First family vacation!

The week before Memorial Day, Erin, W, and I went on our first real family vacation!

Well, we'd previously spent a week in Lake Placid in October, but with my parents joining us - and thus able to babysit W - so this was indeed a more "real" family vacation experience. Just Erin and me with our child. A whole new experience for all three of us. And it was a great experience.

We spent most of the week in Virginia, in Shenandoah National Park and then heading down the Blue Ridge Parkway before staying in a yurt near the charming town of Floyd. The trip started, though, with a stop in Pittsburgh for an important concert. Rather than recounting every part of the trip in detail, I wanted to write about two specific things that rank as two of the highlights of my year: seeing Pearl Jam live for the first time in 15 years, and going hiking as a family.

Pearl Jam

Pearl Jam were my favorite band in high school and college, and although I've since mostly moved on to listening to other music, they remain an important part of my life, as well as one of the best live bands I've seen. Somehow, though, I had gone 15 years without seeing them live, after concerts in 2003, 2006, and 2010 that were all among the best I've ever attended.

2010 was the last time they played in Cleveland, and their tours in the years since became much more limited, but after the show Erin and I attended on May 18 at PPG Paints Arena in downtown Pittsburgh, I feel very foolish for not having traveled to see them in the intervening years.

How, one might wonder, did we pull off going to an out-of-town Pearl Jam concert on a trip with a baby? Well, that's a story in itself!

I'd expressed an interest in going to the show for some time, but had felt uncertain due to the very expensive (resale) ticket price. I guess eventually I just had to remind myself, if I have a good chance to see one of my favorite bands live, I'm not going to regret going, no matter how much it costs. And that ended up being even more true than I'd anticipated.

It turned out that a good high school friend of Erin lives in the Pittsburgh area, and his wife works at a daycare, and a coworker of the wife was able to babysit. Convoluted? Perhaps, but leaving W with someone who (1) takes care of small children as her job and (2) was personally vouched for by the wife of Erin's friend seemed safe.

It also turned out that the house where W would be spending the evening was a ways away from downtown Pittsburgh, basically in the middle of nowhere. We got a hotel in between the two locations, and after going out for an early dinner with W (during which she drummed on metal plates as Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark" played over the restaurant's sound system!), we drove to drop her off.

A very interesting thing I observed during the drive: as we came around a turn on a winding country road, I saw a turkey vulture in the road chowing down on a dead groundhog. Another groundhog, this one still alive, was at the side of the road, apparently watching. The vulture flew away and the live groundhog scampered off as we drove past.

After dropping W off, we drove back the same way. The vulture was back - and so was the groundhog. I suspect it must have been mourning its companion.

Animal behavior never ceases to fascinate.

On to the show.

We parked in a garage close to a half mile from the arena and got to our seats in time to see most of the opening set played by Australian band Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers. Those young ladies (the band has been around for 10 years but the members were 15-year-old high school students when they started it) could rock, and I really enjoyed their set. What an honor to be chosen by Pearl Jam to open for them, and I think it's very cool of Eddie Vedder and co. to have given them the opportunity.

I was obsessed with Pearl Jam from the ages of, oh, about 16 through 22. Although I continued to like them a lot, and never ceased to be aware that I'd been obsessed with them during a formative time in my life, I think in a way I forgot just how much I'd loved them.

The opening notes of Ten deep cut "Garden" filling the arena as Pearl Jam started their set quickly brought all that back.

Although not recognizable to most of the general public like "Alive," "Even Flow," "Jeremy," or "Black" are, "Garden" was a song I always really loved when I was a teenager listening to Pearl Jam's iconic debut album. It was a song I hadn't previously seen performed live, and one that doesn't get played all that often.

A really great thing about Pearl Jam concerts, and a thing that sets their shows apart from those of any other band I know, is that they vary their setlists so much from show to show, meaning that you never know what you might hear and that each individual concert really feels like a unique and significant event.

To wit, they had played another show in Pittsburgh two days prior (in retrospect, I really wish I could have attended both), and among the 26 songs played on night one and 27 songs on night two, there was only a five song overlap. This is typical for Pearl Jam. Other bands I've seen over the years (and there are a lot!) generally range from playing the same set every night of a tour to playing a lot of the same songs while varying a handful of songs from night to night. No other band I'm into does it like Pearl Jam.

And although I've complained about the paucity of shows the band has played in recent years, I have to give them credit: playing such different setlists from night to night on a tour has to take so much more work than playing mostly the same set of songs every night with a few changes, and it's really remarkable for Pearl Jam to keep doing this so far into their career and with such a huge catalog from which to draw.

