Summer 2019 Part 1

This summer reflected the new reality of our RV trips:  whereas once we crossed from one side of the country to another we now prefer fewer stops with longer at each point.  This minimizes the wear and tear on human as well as vehicular bodies.

The route was about 2,000 miles and started and ended in Albuquerque.  There were a few changes along the way and the California section was scaled back a lot (originally we would have crossed from Fresno to Monterey then down the coast to LA).  Put simply, we had run out of time and this was going to be a bit rushed so I changed the route to simply turn us around and head back at a more leisurely pace.

We had a number of visitors too.  In the first section of the trip Gill came and combined with a train journey.

She flew from London to Chicago and took Amtrak #5 to Glenwood Springs Colorado, a distance of 1,200 miles.

It became a bit more complicated because her next train was massively delayed (due around 2pm but was showing an arrival well past midnight) so I changed the route.  She took a bus from Glenwood Springs to Eagle Country airport about thirty miles to the east (with an overnight stop in Eagle).  This small airport exists mainly to connect people to the ski resorts in Colorado.  It is fairly high in the Rockies itself (around 6,500ft).  Once at Denver she flew to Sacramento.

This saved a bit of time and allowed her to catch up with her next train from Sacramento to Los Angeles.  This was the Pacific Coast Starlight that runs down the west coast from Seattle.

At Los Angeles I had flown in and met her so we could take another train out to Tuscon to meet the RV.  Fortunately her LA train arrived at the platform right next to the Tuscon train and I was waiting at the train door for her.

Our second guest was Hannah, one of Hatty's best friends from school.  Her mother texted me to ask if we were near Los Angeles because they had just moved there.  To explain: her sister is an actress and had just got a part in a Netflix show so the whole family were moving from New York to LA while she was filming.  They had literally just signed the lease on a new NY apartment the day before the news came in.

It was a bit tricky to work everything out but I arranged to pick up Hannah when I flew to LA and then I would drive us both up to Fresno to meet the RV.  After that weekend I drove Gill back to San Francisco from where we both left for London on different planes (United for Gill and BA for me).  Hannah remained with the RV, which turned back and carried on to Flagstaff.

This is where it gets super complicated. As explained above I changed the route to shorten the California section but some of my flights were booked long ago and were non-refundable.  Originally I had a flight going into Los Angeles on Saturday, which is also where guest number three Sarah Cowls would be flying to from London on Sunday.

The updated plan had been that I would wait in LA for Sarah and then we would fly to Flagstaff to meet the RV.  However, Hannah needed to be back from school so what I actually did was fly from New York to Los Angeles then Los Angeles to Phoenix.  That flight got in fairly late so I stayed overnight  in an airport hotel and in the morning drove up to Flagstaff to get Hannah then drove back down (about 175 miles each way). Then I flew back to Los Angeles with Hannah and dropped her off with her mother.

So I should have then met Sarah Cowls but that is a story for another day.

A Decade Later

We are not alone among parents in wanting our children to remain children a little longer.  While we can hope for excitement and adventure as they find their place in the world we quietly add an Augustinian 'not yet'.

Hatty is now ten and in reality she has already taken on some of the independence of growing up, with all the associated highs and lows.  She can play freely but middle-school applications still await her contribution.  The most challenging part of relationships we face as adults, how to be a good friend, is already hers to face.  Arguably she and her peers already have a more difficult time because they have more friends.

She was born during what we call at work the GFC, the Great Financial Crisis.  On the day of her birth President Obama made his first address to the joint sessions of Congress to stress the need for urgent action on the economy.  If I can say anything about the world order now, it is that it is just as uncertain as it was back then.

Hatty's generation will face challenges familiar and new.  For her birthday she wants to be able to have her own YouTube channel (for the uninitiated this is a video sharing site). She plans to use it to talk about her favorite games such as Minecraft.  We were cautious about this because of the risks we can see online including bullying and inappropriate content.  I think I said she could have a channel when she was ten because it seemed like it was far away but here we are.

She is an optimistic person and she is unfazed by the challenges.  Recently while reminding her  of the importance of being careful online I mused that I was lucky to avoid this growing up.  Her retort was to remind me that I grew up with three television channels and she was very glad to be around in the age of Netflix.  That was me told and I thought bringing up Channel 4 was not likely to turn the tide of her argument.

Indeed there has been progress.  One of the reasons we do not notice this is that it is hard to remember just how bad things used to be.  Child mortality rates a century ago were unimaginably high.  Even in 1960 the global child mortality rate was almost 1 in 5 but it is now down to about 4 in 100.  It is fragile though as we see long vanquished diseases return.  Yet I have a lot of confidence that Hatty has as good a chance as any in facing the future.  All the feedback from her teachers is that she is one of the people who is friends with everyone.  She is seen by her peers as someone they like to be with and someone they can trust.

Every day for the last ten years she has brought me joy.  Too often I take it for granted and some of my worst lows are when I realize I have gone too far when exploding over some undone piece of homework, room not tidied or hair brushed.  The lows though are greatly outnumbered by the the highs. I look forward to the next ten years knowing that, although the changes are likely to seem even more dramatic, there is underlying constant in all of this - the inquisitive, kind and adventurous spirit of our Hatty.