How to Drive Like a Man

How to Drive Like a Man

Men are not allowed to ask for directions. I don’t know why, but that is just the way it is. That’s why it took Moses forty years to get to the Promised Land. He didn’t stop and ask for directions. So the first rule is to “Know your Directions.” This is easy to do in coastal California if you remember that the ocean is to the west of California. If the ocean is on your left, you are traveling north. If you forget where the ocean is, look for the “101 North” signs to properly orient you. This is important to remember when you are traveling between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. Otherwise, you may think you are heading in a west ward direction.

I tend to get lost in the city of San Luis Obispo. I never knew which way was North.  In desperation, I privately took a peek at a map of the town. Now I knew my problem. The SLO streets run in a Northwest to Southeast and Northeast to Southwest direction. In other words, the drunken padre that laid out the town had his compass off by exactly 45 degrees. Okay, maybe he wasn’t drunk. Maybe he was a man-hater. I am certain he did not have a driver’s license. I still tend to get disoriented in SLO town, so I use Rule Two, “Bring a woman with you.” Fortunately, I am married to one. She never knows which way is north, but she can navigate San Luis Obispo.

If you venture away from the Golden State, be aware of the idiosyncrasies of the other states. Generally speaking, the further west you are, the straighter the compass. For example, Chicago streets tend to be north-south and east west. Manhattan Island in New York City is laid out very well, considering it’s in the East.

Then there is New England. My wife, my daughter Rachel, and myself were visiting Massachusetts. The town roads were confusing, even to my wife. I hate to admit it, but I had to implement Rule Three, “If you and your wife are both lost, ask for directions.” We needed a good city street map.

With our trusty laptop computer and an Internet connection at our motel, we used MapQuest to obtain directions from our motel to the nearest AAA office, which was a mile and a half away. The directions contained thirteen steps. I have been accused of exaggerating, but New Englanders will wonder what my problem is. Thirteen steps to find a location a mile and a half away through a New England town is about right.

We carefully followed the directions and promptly got lost. While trying to guess where we were, we caught sight of the AAA office we were looking for. This brings me to Rule Four, “If dumb luck smiles on you, smile back and pretend you were never really lost.”

I asked two of my wife’s cousins, “Which way is North?” Neither the wife nor the husband could answer my simple question. No one had ever asked them that question before.

Rachel was very impressed with New England. It is one of the reasons she lives in Mesa, Arizona, a town with north-south and east-west streets. That’s my girl.

Utah is a special case. I joke that there are too many Mormons there, but I don’t think that has to do with the roads. When Brigham Young stuck his cane in the ground and said, “This is where we will build our temple,” someone else heard, “This is where we will start our street addresses.” The city fathers of Salt Lake City went beyond that. They conjured a city grid of numbered streets. For example, 100 South, or 300 East, etc. If you tell me a house is located at 750 South 200 East Street, I can go there… most of the time. If I am on 200 East Street, I just need to drive seven and a half blocks south of the temple. I will be south of 700 South but north of 800 South. This works well in Salt Lake County because the suburban cities in Salt Lake County extended the city street grid of Salt Lake City. For example, 10900 South in the city of West Jordan is one hundred and nine blocks south of the Salt Lake Temple. I like this system. My wife hates it.

However, just to the south in Utah County, they have a problem. The townsfolk in the small rural towns used the same system, but set their zero-zero point in the center of their own towns. As long as Orem was a separate city from Provo or Spanish Fork or American Fork or Springdale, this was not a problem. Notice my use of the words “was not a problem.” The Mormons, like all other Americans after World War Two, made lots of babies. Those babies grew up and made their own babies. Today, the rural towns of Salt Lake County are one big city, with numerous address grids. It confuses my wife. If you promise not to tell her, I will confess that it confuses me also.

Regardless of location or religion, if you want to avoid getting lost, there is Rule Five, “Do not, I repeat, do not enter any major college campus.” When you are trying to find your way on campus, you will feel like you are going in circles. I will explain. When the egg heads laid out their cities within a city, they used the wrong kind of compass. They used the drafting tool that makes perfect circles. That is why the streets on any college campus do NOT run straight for any appreciable distance. The most common street name is “College Loop.” 

I like my adopted home town of Grover Beach. Good old D.W. Grover used the correct compass and a straight edge to lay out the town with north to south and east to west streets, except for mine. My street is curvy and at a weird angle. When I’m at home, I don’t know which way is north. It’s a good thing I’m not lost.

