Did you see that?

Bob Greene posted an interesting piece about the impact of instant replay upon our experience of life, using yesterday's Super Bowl to make a larger point about today's media saturated experience. While his historical trajectory from television sports to video-centered weddings is a bit threadbare, Greene nonetheless spins a good yarn.

His article reminds readers of an era before the constant presence of the instant replay, when if you missed the field goal, you missed it. Then in 1963, he says, a CBS sports director used fledgling video tape technology to repeat a touchdown during a televised Army-Navy game. Greene recalls the announcer shouting, "This is not live! Ladies and gentlemen, Army did not score again!"

The article makes a broader point that instant replay helped foster the kinds of technology that dislocate us from reality, transforming time into a mutable prop. For Greene, "there is this nagging feeling that real life has been converted into a series of moments that are no longer expected to be here and gone, but instead are regarded as first run-throughs: performances that will be witnessed repeatedly, on demand." It's no surprise, I should add, that "On Demand" is the wave of our media future.

We live much of our lives as directors, aided especially by now-ubiquitous mobile phone technology. We establish shots, call action, crop excess, and loop meaning. Add the persistent scrutiny of security cameras and, as Greene notes, "you're on stage more constantly than Milton Berle or Lucille Ball ever were in the early days of television." [Of course, I'm even more amazed that readers under 20 may not even recognize those names.]

Watching yesterday's Super Bowl, amid the dawning awareness that the Saints would deploy gutsy plays to crush an opposing Colts team that had been widely favored to win, I observed much of Greene's argument in action. Lounging in my easy chair with an open laptop on my legs (my feet anchored by a heavy sleeping cat) I fiddled with Facebook, followed some trending news items, and read a few online articles I'd stored from the week. The Super Bowl was just another piece of stimulus.

The game was on - vivid on my flatscreen and pumping through the speakers - but I watched with little intensity. Heck, with the amount of times I used DVR to rewatch an interesting commercial, I often sought the reassurance of my clicker's "Live" button to confirm my in-sync status with the world. And even then, the experience was remote.

Bob Greene is right. The control we get from these devices, the on-demand reality they convey, is fleeting at best.

Read the entire piece: Curse of the Instant Replay

A Night at the Races: Ocean Speedway

On Friday, the Wood Family visited Ocean Speedway in Watsonville (CA) to see our first demolition derby (which, for some reason, they call Destruction Derby). Traffic around the "fishbook" leading to Highway 1 was godawful and we ended up spending an hour on a trip that normally takes about 20 minutes. So we showed up in a somewhat stressed mood. But all that hassle evaporated when we arrived and heard the revving of the engines. We found seats, grabbed hot dogs (and a beer or three for me), and settled in for the night.

We presumed that the Derby started at six. Turns out, Ocean Speedway runs races for hours before the big event. So we set through time trial after time trial for five classes of cars. And then we watched those five classes compete for real (after the national anthem and a public prayer). Honestly, we didn't care all that much for the races. But it was pretty cool to see tightly packed scrums of cars whipping around a quarter mile dirt oval. There was at least a minor wreck seemingly every five minutes (oh, how we came to dread that yellow flag). And sometimes, even after a somewhat major wreck, they'd keep the race going anyway. So a number of cars looked like crumbled up pieces of fiberglass by the end of the event.

Finally, they ran the "destruction derby" sometime before 10. About six old clunkers, painted in garish fashion, were driven into a small part of the track set off by tires. The guys who drove them seemed to be regular fellows who do this sort of thing for kicks. Maybe they turn a wrench in their day jobs, but they could be shoe salesmen and barbers for all I know. The Derby ran about 15 minutes, a sort of bumper-cars-for-real spectacle complete with flaming engines and bone rattling crunches. Then, about five hours after we arrived, the Wood Family returned to our own boring car. No more crashes for us.

Visitor tips:

Parking is no big deal. They have plenty of open space across the street from the lot, which fills up early. No fees either way. Just remember to position yourself near the entrance for easy exit.

Seating is fairly spartan. If hours of sitting on aluminum bleachers depresses you, bring a cushion.

Dirt and mud are a big part of the close-up experience at Ocean Speedway. Despite the safety fence, you will likely get hit with bits of earth as the cars screech by. Dress accordingly.

Noise? Hell yeah. They sell cheap ear plugs if you need 'em.

Safety is no problem. Attendees are friendly and the vibe is relaxed. Kids run around the small (largely) enclosed area. Use common sense, but don't worry.

Weather can get chilly at night. We arrived in shorts and t-shirts, perfect for a mid-June afternoon with temps in the 80s. A few hours later, we understood why regulars wear layers. It can get downright cold.