 

Erin, more of a casual fan, had some interesting comments on the reactions of the audience to the performance. She mentioned watching how people would respond upon hearing the intro to a favorite song they hadn't expected to hear. As a diehard fan, this experience truly is an amazing thing about these shows. She also said that looking out across the packed arena and seeing how into the music everyone was, it almost felt like watching a cult. I think there's some truth in that. A concert like this can be very much akin to a religious experience. But unlike most cults, this is a good thing. 

There were a number of songs I was especially thrilled to hear, including long time favorites of mine like "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town" (a song I was kind of obsessed with about 25 years ago), "Immortality," and the ever familiar "Alive" (Mike McCready's live guitar solo is truly a thing to behold).

 

One that took me by surprise for how excited it made me was "Insignificance" from underrated 2000 album Binaural, which might be the Pearl Jam album that for me is most tied to a particular time in my life. 

And one song that I was not at all expecting to hear and that really brought on the emotions was "Hunger Strike" by Temple of the Dog. Had I realized ahead of time that the show fell on the anniversary of Soundgarden/Temple frontman Chris Cornell's death, I guess it wouldn't have been surprising.

In November 2016, I went to Philadelphia to see the first show of the first, and only, Temple of the Dog tour, commemorating the 25th anniversary of the grunge supergroup's one album. It was an astonishing performance. "Hunger Strike," the band's biggest hit, features Eddie Vedder sharing lead vocals with Cornell, but Vedder wasn't present for that 2016 show. The rest of the members of Pearl Jam, who were also the rest of the members (along with Cornell) of Temple, were all on the stage that night. Cornell's death the following May hit me harder than any other celebrity death has - I'd loved his music for most of my life.

Eight and a half years after that Temple show at which Chris Cornell, backed by Mike McCready, Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament, and Matt Cameron, sang those familiar "Hunger Strike" vocals but Eddie Vedder was absent, I got to see Eddie Vedder, backed by Mike McCready, Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament, and Matt Cameron, sing "Hunger Strike." It felt like a full circle moment and like a completion of something that had been unfinished. And given events of my life over the course of those years, that felt fitting.

This was the last show of Pearl Jam's tour, and thus they really delivered by playing an extra long set, clocking in at 2 hours and 40 minutes and ending at 11:40 pm. Perhaps not ideal when you have a lengthy drive into the country to pick up a nine-month-old from the babysitter's ahead of you, but man, was it worth it for me. It was such an epic experience and absolutely one of the best concerts I've ever seen.

It was later announced that long-time Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron (who'd been with the band since 1998 after they'd gone through four different drummers in their first eight years of existence) was leaving the band. Thus, this show had marked the final concert of the "Pearl Jam with Matt Cameron" era, making it an even more momentous occasion and making me even more glad I'd attended.

My dad told me once that one of his only regrets in life was not seeing Springsteen live when he was younger, and those are words I'll always remember. This concert was a reminder, when you get a chance to see a band that's really important to you live, you shouldn't pass it up.

And now moving from one really amazing experience to another...

Hiking as a family

Going on hikes together has been a big part of my and Erin's relationship from the start. On our second date, we went on a 4.7 mile hike in Cuyahoga Valley National Park. We got engaged on a 12 mile hike in the Adirondacks. The day after we got married, we went on a 10 mile hike in Yosemite.

Naturally, we were greatly anticipating going hiking with W, and hoping that she'd be amenable to doing it as a baby.

Early in life, she was very resistant to our attempts to get her in a wearable baby carrier, causing some worries that family hiking was something we'd have to wait quite a while to do. We gave up on the carrier for months because she became so angry whenever we put her in it.

Good friends had kindly provided an Osprey hiking backpack with baby carrier for us to use with W in our hiking endeavors. Our first practice run was on a cold winter day when we went to the Shaker Lakes Nature Center for a short hike on snowy trails. W seemed okay but not thrilled at first, then started crying, then fell asleep. Not an inspiring outcome, but it was very cold.

We took W in the hiking backpack one other time before our vacation, on a longer but still fairly short hike with some friends at a metro park. She still seemed to be trying to make sense of it all, but by the end seemed to be getting into it more.

Our first real hike as a family? It was a big jump up from those practice runs.

The day after the Pearl Jam concert, on our drive from Pittsburgh to Shenandoah, we stopped in the George Washington National Forest to hike Big Schloss, a peak on the border of West Virginia and Virginia. It's about a 4.5 mile round trip with a total elevation gain of about 1100 feet. The bulk of that comes in the first 0.8 miles - 600 feet of climbing before the trail levels out and follows a ridge to the peak.

