on Interstate 10.

I was excited about the destination, 3616 Ashwood, in the Mar Vista neighborhood, not far from Venice Beach.  It was time for another reconnection, this time with Ellen Cox and Peter Quentin, who I first met in 1973 in Sydney, Australia.  In another time.  A time when young backpackers exchanged addresses of friends who would welcome an indirect friend.  In this case, I was in a youth hostel in New Zealand, and Brian Atkins gave me Ellen’s and Peter’s address on Glebe Point Road and said they would likely open their doors to me.  So about noon on Wednesday, August 1, I was in front of their rented terrace house on a sunny winter day.  Ellen and Peter were on the front balcony.  I told them Suzy Creamcheese sent me, and they let me in.  I saw them next in 1976, when they were briefly living in New York (and again offered a free bed), then for a few hours in January 1981 when they picked me up at LAX just before I boarded a Qantas flight for Australia, where I taught that year.  That was the last time.

Peter's and Ellen's address, from my 1973 journal

So it had been 30.5 years.  I had sort of stayed in touch, and I recall almost seeing them almost a decade ago, when Robin was still studying at USC.  We spent a joyful couple of hours, each taking turns summarizing three-plus decades of work, raising children (sometimes challenging for them, too), having fun.  We reminisced about long-distance budget travel back in the day, recounting various adventures.  In Sydney in the early 1970s, Peter was a musician and had a band; he still plays gigs, acoustic guitar, and is in the band at their synagogue.  As I have written before, there is something really wonderful about those reconnections.  Maybe it is simply that the paths again converge.  The two hours, with tea and scones on their patio, went far too quickly.  We hugged each other, took a picture of three young adventurers who still felt young, and Peter drove me to Venice Blvd.

I hopped on the 733 bus back to L.A.  It was called a Rapid, because it made limited stops, but it took ages – 80 minutes to go 12.5 miles.  Happily, I had a seat.  To my left was a Latina high school student, who boarded when I did, and immediately opened her Calculus textbook.  I pointed at a formula and saluted her diligence, a T-t-S moment made brief by my decision to let her concentrate on the differentiation, functions, and derivatives at hand!  Her commitment contrasted markedly with some loud and really foul-mouthed youngsters further back on the bus.  A rough census of the passengers: 92% Hispanic, 7% Black, 1% Anglo.  There was time to read The New York Times and a little of a new book.  And there was time to think about immigration.  I was happy to be riding the bus that day; as I have often written, public transit is a great way to get close to people you would otherwise not encounter.  It makes you think, not only about your privilege, but about their lives (two days earlier, I remarked aloud about the civility of a homeless man riding the Green Line, whose sense of politeness contrasted so much with the ornery behavior we often see at airports).

At Hoover Blvd., I hopped on the 200 bus.  I was running a little late, so I knotted a new red tie on the bus.  Was in Popovich Hall and in classroom 112 by 7:45.  The lecture went well; even at the end of a long day, after hours of work and school work, the part-time MBA students that comprised 90% of the class were still engaged.  At ten Joe drove me to the hotel and I clocked out.

Up early Friday morning.  Linda and I scored tickets to see USC play Stanford the next day (thanks to ongoing generosity of Debbie, an AA marketing colleague in Los Angeles), and since it made no sense to fly home, I had another day off.  Did a couple hours of AURA work, then walked across downtown L.A. to Union Station.  The walk was interesting.  It began on a high note, your scribe pausing to admire the Los Angeles Public Library (1926), first visited when Robin was at USC.  The 1991 renovation and expansion added some brilliant touches inside and out, but because it was early, I focused on the exterior – stuff like the west steps, the vertical surfaces of which were lined with the written word from many alphabets and symbolic systems.  Between the parallel staircases was a stepped fountain, the words “bright,” “lucid,” and “clear” inscribed on stone blocks.  Further along, a memorable quotation from Dr. Seuss:

The more that you read, the more things you will know.

The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

I smiled when I read it, because Dr. Seuss captured the essence of my life.  There was more, lots more.  It’s just a fabulous building and grounds.

West steps, Los Angeles Public Library

From the shiny office towers on Bunker Hill, there’s a steep income slope down to Broadway, where lots of homeless ply the streets.  Walked north on Broadway, pausing to admire the interior of the Bradbury Building (1893), a historic office building best known for a light and airy atrium – such open inner space was largely unknown back then.  The local “chapter” of Occupy Wall Street was encamped around City Hall.  I continued north to la plaza and Olvera Street, the historic center from the city’s founding in 1781 as La Ciudad de Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles.  I stopped in the church of the same name, which the Franciscans built in 1814.  There were a few tourists inside, but mainly it was the faithful, many praying with vigor.  I joined them.