Prices are predictably high, but not outrageously so for this kind of venue (one bottle of bear will run ya five bucks). Bring cash. They may accept credit or debit, though I never saw any card readers.

(Photographs by Andrew Wood)

2005 Wood Family Trip to Australia

In three weeks and countless thousands of kilometers, we sampled the cosmopolitan pleasures of Sydney, watched Aussie parliamentary action in Canberra, enjoyed the coffee culture of Melbourne, played with kangaroos, wallabies, and koalas on Kangaroo Island, saw a Green Day concert in Adelaide, journeyed by train into the Red Center, communed with Uluru near Alice Springs, snorkeled along the Great Barrier Reef, befriended the fruit bats of Brisbane, and visited friends upon our return to Sydney.

Here's a link to the website (text written by Jenny) from our trip: http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda/oz/index1.html

Our 20th Anniversary Weekend

Jenny and I celebrated our twentieth anniversary over the weekend. We started with an early departure south on 101 toward San Luis Obispo and the world-famous Madonna Inn. After our arrival and a decent interval to freshen up a bit (our room was the Krazy Dazy), we sat down for a tasty meal at the Gold Rush Steak House. As ever, the room was practically pulsating with pink, everything sumptuous, decadent, and delightfully tacky.

Following a complementary dessert of black forest cake, we changed into comfy clothes and headed to the Sunset Drive-in to catch a double-feature of Indiana Jones and Iron Man. We'd seen them both before, but Jenny and I love drive-ins, and we'd never visited this one before (I'll post pix tomorrow). The Sunset is a terrific drive-in: clean, friendly, and well-priced. We thought we'd stay for only one show, but we enjoyed both.

We slept in the next morning, saw Hillary Clinton's concession speech, and had a free breakfast at the Copper Café (thanks to being awakened by hotel construction before 8 a.m.). Jenny thought it'd be nice to check out the new pool, and - wow - is it impressive. The pool's got one of those swell overflow features and the area also includes a rocky waterfall that kicks up every hour. Sure, it's fake, but it's also pretty cool. We turned our deck chairs away from the sun and enjoyed the show. We dug our stay so much that we reserved a room next June for our 21st anniversary.

Our next stop was Oakland, thanks to free baseball tickets supplied by Jenny's boss at Seagate. I'd been wanting to see a baseball game for a while now, even though Jenny gets bored with most sporting events. So when her boss was handing out free "Diamond Level" tickets, Jenny kindly snagged a couple for us.

Oh, the Diamond Level. It's cool for so many reasons. First, it has its own parking area. Second, it's only accessible through the same hallway as the players. Third, it's got all-you-can-eat sausage, pizza, wings, and coupons for free beer - delivered to your seat. And best of all - it's right behind home plate. That's why individual tickets run 225 bucks - and they can only be bought in half- or full-season amounts.

We had an awesome time. About twenty players were kind enough to sign my ball, and even Jenny got excited by the game, especially the heart-breaking finale as the A's came that close to overtaking the Angels in the bottom of the ninth. Afterward, we got onto the field for a phenomenal fireworks show.

We closed out our evening with a quick visit to Forbidden Island, my favorite Bay Area tiki bar (other than Hula's, of course). The next day was dedicated to rest and much needed relaxation from a terrific celebration of twenty years.


(Photos by Andrew and Jenny Wood - and a friend we met at the game)

20th Anniversary

Tonight we're heading to San Luis Obispo to stay at the Madonna Inn. Tomorrow we're heading to Oakland to catch the A's-Angels game, thanks to free tickets from Jenny's cool boss. Location? Fifth row, home plate.

What's the occasion?

Nothing much, just a celebration of our twentieth anniversary (technically: June 8th).

That's right. Jenny and I have been married for two decades.

One silly little blog post will not do justice to how lucky I feel to have been married to Jenny for 20 years. And one weekend of celebration (resting of Sunday, of course) will not adequately reflect the significance of this milestone. But it's something to say this: I married "up."

Anyone who knew me back in high school recalls a fellow with a big mouth but not much discipline. That's why I joined the Navy; I had no other options. That, and the fact that my grandfather was a sailor too.

I hit boot camp, and it hit me back. I couldn't wear my uniform right, I couldn't march straight, and I couldn't seem to avoid pissing off my company commander. I just couldn't seem to keep my stuff in one sock (though I distinctly recall a different word for "stuff" back then). Somehow I managed to squeak through and snag my spot in journalism school.

There again, though, I was a screw-up. Sure, I was smart enough. I could understand the material and I showed promise as a writer. But the exacting discipline of the work, the demands of correctness, frustrated me. It was easier to go my own way rather than to follow orders. For a while, it seemed like I'd wash out.

But I was engaged to Jenny back then, and I knew I had to straighten up.