 

It's a really cool hike, one Erin had done before and I'm glad she suggested it; the scenery as you traverse the ridge and then reach the summit was really gorgeous and also different from any other hike I've done.

A 600 foot climb over the course of 0.8 miles is pretty steep hiking, but I've done worse, and I've done much lengthier stretches that were at least that steep on other hikes. I had definitely not, however, done anything like it while carrying a baby on my back. Coming at the very start of our very first real hike with W, it was quite an introduction to hiking with a baby!

In fact, although the length and elevation profile of this hike were fairly modest by my normal standards, this was, no exaggeration, the most strenuous and physically taxing hike I've ever done. I've done all sorts of extremely strenuous distance running and cycling over the course of my life, but hiking? Hiking had never felt like this. My legs felt so heavy and I found myself basically gasping for air at points.

And you know what? It was great!

I've always found great satisfaction in challenging myself physically, testing my limits. It's something that I haven't done as much in recent years, not for lack of desire, but because my joints could no longer handle that intensity of running or even cycling. But now I found that simply walking up a mountain while carrying W on my back provided a great challenge. An unexpected benefit of parenthood.

The more important thing, of course, was whether W liked it. And she did - she seemed to love it! She babbled excitedly, looking around at the scenery and taking it all in. She also caught a couple naps over the course of the hike (one on the way up, one on the way down), looking so precious as she rested the side of her head on her little hand in the carrier.

At the top, we crossed a cool wooden bridge and reached some rocks with just breathtaking views of the surrounding mountains where we got to hang out for a little while, just the three of us, our little family.

 

On subsequent mountain hikes we've let W out of the carrier at summits, but on this particular one that seemed questionable so we kept her in the carrier. We enjoyed a nice snack, including some cheese, a W favorite.

The descent was, of course, not nearly as physically taxing, but I did find I had to be extra careful descending steep sections of trail while being so top heavy. I've since picked up a hiking pole and have been very glad to have it.

At the end of the hike I took the backpack off, set it on the ground, and looked down at W, and she looked back up at me with just the most delightful smile on her sweet little face. She looked so happy - and I felt so happy. Hiking in the mountains with my wife and daughter and discovering that my daughter enjoyed it so much was probably one of the most magical things I've ever experienced.

We did several more hikes that week, and having found how much she liked it, W became visibly excited when I'd put her in the hiking backpack and lift it up off the ground. It was just so great.

A recent Adirondacks vacation brought a lot more family hiking, and W has continued to love it. I'm looking forward to the years ahead, as she grows first into a toddler who'll provide an even greater challenge for me to carry, and then into a child who can tackle the trails herself with increasing skill and speed, just as I did in my youth. And I'll always remember Big Schloss, our first family hike on our first family vacation. 

The wonderful mind of a child, or, "A drink that is orange"

The mind of a four-year-old is one of the most fascinating things there is.

A newborn baby, as much as he or she is beloved by the parents and other relatives, is not someone with whom you can have a conversation. A newborn responds to stimuli in a similar way to how lesser animals respond to stimuli, and likely has little ability to engage in abstract thought. Somehow, over the next few years, an incredible developmental process occurs, integrating both intrinsic biological cues and extrinsic cues from the people and things in the environment and from all the human culture that has developed over the millennia, and that newborn's relatively simple mind turns into something that is capable of a vast array of very complex thought processes.

One of the most incredible parts? None of us really knows what that developmental process is like, because none of us can remember it.

I will soon be 34 years old. As the years go by, the memories of my past become increasingly distorted and imperfect, but I can still remember quite well what it was like to be, say, an 18-year-old. I remember less well, but still fairly well, what it was like to be a ten-year-old. A six-year-old? That's very hazy, but I still have some idea. But what it's like to be inside the mind of a four-year-old is something I have absolutely no idea about, and the same is true for almost everyone. That doesn't prevent us from recognizing as we interact with four-year-old children, especially with particularly smart four-year-old children, that there are truly amazing things going on inside those little minds. Which is why I've come to view the inner workings of the minds of small children as one of life's great mysteries.

Over Memorial Day weekend I visited EB in Nashville for the second time, and for the first time EB's daughter [redacted] spent almost the whole weekend with us, as opposed to very limited chunks during my previous visit. [redacted] is an incredibly bright four-year-old and I was constantly filled with a sense of joy and wonder by my interactions with her.