Atrium, The Bradbury Building

Exuberant commercial architecture from the 1920s

The 1814 Franciscan Church, Old L.A.

Tents, Occupy L.A., Los Angeles City Hall

The Transport Geek paused in front of the station, a lovely Spanish Colonial design, and listened for the sound of the Santa Fe’s Super Chief, the Southern Pacific’s Sunset Limited, and other famous trains that arrived here for decades.  Seventy or eighty years ago, the place would often have been hopping with movie stars and entertainers arriving on those and other trains from back east.  Today, the crowd was less starry, a curious mix of travelers.  I found my way to track 10 and Amtrak’s Coast Starlight, bound for Seattle, 1377 miles north.  I was headed 100 miles west to Santa Barbara.

Union Station

It had been more than 25 years since I had been on a long-distance Amtrak train.  Found my way to the observation car, which was remarkably similar to the glass “Vista-Domes” that my brother Jim and I loved to ride from Minneapolis to Chicago, enroute to visiting kin.  The T-Geek was in a good place, and I stayed in that car the whole way.  We headed west into the San Fernando Valley, stopping at Burbank Airport (across the parking lot I spotted a Silver Bird) and Van Nuys, then climbed up, through tunnels and into Ventura County, the train traversing fields of onions, carrots, and strawberries, past vineyards and orange groves labeled Sunkist, past shrub nurseries.  Field workers, immigrants, stooped in the sun, picking.  When we think of California, we may think of high tech and of entertainment, but agriculture is bigger than huge.

Beyond Oxnard, 55 miles west of L.A., the tracks met the ocean, almost literally.  For nearly forty miles, we skirted the beach.  We saw lots of surfers, a few swimmers (water temperature now is only a bit above 60 F), three dolphins.  Offshore, in the Santa Barbara Channel, were the oil rigs that the Sierra Club dislikes, but I emphatically would like more oil from there and less from places where people don’t like us.  Whoa.

The view from the tracks, literally on the beach

Amtrak’s Coast Starlight at Santa Barbara

Then we were in Santa Barbara.  I hopped off, snapped a couple of pictures of the train and the wonderful old depot, and ambled east on Yanonali Street to a deli I found online.  Had a big sandwich, then headed down to Stearns Pier and out onto the water.  Then into downtown to a Starbucks, to bring this journal up to date and recharge my iPhone battery (it got a lot of use on the train, capturing video and e-mailing it to Dylan and Carson, who love to watch what I call Pots TV).  I expected to see an affluent place, and that’s what I found.  Interesting, but a little too homogeneously nice for me.  I spent the last couple of hours at a brewpub watching game seven of the World Series.

The former Southern Pacific railway station, Santa Barbara

The postcard view of Santa Barbara

Back at the Amtrak station it looked a little chaotic.  There was a dark train on the platform.  My train, the southbound Coast Starlight, was due, according to the Amtrak website, at 7:03.  It arrived at about 7:20.  I immediately headed to the dining car, where a steward was cleaning up.  No dinner in the diner.  I settled for a bag of chips and a beer.  We set off at 7:40, rolled a couple of miles, then backed up and coupled with the disabled train to tow it to L.A.  We were finally underway at 8:30, and into Los Angeles 130 minutes late, at 11:10. Not the finest moments for the National Railroad Passenger Corporation.  I kept muttering “these people could learn something from the Swiss Federal Railways.”

The plan was for Linda to fly to L.A. Saturday morning, and we’d head to the Coliseum to see USC play Stanford, but she rang me way before dawn to say she was feeling poorly.  I decided to give the game a miss, so I changed flights and other arrangements, and turned off the light to try to get back to sleep.  Nope.  So I got up, went to the gym, and checked out.  Having missed dinner the night before, sustenance was the first priority.  And where better than The Pantry, a downtown L.A. fixture since 1924 and just a few blocks south of the hotel?  In no time I was on a stool at their counter, tucking into a huge cheese and sausage omelette and a larger pile of hash browns.  You can’t eat those breakfasts every day, but from time to time they are a total treat.  Hopped on the Metro blue and green lines out to LAX and flew home.  It was only three-plus days, but it seemed longer.  When I hopped into my Toyota, I remembered that Peter Quentin gave me a CD of his music.  I popped it in the player and started tapping my hand on the wheel.  A great set of songs from an old friend.