Vaso-vagal attack

Vaso-vagal Attack

In 1979, I was in my kitchen with my wife, drinking a glass of water. Something funny was said and I started laughing while the water I was still swallowing the water. The next thing I know, I am on the floor and Cindy is saying, “I’m calling 911.”

I get up and tell her to put the phone down. She is still holding the phone and looks like she has just seen her husband pass out.

She asks, “Are you sure?” I wasn’t feeling too bad and told her I was okay. I was almost correct. For many years, I thought I had just choked on the water. I was wrong.

What really happened was I triggered an inappropriate response of my vagus nerve. This nerve’s job is to send more blood to the stomach or bowels as these organs need a greater supply of oxygen, such as when you have just ate or you are on the toilet. In some people, this nerve can be triggered to send too much blood to the lower part of the body and not enough blood to the brain. Dizziness can occur and the person, such as yours truly, can faint. This is called a “vaso-vagal episode or vaso-vagal response or vaso-vagal attack.” The trigger can be caused by laughing very hard, trying too hard on the toilet, or swallowing something wrong.

A did faint one morning while using the toilet. I had no idea why at the time but I did see a doctor the next day. When the nurse took my blood pressure, it was about 90 over about 50. That is a tad on the low side all right. When I acknowledged that I was avoiding salty food because of a family history of hypertension, he told me to eat all the salt I wanted. True, my blood pressure was low, but I now believe it was due to a vaso-vagal episode.

Swallowing something wrong and getting a dizzy sensation happens to me so frequently, I thought it happened to everyone. Last November, with dinner guests present no less, I actually passed out for a few seconds. I shook it off and didn’t do much about it.

I did do some googling and found that same thing happened to President George W. Bush when he was eating pretzels. That was the first time I ever heard of the Vagus nerve. I know that self-diagnosis is dangerous, but the article explaining what happened to President Bush and the descriptions of the symptoms exactly matched what happened to me.

It turns out that uncontrolled, gut wrenching laughter can also trigger a vaso-vagal attack. I am watching a funny skit on television last night. A gym instructor is doing a workout with his two partners behind him. The girl is just sitting or standing, and eventually takes out a blanket and pillow and lies on the floor to take a nap. Meanwhile, the other guy in the back works himself so hard, he collapses. I laughed really, really hard...

Suddenly I was dreaming something weird and Cindy was tapping on my shoulder, asking me if I was all right. I am startled awake and startled by the sight of my wife. She is trembling, holding the telephone, and talking with the 911 dispatcher. She doesn't like the way I am looking and tells them to send the paramedics.

I do not like the way I am feeling so I do not object. I feel like all of the energy went out of me. By 8:30 p.m. I am taking a ride in the ambulance to the Emergency Room.

The Emergency Room personnel see these events all of the time. The only thing to do is to conduct tests to rule out other causes of the fainting. They drew blood, conducted an EKG, and took a chest x-ray. Everyone, including myself, suspected it was a malfunction of my vagus nerve. I was feeling better by 10 pm. The doctor came in about 10:30 and told me all of the tests came back with normal results. He handed me some literature about vaso-vagal episodes and sent me on my way. I walked out of there on my own two feet, although I was still tired. Cindy drove us home.

I was still feeling tired this morning. Evan had a music practice in Atascadero from 11:30 to 1 pm. Cindy and I had a picnic lunch at Atascadero Lake and then we planned on going for a walk. I decided I would walk as fast as I normally do and see what happened. No, I didn’t faint. I actually felt better and better.

I’m cured, until next time. But now I know what to do next time, just lie down before gravity takes me down.

How to shop like a man

How to Shop Like a Man

Men and Women shop differently. Since I am retired, it is my privilege to shop with my wife more frequently and to note these differences. When I go shopping, I like to go into the store, find the item I want, put it in my shopping cart and immediately head for the checkout stand. My wife likes to go into the store, find what she’s looking for, and then browse around looking for other items to spend my hard earned money on. Fortunately, she is something of a cheapskate, so she doesn’t usually overdo it. That’s why I love her so much.

Once, my wife dragged me to the store to shop for a birthday present. The birthday boy was turning two years old and he is one of our grandsons. While she was browsing through the cute little boy outfits, I saw a perfect present for our daughter’s little boy, a noisy telephone toy with all kinds of bells and whistles and lights. It was in the shopping cart before my wife chose an outfit.

When another grandson was the birthday boy, my wife dragged me to the store again, with similar results. I sought out the famous push toy that makes the annoying popping sound. She could buy the kid all the clothes she wanted, but he was also getting that popcorn popper.