Here's a picture of the two of us waiting in line at Hattie B's, a restaurant known for Nashville's famous hot chicken.

[redacted]

The best of friends, right? It's oh so hard to believe that just four weeks prior, on my first visit to Nashville, we had been at the exact same spot and poor little [redacted], having just met me in person, had been cowering behind her mother's legs and talking about how "Jeffy" was "mean" because I had tried to bite her eyes(!!). When prodded by EB to acknowledge something nice I had done, [redacted] admitted that it had been nice of me to return EB's keychain to her. (I have no idea where she got these ideas about biting eyes and returning keychains!)

[redacted] quickly warmed up to me (Skype helped - hooray for technology!) and on this visit was eager to spend time with me. The three of us had a fabulous weekend. Here are some more anecdotes about [redacted]'s precious and fascinating behavior.

On Saturday morning we went to [redacted]'s T-ball game. In this version of T-ball, the players have a few chances to hit a real pitch thrown by their coach before the tee is brought out. [redacted] had never previously gotten a hit from a real pitch. On this morning, she did - not just once, but on both of her at-bats! This was a source of tremendous excitement for us all. Later, while walking to brunch from T-ball, [redacted] told us how we should tell her aunts and cousins about her amazing feat. "They would like be [she says "like be" rather than "be like" - adorable], '[redacted] couldn't do that!'" she said. "And we'll like be, 'she sure did!'"

Also that morning, [redacted] was being quite stubborn at points on our walks to the neighborhood grocery store and the T-ball game, risking losing her privilege to have an orange soda at brunch. (Spending the whole weekend with her, I got to be exposed to much of the full range of four-year-old behavior. It was a good learning experience.) When told by EB that EB didn't want to hear anything more about orange soda, [redacted] quickly shifted to asking if she'd be able to have "a drink that is orange." Ah, logic!

There was a very touching moment when [redacted] asked me why I was wearing a ring. I explained that it was my wedding ring. She asked if it had always been there. I told her no, it used to be on my left hand (one year and one day after Cara's death, I moved it my right hand ring finger). She asked why I moved it, and I said that when you have a ring on your left hand, it's a sign that you're married and therefore not looking for a girlfriend, and some time after Cara died I decided that I did want to look for a new girlfriend. "And then I met your mommy," I concluded.

[redacted] followed this up by asking how EB and I did meet, a question that EB tackled, jumping into an explanation about how there are Facebook groups for people with various interests.

How does a four-year-old grapple with the fact that her daddy died when she was just one, and she'll never know him except through stories and pictures and videos? But we humans are very good at adapting to different circumstances. For her, that's just the normal way that life is.

The very best part of the weekend was the hiking the three of us did. We went on beautiful hikes on both Sunday and Monday. Monday's was especially wonderful. Early in the hike, little [redacted] took off running along the trail. She quickly built up a significant lead on her mother and me. I decided, why not, I should start running with her. So I caught up to her and the two of us sped through the woods together, [redacted] in the lead.

It was about the most amazing feeling in the world.

Periodically, [redacted] would stop and look back along the trail, peering through the trees until she spotted EB walking behind us. "Let's start running again!" she would cry. The hike was four miles long, and I was astonished at the fact that [redacted], just four years old, was actually running for the majority of the first two miles. After this, she took several little spills and wanted to be carried by EB for a while in her carrier. But falling down did not do much to dampen her enthusiasm for the outing. She's a remarkably resilient little girl, and after most of the falls was eager to get right back up and keep going. "I'm okay, I'm okay!" she exclaimed to EB. "It was the root's fault!"

Our trail running time was also opportunity for more interesting conversations. At one point, [redacted] was telling me about something EB had told her, and I said, "Well, that's probably true, because your mommy is pretty smart."

I was taken aback by [redacted]'s response. "But I'm smarter, right?" And she went on to explain how she always gets things right in school, etc.

I had to ponder for a moment how to reply to that one! "Well, I think actually you're both really smart, and it would be hard to say who's smarter," I eventually said, which seemed to satisfy her, but who knows what she was really thinking when I told her that?

EB has been marveling for some time at the amazing things [redacted] says and does, and now I get to as well. I asked my mom if, when I was that age, she and my dad found themselves marveling at how smart I was. She said yes, definitely, but that she didn't have specific stories to tell. I guess that's part of the reason for EB and me to do this sort of writing - so that we will have specific stories! I'm sure you'll all be hearing more about the adventures of EB, [redacted], and Jeff in the months and years to come.