Lake Monona and the skyline of Madison, one of my favorite places

I arrived home from Calgary early Saturday afternoon, but back out the door 24 hours later, rocketing north to Chicago, then the short hop to Madison, for my fifth annual appearance at the business school of the great University of Wisconsin.  Landed at sundown, hopped in a cab, and got to the hotel.  At eight, I met Josué Gil Deza, one of my young Argentine friends from ITBA in Buenos Aires.  He was in the first weeks of a one-semester exchange program in chemical engineering.  We ambled across the street to Dotty Dumpling’s Dowry, a Madison landmark known for great burgers.  I knew he was going to have some great experiences, and he was.  We yakked for a couple of hours about his academic and leisure experiences – he liked his classes, he joined the Hoofer Sailing Club and was learning to sail, he had been to all four Badgers football games.  In short, he was absorbing all that UW-Madison had to offer.  It was a lot of fun.

At eight on Monday morning, I met my friend Jan Heide, one of my favorite academic hosts, for breakfast.  We walked up University to the business school, time to stand and deliver, on that day back-to-back lectures on airline loyalty programs to his MBA core-marketing classes.  One of my Madison friends, Dan Smith, and his work colleague Don Knapp, attended the second lecture, and they took me to lunch at a Turkish restaurant on State Street.  Dan is a former dairy farmer who I met after I read an essay he wrote in the UW alumni magazine.  They work for an agricultural supply and consulting firm, and we had a good yak about business challenges at their firm and ours.  A fun time.

At two, as I have on three of my four previous visits, I rented a bike at Yellow Jersey on State, and set off, along the lake, then southwest, pausing at Camp Randall, the football stadium, then continuing on a bike path along a former railroad right of way.  At the edge of town I joined the Capital City Path, which circles the city, then back into downtown along Lake Monona.  I continued along the north shore of the lake, into the funky Marquette neighborhood, where I saw lots of signs and bumper stickers expressing disapproval with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.  I concurred.

Wisconsin's impressive state capitol

Autumn color near Lake Mendota

"Coloring book" housepainting in Madison's Marquette neighborhood

Back to the bike shop, dropped the cycle, paid $10, and headed back to the hotel for a shower.  At 6:45, Jan and his swell wife Maria picked me up and we motored a mile to the Tempest Oyster Bar for a splendid repast.  Jean Grube, whose class I would join the next day, joined us.  The starter was a huge (and I mean enormous) plate of smoked fish: herring, lox, whitefish, and trout.  Main course was grilled Lake Superior sturgeon, a fish I had never before consumed, and it was really good.  I was sprouting gills by the time we shared dessert.  Also worth a call out: a glass of Night Train Porter from the O’So Brewery in Plover, Wisconsin.

Tuesday started early, joining a long Skype call (audio and video, which prompted me to get out of my pajamas!) with my AURA colleagues at 5:45.  At ten I had to say goodbye, and head to Jean’s two undergrad Human Resource Management classes.  At one, Jan and I headed back to Dotty’s for a caloric lunch and a good yak.  He is such a great fellow.

I was sorta baggy-eyed by 2:30, so grabbed a quick nap, then headed out for a walk around campus and a return to the splendid reading room of the Wisconsin Historical Society.  At 5:15, I walked across the street to the Wisconsin (student) Union, and sat down on the terrace (“the heart and soul of UW Madison” read the green banners) to bring this journal up to date and enjoy a very hoppy ale.  At about 5:30, a steam whistle blew; Googling, I learned that the Hoofers Sailing Club (that Josué joined) blows the whistle an hour before sunset to warn boaters to begin heading to shore.

On the terrace of the Wisconsin Union

My fellow tipplers were a mix of old and young, and I saw myself – as I tend to do – as closer to the latter!  The scene on the shore of Lake Mendota was wonderful: the sculls of rowing club cranking past, sailboats luffing their sheets, a couple of dozen Canadian geese honking aloft, an oak leaf falling right next to my netbook.  Those were splendid moments.  I walked back to the hotel, crossed the street for pizza and salad at Ian’s, another eating landmark, and flew home the next morning.

Again, back out the door in roughly 24 hours, flying up to Washington, and onto the Metro north to my debut at the University of Maryland.  It was unseasonably warm and humid, and storms were near.  I hopped on a handy university shuttle bus from the Metro station to the center of the leafy, red-brick campus, ambled south to the business school, and spent a half-hour chatting with leaders of the school’s Global Business Society.  On the train north, I Googled the school’s nickname, the terrapins.  I knew they were turtles, but I thought they were big ones.  Nope, terps are only five to seven inches long.  Some schools have lions and tigers and bears, but here were small reptiles, not unlike my alma mater’s gophers, a small, burrowing rodent!  Still, it was fun to see kids on campus sporting T-shirts that read “Fear the Turtle.”