When it was time to purchase a new television, I wanted to shop for the new electronic gismo the man’s way. I decided we should buy a “Smart” TV. An old dumb one just would not be sufficient for a grandma and grandpa trying to transition from the twentieth century to the twenty-first.

I went to a few stores by myself. I found a “smart” TV that was just the size we wanted. It was a little bit more expensive than the same sized dumb TV, but it was two to three hundred dollars less expensive than the other “Smart” televisions that were on display. The next step was to return to the store with my wife and show her the good deal I found. She was impressed by my bargain hunting ability and agreed the displayed TV was just the thing for our humble abode. We waited until we had the attention of a sales clerk and I went into action.

I pointed at the display and said, “I want to buy that TV.” Yes, that is how a man shops.

“Okay, let me see if we have it in stock.” After checking his computer, he mumbles something unintelligible and says, “Come this way, please.” He then starts to show us how to use one of the other smart televisions for sale.

“Why are you showing us this one? We want that other one.”

“Oh, that one is out of stock.” What he didn’t say was, “I’m pulling a bait and switch and trying to sell you a more expensive model.”

“No thank you,” we said, and left the store. We found the same television at another store, for the same price no less.

With the second sales clerk by my side, I point to the television and say, “I want to buy that TV.” Yes, I think to myself, this is how a man shops.

“Oh,” he says, “That television is out of stock.”

We did some research on the Internet and discovered that the “good deal” model is no longer being manufactured.

When in this quandary, the intelligent Man shopper will implement my second rule of shopping, “When you don’t know what you are doing, ask questions.” I actually do this all the time when I shop at the local hardware store. I often don’t know exactly what I want, but the hardware sales staff is always helpful. Besides, it’s always a Man thing to shop at the hardware store.

So I pretend I am in a hardware store, rather than a big box electronic store. I start to ask questions. It turns out that we could purchase a dumb TV and a “Smart” blue ray player. By connecting the “Smart” device to the television, we get a “Smart” TV as well as a new Blue-Ray CD player, for about the same amount of money as the purchase price of my original “good deal” find.

We made our purchase, and after some false starts, we get our brand new, up to date, entertainment system to work. When our daughter came to visit with her sons, she made sure she brought her son’s popcorn popper push-toy. I don’t know why.

Submarine Life

A Sub Life

The year was 1975. I stared at the red metal wall, knowing that tons of water was on the other side, trying to get in. The wall, or “bulkhead” in navy jargon, was the pressure hull of the submarine, which was cruising several hundred feet under the ocean. The pressure hull is what separates the crew from the ocean water. Suddenly, water gushed through cracks in the bulkhead.

I yelled, “Flooding! Flooding!” I knew that briny deluge was going to sink us permanently.

I heard a voice say, “Wake up, Mike. You’re having a bad dream.” I recognized the voice as my friend and shipmate, Gary. I sat up, still half asleep.

“Flooding,” I stammered.

“Mike, there is no flooding.” He was both concerned with my mental well being and somewhat amused by my shouting. “Flooding” is not that kind of false alarm you want to raise while on board a submarine. I was in by bed, or “rack” in navy jargon, close to the center-line of the submarine. If there really had been flooding, I would have been the last person on board to know it.

My nightmare was imaginary, but the threat of flooding on board a submarine is real. The USN Thresher, a nuclear powered fast attack submarine, was lost at sea in 1963 due to flooding in their Engine Room. The Navy made a lot of improvements to their submarines due to that disaster that minimized the chance of flooding.

Minimized does not mean eliminated. When a submarine has been in the shipyard for maintenance, many of the pipes that carry ocean water or other hull penetrations may be disturbed. When the boat returns to sea and the first dive is performed, everyone on board is checking for leaks. Every nook and cranny, every dark recess hidden behind shipboard equipment is inspected with flashlights in hand.

If there are no leaks, the submarine sea trials may continue. The crew returns to port to repair anything that is broken, and then departs for the assigned patrol.

My submarine, the USS Halibut, was 360 feet long and had a crew of 150 men. That works out to about two feet of boat for every crewman. To be accurate, we had two levels, or decks, so I could argue we had four feet of boat for everyone on board. However, the four feet of boat per crewmen was jammed with equipment. Furthermore, pressure hulls are made from very tough, very strong, very expensive steel. It makes sense to build the pressure hull as compact as possible to fit everything in and still leave some room for people to work, eat, sleep, shower, and use the bathroom, or “head” in navy jargon. It is fair to say the spaces were cramped.

