Monday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Monday

Hours of video, 10 more photos from the bottom of the ocean

And how was your weekend? Cold and gray Saturday here, sat on the porch and enjoyed the warm of a brilliant Sunday. Took a nice walk. A low-key stretch by all accounts.

More improv comedy from a live production on Saturday night. This should go right to where it starts, but if it doesn’t, scrub your way over to 12:48 to see all the funny stuff begin.

And if you’re not in the mood for young comedy — and how could that even be a possibility? — let’s have some sports talk with another fun episode of the B-Town Breakdown.

And here’s a package on a historic moment in this year’s Little 500.

I hope they did a version in Thai, too.

Let’s look at some more stuff under the sea! This is some sort of pillar coral (Dendrogyra cylindrus), I think.

Here’s another juvenile stoplight parrotfish (Sparisoma viride) hanging out with some beautiful branch coral.

This is a good place to mention that I updated the front page of the site this weekend. There are now a lot more cool images rotating through. Some of them you might find familiar from recent days here. I have a lot of really nice ones there, so we’ll be able to keep that fresh for some time. Check back often, as they say. (But keep scrolling for now.)

There’s a barracuda just hanging out under this rock. I got to within probably three or four feet of him. He was unfazed by the attention.

I’m not sure what’s prettier here, the color of the ocean, the coral or the the queen angelfish (Holacanthus ciliaris). This species, it is believed, communicates through temporary changes in color. Also, the juvenile fish are a different color. You thought you had difficulty reaching teenagers!

Always look in the vase coral. You never know what you’ll find inside. Like this lobster!

This is a moody picture, isn’t it? There must have been some passing clouds in front of the sun as I passed by this setting.

The light changes everything. You might think this is a lonely or spooky feeling, but you’d be mistaken.

There’s all sorts of interesting things to see and critters to meet, after all.

And if the fish and all of their natural wonders aren’t enough, you also have your dive buddy.

Best fish in the sea!

That is, by the by, the 100th photo I’ve published from the Cozumel dive series. And, if you’re wondering, I can probably get two more days out of this. So stick around!

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4
Apr 22

Fish aren’t sneakers, but shoes could look like fish

Spring arrives here just in time for the big bike races. Every year we’ve attended those races — Covid notwithstanding — you could either note the difference from the day before or, literally and seriously, during one of the two races themselves. This year’s iterations of the Little 500 take place on April 22nd and 23rd. And the spring series is underway, a whole bunch of smaller bike contests meant to determine qualifications and starting positions, and I guess spring is getting antsy, because we hit … 61 degrees today.

People were saying “You have to get outside! It’s beautiful!” And I said, we’re in an anomalous moment of a place with poor weather patterns and you’re missing the real takeaway.

That being it took until April 4th to get into the 60s.

There’s a lot of Stockholm Syndrome that goes into something like that. Warm winter, cold spring, and finally, finally respectable weather. What a weird phenomenon.

Also, I have not seen any robins yet. You usually see one or two here. Maybe it’s a migratory pattern issue. The bullfrogs have made their triumphant return, and the bike races, which really mean spring, are still two weeks away. Anything could happen.

There is presently snow in the forecast for Friday. Back home, they’re looking at 70s for the weekend.

The weather was lovely in Cozumel two weeks ago! Let’s see a few more of the neat views from under the sea.

The queen angelfish (Holacanthus ciliaris) is really one of those specimens that comes to mind when I think “Shoe designers should all get their inspiration from reef diving.” You know this would be popular at the gym.

Be careful you do not get pinched by the Carribean spiny lobster (Panulirus argus).

More cool reef shots.

This would be a good time to say that one of the productive things I did this weekend was update the front of the website. Go check out the new art!

Isn’t that beautiful? And there will be more to add there as we work through the rest of these photos.

Meanwhile, enjoy this blue tang (Acanthurus coeruleus). You know that’s a running shoe or a basketball shoe color scheme waiting to happen. These guys live up to 20 years, which is better than any sneaker you’ve ever bought.

Hard to mistake the stoplight parrotfish (Sparisoma viride) for anything else. They can get up to two feet long.

If you turned to look away, this rock and coral formation would move closer to you. It always looked that menacing.

How many living things are in this photo, do you think? (There are three tiny patches of sand, but everything else in this photo is alive.)

These delicate little blue coral vases became one of my favorite sights this trip. So delicate, so intricate, so beautiful.

And we floated above it all.

Drift-diving Cozumel is a great experience. Please pay no attention as I am pricing out airline tickets for my next dive trip.