On the leafy campus of the University of Maryland

The Robert Smith School of Business at Maryland

At six, I began the talk on airline alliances.  Within 30 minutes, I saw a bunch of students looking at their phones, then a couple of students walked out, and I asked “what’s up?”  The school’s campus alert system (an innovation developed after the 2007 massacre on the Virginia Tech campus) blipped that a tornado was going to strike the campus in 15 minutes.  Yow!  We headed to the basement, which was small,  and soon filled up (the dean was down there, too).  After about ten minutes of uncertainty, I went online, to the website of the National Weather Service – they’re the agency that issues tornado warnings, the threat level that means a tornado has been sighted in the vicinity, thus it’s time to take cover.  But there was no NWS warning, only a tornado “watch,” which means be alert to the possibility of a tornado.  Aieeeeee.  Either Prince George’s County (where we were) had gotten it wrong, or the university had misinterpreted things, or both.  In any event, I was pretty cranky.  Others seemed to conclude similarly, and we walked back upstairs about 7:20, only to receive a second campus alert that the tornado was fixin’ to hit in five minutes.  I was skeptical, as were others, and we didn’t return to the basement.  The lecture was a write down.  One of the organizers drove me back to the Metro, and I headed back to D.C.  Too weird.  And worth a follow-up by this cranky citizen, to find out who messed up.  (I subsequently learned that the university buys weather forecasting from the woefully misnamed private firm Accuweather, which judged that a tornado was near; I continue to believe that the National Weather Service should be the sole authority for warnings.)

Waiting out the false alarm in the basement of the B-school

I was due to meet my longtime American Airlines friend Carl Nelson for dinner at nine, and I was at the appointed meeting place an hour early.  Happily, Starbucks was open, and I headed in for a mango smoothie.  It’s easy to dump on chains, but I really appreciate Howard Schultz’s set of stores, all with free wi-fi, nice music, and a table useful for, say, bringing this update up to date.  Carl rode up the escalator right at nine, and we walked down the street to a restaurant/bar for a meal and some catching up (I’ve known him nearly 20 years; he is AA’s associate general counsel in Washington).  We had a good yak and walked a mile to his old row house on Massachusetts Avenue, just east of the Capitol.

I slept in (7:10!) Friday morning, and after a bowl of Cheerios Carl and I walked to the Metro and rode to the AA office, I place I’ve known through the years.  Did a bit of work, yakked with an old friend, and around ten met daughter Robin, in from suburban Virginia.  We had a good chat, mostly around her desire to get back to a job – in addition to being a superb full-time mom.  She dropped me at National Airport and I flew to Chicago, where at 1:50 I met Cousin Jim.

We motored into the city, bound for Hot Doug’s on California Avenue, a lunch opportunity that had long eluded us.  Jim had raved for years about their “encased meats.”  The long line out the door said it all.  We yakked across a bunch of topics, and then it was time to feed.  My ultra-spicy hot dog was yummy, as were the fries (only offered Fridays and Saturdays), and cooked crisp in, yes, duck fat).  Fortified, Jim dropped me at the CTA Blue Line, and I was in the Loop in 25 minutes.

Hot Doug himself, taking orders

Painted porcine sculpture in Hot Doug's "back yard"

Checked into my hotel and made fast for Brooks Brothers on Adams Street, to see if one of their tailors could repair my torn zipper.  I was a little stressed about delivering a 90-minute lecture with my fly open!  But no, he could not put the zipper back on track (I’m pretty sure I could have if I had small tools), so I had to make field repairs with a strategically placed safety pin.  Mercifully, it closed the flap.  Crisis averted!

My sixth appearance in the University of Illinois’ EMBA program went well.  It was a big and engaged group.  After dinner, one of my hosts, Prof. Steve Michael, joined a group of current and prospective students for a relaxed and really enjoyable chat across a bunch of topics.  One of the prospects was a captain for AirTran Airlines, and his partner was a registered dietician.  One student worked in capital planning for the Illinois Tollway, the other was setting up a green lighting business.  It was the kind of exchange of ideas that makes universities so magnetic.

The original plan for Saturday the 15^th was to head out to Cousin Jim’s in the suburbs, then attend the Centennial dinner of my maternal grandparents’ parish, St. Bonaventure, four miles northwest of the center.  I had been gone too much and wanted to get home, but that morning I struck a sort of compromise with myself, and took the CTA out to the old neighborhood, walking north on Marshfield Avenue, past what had been my grandfather’s small grocery, then past the McWhinney social club (site of many fun times, according to my Uncle Alan), my mom’s old house, and finally past the church itself.  It was a clear, crisp morning, and I was glad I made the detour.  Grabbed a coffee and donut at a Starbucks across from “St. Bonnie’s,” headed to the airport, and flew home.