The only private place on the boat was our racks. Each rack was the approximate size of a coffin. It contained a six foot long padded mattress, a reading light, and a curtain to provide privacy. Our personal storage space was located under the mattress.

There are no doors on the submarines, screen doors or otherwise.  We call them hatches, and they are built of thick metal. They are designed to be water tight. Even I had to duck to pass through the hatchways. Lester, at six and half feet tall, had an excruciating time passing through these hatches. I was always bothered by my short stature…until I was assigned to the submarine.

There are no windows on the submarines. None. Nada. Never have been and never will. For one thing, if you could put a window through the pressure hull, you are most likely looking at the insides of a ballast tank. If you could see the water, you would see that it is dark. And the third and most important reason is you want the toughest material between you and all of that water, especially if the enemy is dropping depth charges near your boat.

After all, these vessels are warships.  I served in the navy during the cold war between the Soviet Union and the United States. If a shooting war did break out, the submarines would have been doing much of the shooting. This fact hit home for me when I was in the Forward Torpedo Room. The Torpedomen had hung a brass placard on a torpedo tube, stating “Warshot in Tube.”  That is, we were ready to fire an armed torpedo. According to our dark humor, we would never fire a torpedo at anyone. They might fire back.

The most distinctive facet of submarine life is the smell. Since a nuclear reactor does not require any air to work, the submarine may stay submerged for months at a time. We had machines that scrubbed carbon dioxide from the ship’s atmosphere. We had devices that generated oxygen. But unless the submarine surfaced, the air in the submarine stayed in the submarine, along with anything in the air. This smell is a combination of high school P.E. locker room, automobile repair garage, Laundromat, garbage can, cigarette smoke, and pit toilet. Fortunately, our noses acclimated to the odors and we hardly noticed the smell.

After returning from a long patrol, we would return home with our clothes reeking with the sewer pipe smell of the submarine. I don’t think any of the wives burned these clothes, but they certainly wanted to.

There was one, and only one, aroma that was highly desirable. Our baker baked fresh bread every day at about 2200 hours, or for you landlubbers, 10 p.m. He served a meal of bread and soup for the midnight meal. It was actually one of the more popular meals, served from 2300 to 0100. Breakfast was served from 0500 to 0700, lunch from 1100 to 1300, and dinner from 1700 to 1900. 

The navy tried to provide good food for the submarines crews. Sometimes we even had steak and lobster. We always left port with a lot of artificial ice cream mix for the ice cream machine. We brought ice cream cones that were quickly used up. We worked around this problem by using coffee cups to eat our ice cream. Even after I left the Navy, I would sometimes eat my ice cream in a coffee cup. My kids thought I was nuts.

What time is it? That’s actually a good question. A typical duty schedule for a crewman is six hours on watch and twelve hours to sleep, eat, study, and engage in some sort of recreation. He then goes on duty again. For example, if I was on watch from 0000 to 0600, I would eat breakfast after being relieved from duty. I could then shower and shave, go to bed, study for my qualifications, or read. If I was awake around 1200, I could eat lunch. I would have to eat dinner at about 1700 and go back on duty at 1800. Six hours later, at 2400, I would be relieved from duty and I could go eat. Twelve hours later I would be going on duty at 1200. The bottom line, what meal you eat is determined by the time. That is the only difference between sunrise, noon, sunset, and midnight. The berthing areas are kept dark so people can sleep. The duty areas, such as the Engine Room, are kept fully lit, so people can stay awake.

There were times I was on another type of duty rotation; six hours on, six hours off, twenty fours a day, seven days a week. That works out to an eighty-four hour work week. There were a few weeks I was on a much different schedule; six on, eighteen hours off. I was bored out of my mind.

Communication with the family back home was almost non-existent. We were allowed to receive and send five short printed messages to our families on each patrol. There was no mail service between ports. We could mail letters if we entered a port. For some boats, that seldom or never happened. We steamed into one port for emergency repairs once. Our mission was Top Secret, so we were instructed not to tell our families we had entered port in Adak, Alaska. This was a rare opportunity for me to actually be topside, at the top of the conning tower. That is the tall structure that sits atop all submarines. I was able to see the clear blue, but cold, waters off of this Aleutian island. I saw a dolphins and a killer whale. I later saw a bald eagle on the island.

By far, the very best thing about submarine life was returning to our home port and reuniting with our families.