Roxboro Ravine . . . it rocks!

I thought it might be fun to write some posts about neat places around Cleveland (this isn't entirely a music blog!), so now, while I'm still recovering from a broken hip, some words about one of my favorite places to go when I have my normal mobility.

I suspect that not many people are familiar with the term Roxboro Ravine. A Google search returns very few results. Here's one, though; I think it's where I learned the name:

Path down into the Roxboro Ravine (formerly known as Ambler Park), approximately where Bellfield meets North Park Blvd. (from Cleveland Heights Historical Society)

Quite pretty, isn't it? The spot pictured doesn't look exactly the same today, but anyone who has spent a lot of time in the ravine would have no trouble recognizing the image. I'm sure that a lot more people are familiar with the place known as Roxboro Ravine than with the name Roxboro Ravine, but at the same time I'm sure many people pass by it often while remaining unaware of the wonderful place hiding in plain sight between North Park and Fairhill roads in Shaker Heights.

I was certainly one of those people once. As a cross country runner at CWRU, I often ran along North Park, on the grass right next to the ravine. I undoubtedly glanced down into the ravine from time to time while running by, but (to my memory) did not venture down there at all for my first two years of college. I remember a run my junior year where a couple of my teammates suggested heading down the wooded trails there. I voiced my disagreement, worried that it might be dangerous and not wanting to risk an injury.

I've since been injured twice on those trails, but that hasn't hampered my enthusiasm for running there. The trails aren't inherently dangerous; they just require somewhat more care and surer footing than running on roads. The broken arm in particular was due to completely reckless behavior on my part - I was walking, on a fallen tree, across the brook that flows through the ravine. That was risky enough, but then, as I neared the end of the tree, I began to pick up speed. I guess I just couldn't wait a few more steps until I reached solid ground, and I paid the price for my stupidity when I slipped, fell backwards several feet to the ground, and caught myself with an arm that one glance instantly revealed was broken. I walked out of the ravine up to North Park and was lucky enough to immediately encounter some other people, one of whom was a student at the Case Medical School and drove me to the hospital.

So I've certainly had some adventures in the ravine. (Since learning the proper name, I still usually think of it as just "the ravine." Cara and I have another name for it, as well - "Leslie Anne Ravine," a pun on the Decemberists' song "Leslie Anne Levine." I'm not even sure now which one of us came up with it, I think it was her? We are pretty silly.)

Roxboro Ravine really is a fantastic place for running. In the past few years, I've come to enjoy trail running more and more. It's a great way to commune with nature, and it's much more stimulating to my senses and my mind than running on the streets. The trails in the ravine require more attention than most. There are all sorts of rocks, roots, sharp turns, and quick ups and downs to navigate through. None of it is excessively difficult if proper care is taken, but it's a much more rugged trail than what one might typically find in, say, the Metroparks. I have to say, somewhat egotistically, that running is more fun when you can run fast, and running fast through a rugged, forested trail full of twists and turns is really fun. I've covered the trails through the ravine so many times that my feet practically know each step of the way. I really feel lucky, living in an urban environment, to have such a great place for trail running so close by. (It also seems to be a popular place for mountain biking. I've never tried mountain biking myself, and frankly, the idea of doing it on some of the more treacherous segments of the ravine's trails seems rather scary.)

Running in the ravine is great, but sometimes it can be nice to take in the joys of nature at a more leisurely pace. Cara and I often like to go on walks or hikes together (again, I'm looking forward to getting back to doing this after my injury is all better!), and Roxboro Ravine is one of our favorite places for such excursions. We've traversed the trails there in all seasons. Our most recent hike there was on a beautiful spring day, and contained a cool surprise. As we walked, we noticed there was music coming from somewhere nearby. And not someone's stereo system - this was live music, played by a couple of brass instruments. After we walked farther down the trail, an upward look revealed the musicians' location. They were sitting on the back patio of one of the houses on Fairhill that overlooks the ravine (I'm really jealous of the people who live there). It was like having a concert performed just for us while we enjoyed a great stroll through nature.

That was a memorable hike, but definitely not as memorable as the one that took place on March 7 of this year. That was when Cara and I got engaged. Here's a picture of the spot where it happened, which I took just before the big moment (the ring, at the time, was hidden in my camera bag).






















Earlier in the walk, Cara had mentioned that the ravine was "special" to her. This secretly thrilled me, knowing what I was planning to ask her before we left the ravine that day. So I definitely agree, Roxboro Ravine is a special place, for many reasons.