Cozumel / IU / Monday / photo / SCUBA / television / video — Comments Off
28
Mar 22

A week at full speed

Let’s catch up on what the television students have been doing at IUSTV. Two weeks ago, of course, they were on Spring Break, which means they have to spool back up, which means it’s a little light. But, still, they released three new episodes, including a brand new show. Check these out.

First, the late night crew did a game show.

I’ll need you to tell me if the bit at the end was deliberate, or an accident. I haven’t caught up to the people involved yet to get the … official … version of the story.

This is a brand new show, and it starts with an interview with filmmaker Angelo Pizzo.

I wonder who they’ll book next for that show.

And if you need some sports, here’s some professional soccer talk from the semi-professional talkers.

And let’s check in with the kitties, who haven’t been featured here in two weeks. Two weeks, I’m told by my consultants, is a long time to not highlight your most popular feature.

Usually this is Poseidon’s role, but Phoebe has lately been hopping into the shower.

Her brother likes water more than she does, though. But that morning, I suppose, he was enjoying a few moments in the sun.

It was cold this weekend. How do I know it was cold? These two were cuddling for warmth.

Speaking of cold, this winter Poseidon learned about the joys of the space heater. Because he is spoiled, I have to put a blanket on the floor for him to enjoy.

Ridiculous, right?

A few nights later, the house was still feeling chilled. I tried to set that up for him again. Space heater, blanket, and all of that, but he wasn’t interested. Phoebe took it to the next level, however. And you’ll just have to believe me here, but …

She’s under the blanket, in front of the space heater.

And now, we’re back to it. If you have some more time to kill right now, however, there’s always more on Twitter and check me out on Instagram, too, including tons more videos from diving in Cozumel. And the cats. Did you know that Phoebe and Poseidon have an Instagram account? They do. Check them out.

adventures / memories / Monday / photo — Comments Off
21
Mar 22

From one destination location to the next

We are back in the United States. Specifically Cleveland, the Cozumel of Ohio. This was the plan. How we arrived here, shockingly, did not go to plan. This was the fault of American Airlines.

Got to hand it to those airline people, boy. They can’t do the one thing you hire them to do.

I’m not over it. I am, in fact, slightly traumatized by the entire American Airlines Inferiority Experience.

TL;DR — They were just as bad, or worse, this Saturday as last Saturday.

I was standing in a line at the Cozumel airport talking with a man from Mobile. He’d gone down there some years back, fell in love with the place and bought a bar. Said he’d never seen the airport like this. It was conert-hall packed.

You know those vinyl roped retractable stanchions you weave through? The maze maximizes the foot traffic in a limited space. The line at the security checkpoint at the Cozumel airport went well beyond that maze. The line somehow formed itself into several of its own zig zags. And the point where the self-policed line joined the maze was the most dangerous place in the airport, because everyone was eyeing the clock and stressed and sure you were breaking in line. I saw two almost-fights right in front of me. It was amazing ugly-American people watching.

Also? our plane? Departed late.

It arrived in Chicago … late.

See where this is going?

Once again they couldn’t get the plane attached to the airport, and then they couldn’t get the door opened for a long time.

Then there’s customs and border control. And we got separated.

We had too much divide and conquer for a vacation, if you ask me.

In the wisdom of the TSA and whatever other agencies were involved in this, you have to claim your bags from your international and re-scan them for your domestic flight. And you have to go through security again. I get it, coming from Cozumel. That procedure Saturday afternoon was laughable, as almost all airport security is when the agents look up and realize that thousands of angry people are waiting to get through their chokepoints. Theater only goes so far.

Anyway, we get to the point where you have to check your luggage back in, and the American Airlines agent says, matter of factly, “You’re not making that flight. They’re in final boarding.”

Never mind that her colleagues made us late. Or that boarding just started. The defeatist said it wasn’t happening, and blamed the airport.

She could get us on a plane tomorrow. Through Winnipeg or some such. That’s not going to happen. For a host of reasons we had to be back that night. Relieved to just be through with American Airlines, I said, “Forget it. Get me a rental car, I will drive us to our car at Indy.”

And that’s how I came to drive four hours to Indianapolis after arriving two hours early at a Mexican airport, to barely make it through security in time, only to find that the plane at the gate prior to ours was an hour-plus late, making our flight late, and the pilot of the flying sky tube was out for a Saturday stroll the whole way up North America.

So we got to the Indy airport, dumped the rental, caught the shuttle to the park-n-fly, and then drove the one final hour to the house. It was 2 a.m.

Which was when I got to deal with things like unpacking, starting laundry, cat puke. And ants.

So at 4-something I went to bed, and woke up about six hours later. Happily, Sunday was relaxing. It was just finishing the laundry, making some videos, spending a little quality time with the cats, and then packing again.