My grandpa Jim's former Centrella Grocery, Marshfield Avenue, Chicago

Part of the Calgary skyline from Prince's Island, in the Bow River

Travels in the last quarter of 2011 began six days in, when I flew to Calgary on behalf of SATMAP, the software company for which I still do a bit of work.  The ride north was mostly cloudy, and we landed in light rain and single digits (Celsius, that is).  After answering the immigration officer’s questions, and her welcome to Canada, I couldn’t not offer a comment I’ve wanted to say on many previous visits: “Ma’am, I just want to tell you how happy I am to be in a country where a mom doesn’t have to choose between buying groceries and taking her sick kid to the doctor.”  It took a moment to register, then she simply replied, “thank you.”  I may reprise the comment on future visits.

The hotel was close to Calgary airport, and the prospect was walking distance from there, so the original plan was not to get a car, but my Canadian SATMAP colleague, Bruce Williams, asked me to rent a car, so I picked up a sweet new Ford Fusion (see my laudatory comment a couple of months ago about another Detroit product).  Traffic was impossible (wrecks in the rain), but I finally made it the few miles from terminal to Hilton Garden Inn.   First, though, a detour to a late, light lunch at Tim Horton’s (where there’s always a queue, no matter the time of day; no wonder it’s a signal Canadian institution!).

Worked my e-mail and hopped back in the car, motoring a couple of miles east to a Calgary Transit Park and Ride station, then onto their “CTrain” light rail into downtown.  A little vignette of polyglot Canada: more than half of the passengers in our car were Sikh men with turbans of burgundy, mauve, grey, teal.  We were in the big city in 25 minutes.  The rain had stopped, and I ambled around, admiring all the public art (another endearing thing about Canada; yes, Governor Perry, it costs money, but it makes us civil and it makes us smile).  Walked north to the Bow River across a channel, and onto Prince’s Island and a big park.  Snapped some pictures and continued north, across the main channel of the Bow (From Wikipedia: “The name “Bow” refers to the reeds that grew along its banks and which were used by the local First Nations peoples to make bows).

Public art: a splendid interpretation of the magnificent Lake Louise

The Alberta Oil Patch is booming: new office tower, Calgary

Walked back south, across downtown at rush hour, to the District brewpub on 11^th Avenue SW.  I was glad I did a bit of research a day earlier and spotted an agreeable place.  Ordered an Ambush IPA and struck up a delightful conversation with young Cassandra behind the bar. It was a ten-minute download of my travels in Canada, hitchhiking (like most young people, she was amazed at the distance I covered), and related travel topics, with her lobbing in some of her life story starting with growing up in Powell River, British Columbia. Talking to strangers is such fun.  Worked my e-mail, surfed the web, relaxed.  Enjoyed half a dozen oysters fresh from Qualicum, B.C., and a swell organic hamburger (with bacon cured on premises, yum) and fries.  Spent nearly three hours in a very agreeable place, then ambled out into the rain (I brought my new L.L. Bean long rain parka, a good move), and back to the hotel on the train.

Still life, District brewpub

It was still raining Friday morning, so motored a few blocks to breakfast at Tim Horton’s, and  back to the hotel to work.  At 11, I returned to the airport and picked up Bruce, who had just flown in from Toronto.  Drove to lunch, then back to the hotel to work a bit, and at 2:30 made our sales call, a good meeting with some engaged prospects.  It was the start of the long Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, so Bruce opted to fly home at six.  We debriefed in an airport bar, I said goodbye, zoomed back to the hotel and changed clothes.

Keep moving!  At seven I met longtime friend Norah Carmichael and son Mark (who I had not seen in 8 years, when he was an early teen).  I met Norah in the mid-1990s when she worked for the late Canadian Airlines.  We motored to an Indian-Pakistani restaurant nearby for a spicy dinner and a great catch-up.  Mark graduated from Dalhousie University in Halifax in 2010, and recently took a job with Fluor Corp.  On nights and weekends he’s an unpaid scout, looking for talent in the Western Hockey League, a minor group but with strong talent.  We had a good yak about that fast game, U.S. politics (Canadians are concerned!), the booming Alberta economy, gay rights, and more.  Clocked out, up way, way before dawn the next day, back to the airport, and south to Texas, where lots of mothers do have to decide between buying groceries and taking their sick child to the doctor.  Canadians like Mark and Norah have it right.

Norah and Mark