Because now it’s Cleveland!

You might remember that my lovely bride had a planned surgery last year. It was a left leg thing, a circulatory issue. It’s an obscure and rare problem, relatively speaking, which is part of why it took 20 years to find someone that took it seriously, and could put her in front of the right experts. Turns out the two top surgeons for this work are at John Hopkins, and at the Cleveland Clinic. And, as we learned in the extra-curricular reading, there are other surgeons doing it poorly. Well, we got in with the guy at Cleveland. Actually, last summer, we had an appointment with a resident and he said “I’ve done a few of these. But let me see if the chair is in. He does all of these.” And he was, and he was great. Explained everything. Answered everything.

I went into reporter mode, asking every question under the sun, and reframed certain questions to see if they would elicit different answers. That first day, when his colleague just pulled him out of his office, he patiently and kindly and thoroughly answered questions for 48 minutes. That was just the Q&A part. He explained it all. It’s similar to when you cinch up a garden hose. There are five arteries in your leg, and in The Yankee’s legs the artery behind her knees get cinched up because of her muscular development. (She has muscular legs.) She had all the symptoms. The timeline tracks. Every benchmark he presented, she complained about. He drew a diagram and said “This is how your arteries are supposed to look. We’ll do some scans, but I bet yours look like this.” He did some scans and her legs looked exactly like his sketch.

The procedure, the doctor said, is essentially like tearing a muscle. He took out a bit of muscle below and above the popliteal fossa. The popliteal artery goes where it is supposed to, circulation is returned to normal, and now one of her legs doesn’t tingle and her foot feels like a foot is supposed to feel, not ice-cold.

She did the procedure on her left leg in October. She was weight bearing the next day, and took increasingly longer walks for two weeks before PT began. Ultimately a near-perfect recovery.

At her checkup-slash-prep appointment today he had her talk to a teenager about the procedure. She deserves kickbacks.

The doctor was pleased to see her do the deep knee bends he uses as a metric. She has to get it stretched and warmed up, and has a little nerve issue, but it’s otherwise all working as it should, that left leg. He was impressed she ran a 10K with me in December. (Ran better than I did that day, in fact.)

Which means it is time to do the right leg. Which is tomorrow.

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14
Mar 22

American Airlines is the worst thing in the American airspace

Subtitled: Finally, now finally, on our Spring Break 2020 (And this time we mean it) trip

We are in Mexico today. We are finally in Mexico. Just as of today. Should have been here on Saturday. But the journey to our sojourn was negatively impacted by forces beyond our control. In other words …

TL;DR — American Airlines is a terrible way to travel.

It starts like this. We booked this in 2019. Then Covid. We rescheduled twice, because Covid. We were supposed to fly Delta, as we often do, but they canceled this route because of Covid. So American Airlines became our only option to Cozumel. Months ago, American Airlines rescheduled the first flight out of Indy, to make it even earlier in the morning.

So we woke up at 4 a.m. to arrive at the airport to do airport things and got on our plane which couldn’t leave on time. There was a fuel door that wouldn’t close, you see. The ~~captain~~ pilot must leave the plane, study the problem, Google the panel code, call his mom’s neighbor’s uncle about it, and then request a repair team to come and bolt the panel shut.

Then, and this part is very true, the pilot comes over his comm system and says “Well, that’s done, but this plane has an awful lot of computers, so it’ll take a little time for us to get started and in the air.”

Gentle reader, dear friend, if an airplane pilot ever complains, or speaks aloud in wonder about the amount of electronics on his flying sky tube, disembark the vehicle immediately. This is simply good life advice.

Only, you see, there’s a script the pilot is using now. Sure you can get off the flying sky tube. Reschedule a flight. Who knows how that will go. And if you leave this flying sky tube you’re not getting back on this flying sky tube. Tricky door panels and all that.

So we stay on. We depart (very) late. We arrive in Dallas very late for our connection. And this is where the troubles began.

We landed, and waited and waited and waited for the plane to connect to the airport, because of personnel problems. Meantime, our connecting flight just … left. Left five minutes early, even.

What airline does that?

(Later — Note how that flight departed early and was still delayed in arriving? Should have been a red flag for everyone.)

So now we’re stuck in Dallas with nothing but our luggage and dreams. There are no more flights to Cozumel, on the Saturday of the first week of Spring Break for most of the US. There are flights to Cancun and, after standing in a line for many hours, we are on standby for each of them.

Abandon hope, all ye who enter the purgatory of ineptitude that is American Airlines, and the studied indifference and downright rudeness of their employees at Dallas-Fort Worth.

Also, that sign in the foreground? May as well be hieroglyphics out here in the real world. You wonder how long before some bored maintenance crew takes them all down at this point, and where the last tattered one will be.

We also spent hours on the phone, to no avail..

We finally arrived at a place euphemistically called Customer Service. We went here three times on Saturday, standing in exceedingly longer lines each time, to be told different stories, tall tales, excuses and downright lies. Six hours or more in this line alone, for lies.

It was well-staffed. If you like irony and travelers’ distress. I painted over the very young person standing here just in front of us to demonstrate the time when the eight-station desk, the one featuring hours-long waits with a line stretching beyond eyesight into the distance haze of the airport. It was staffed by exactly one American Airlines “professional.” At max capacity, there were three people working at that desk.

And dear and gentle reader, at this point I have written 651 words on this shambolic experience, giving you only the highest points. The details will be spelled out to the executives at American. (I found a helpful mailing list.) Suffice to say, to you, that you likely haven’t had the displeasure of dealing with customer service of this sort in a long, long time. The business model, on the phone and in the airport, and at every level, seems to be “Get these people out of my line and into someone else’s.” We spent an entire day and night at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport dealing with these miserable people. And they are miserable. They are angry, and they are angry at you. Do not dare inconvenience them with your inconvenience, no matter how polite or flustered. Also, they’re the ones getting paid to be at the airport today.

Finally we got a voucher for a hotel. We had to re-coordinate with our condo people, who have been amazing. We had to cancel dives. (This is a dive trip. You go to dive and do little else. Because of this airline we have lost 45 percent of our dives.)

We spent Sunday doing nothing in exotic Dallas. Spring Break! We did nothing because The Yankee had to go back to the DFW airport on a luggage journey, another quixotic four-hour tale. One of our bags got to Cozumel yesterday.

American Airlines: Where incompetence meets apathy, in the sky!

Hertz canceled our car reservation, another American Airline knock-on effects, so we also spent about four hours on the phone with American Express and Hertz trying to make this right.

Which brings us today, and the Cozumel airport, after we finally arrived two years, and then two-days, late.

The Yankee retrieved the piece of luggage that arrived yesterday without us (I’m impressed we got anything back from these yahoos) while I stood in the Hertz line, because, we were told, time was critical. The people in front of us at the little Hertz desk, no dice. This bodes well. That poor family was irate, but no carros means no cars.

Meant the same for us. The guy starts to explain it to me. I said, “Please stop, and thank you. But you’re going to have to explain it to her,” and about that time my lovely bride came back with our lost luggage and I stood well, well away, over at the Avis desk, where I got one of the last cars they had available. We previously had a week-long Hertz reservation for less than the daily rate of this Avis car, and American Airlines will get that bill, too. (And the two-night Dallas stay, and the three extra Uber rides. And another for missed dives. It’s going to be fun.)

To sum up: American Airlines is terrible, and by 4 p.m. Saturday afternoon Smith’s First Rule of Economics, “Don’t make it hard for me to spend my money with you,” was invoked.

If American Airlines is the only way to get to somewhere I need to be, I’ll go anywhere else but there.

But enough about that, for now.

We’re staying at a place called Residencias Reef. Let us sing their praises.

It is a nice oceanfront place. We rented a one-bedroom condo. The furnishings are fine and it is well appointed. There’s a note on the printer that says you can’t get these cartridges in Mexico, but some are due in from Estados Unidos this month. Had I known, I would have picked some up for them. It seemed necessary after seeing all of the things there. Need Gorilla Glue? Got it. Forget your beach reading? Two shelves worth. Fresh fruit? At the ready. Sun block? Bug spray? Right over here. Bikes? Paddles for the paddle boards? Of course. Dry bags? You bet.

They’ve been beyond patient and kind to us. As we’ve noted, this is our Spring Break 2020 trip. We postponed it at the 11th hour that because of the rapidly deteriorating Covid situation, wondering “Will they even let us back in the country at the end of the week?” (The next week the mercurial federal government supposedly shut the door to Europe and Canada, after all. And there was something about a wall?) The condo owners were very understanding in 2020. We were ready to make this trip last year, but then a Covid spike hit. They kindly let us postpone once more. But this, they said, was the last time.

It was more than you could ask for, really.

And then we had to write them Saturday and say “We’ll be there Monday, because American Airlines is terrible at their job.”

Residencias Reef has been great. If we come to Cozumel in the future, or steer anyone else here, it will always be with them in mind.

Also, they have two heated pools.

And we waded into the ocean, which was chilly.

Tomorrow, we dive!