As now, Jenny was kind, trusting, and resilient. She'd thrown her lot in with me, even though she could have done much better. She could have found a fellow with a better career path, with better prospects, and with better looks. But she stuck with me through the hard times.

So I knew that I couldn't screw this thing up.

I endured boot camp and survived my schooling because I wanted to be worthy of Jenny.

And more than anything, I wanted to be stationed near her.

Naturally the Navy sent me to Rota, Spain.

So she and I got married and started our family overseas.

We kept a dingy, cold, tick-infected apartment in town, me working 12 hour shifts and her not knowing a soul. I was tired; she was lonely. It was a miserable way to start a marriage. I was always stressed over something, so even when I returned to our flat, she didn't get a break, just a cranky sailor.

Some Navy spouses leave, but she stayed.

We decided to have a baby, and pretty soon we had to transform our wretched apartment into a place suitable for a child. Jenny and I spent our Saturdays "yard sale-ing," shopping for bargains to furnish the baby's room, and we attended evening parenting classes. I did what I had to do as a father, I guess, but it was she who transformed our apartment into a home.

Jenny tackled motherhood without proximity to her family or even a husband who had a clue what it meant to be a father.

I could go on, but twenty years is worth a book, not a blog post. Suffice to say that when we returned stateside I had to find a job, get a degree, start a career, and grow up as a man. We had tough times. We faced predatory landlords, wrecked cars, empty bank accounts, and terrible arguments. Our "salad days" sucked.

But Jenny stuck with me.

She and I attended Berry College, where we both finished our bachelor's degrees. We then moved to Ohio, where she worked while I continued school. We ate because Jenny brought food home from the restaurants where she waited tables. We kept our budget balanced because Jenny took the needle every week at the blood bank. And our daughter grew up into a fine young woman because Jenny taught her to read, ride a bike, and believe in herself.

I was in our family. Jenny made our family.

And now it's been twenty years. We live in a home that reflects our shared work and sacrifice. We have a daughter heading off to a fine college. And we have learned to treat each other with kindness, respect, and patience. It was never easy, but it was worth it.

I can't wait to see what the next two decades hold.

Super Bowl XLII

Now that was a Super Bowl.

Normally I don't follow any sport, and I never watch the big games that seem to capture everyone's attention. The Final Four, the World Series, the World Cup: couldn't care less. But every year I dedicate one Sunday to the Super Bowl. Ostensibly I watch it for the commercials and the grandiosity of the whole thing, a spectacle that manages to conflate our nation's obsessions with gastronomic excess, militaristic nationalism, nostalgic patriotism, and consumer identity.

But I also enjoy the game.

Oh yes, four 15-minute quarters that, to Jenny's chagrin, manage to last all afternoon and into the evening.

Since I don't follow the teams throughout the year, I usually face a last minute decision: for whom do I cheer? A sense of honor compels me to pick a team before kick-off so that I can ride its fortunes up or down. Yet I cannot help but grow excited for both teams as they advance down the gridiron.

Yesterday I chose the Giants, if only because they were so destined to lose. I mean the Patriots were coming into the season with a perfect record, ready to join the ranks of immortals like the '72 Dolphins. Compare to those beleaguered Giants who lost their first two games and came into the post-season as Wildcard players. It would be a slaughter.

But I was drawn to the underdog and - wow - did they come through.

Of all my favorite plays, and there were several, was a moment when Eli Manning looked sure to be sacked before miraculously breaking free of jersey-grabbing linemen. Creating a momentary pocket, Manning floated a 32-yard pass to David Tyree, who made a catch that could only be envisioned by a Hollywood screenwriter, wrenching from a determined opponent and slapping the ball to his helmet. Tyree later explained, "My opportunities are too far and few to let that one go. It was supernatural, you know? Some things just don't make sense, and that catch is a good example."

After a slow and ungainly start, this Super Bowl (and its winning team) offered up a vivid example of persistence in the face of long odds. An incredible game.

Read more about the catch at ESPN.

Learning to Fly

During our Wood Family Southern Routes BBQ Tour, we visited North Carolina's Outer Banks and took hang gliding lessons from Kitty Hawk Kites. This was our second try -- the first attempt back in 1997 was scuttled due to a lack of wind. During our training and while receiving feedback and encouragement from our instructors, I decided that the lessons necessary to ensure a safe and exhilarating glide over the sandy dunes might be useful in other aspects of life. Now, this isn't to say that I flew a hang glider. My experience was that of a student taking micro-leaps that lasted mere seconds. But above the ground, contemplating every moment with a rare exactness, I picked up a few pointers whose utility may stretch beyond this singular experience. Never being afraid of a little pretension, here are six lessons I learned while learning to hang glide.

Get Help

Leaping off a dune with only the wind to help you avoid a gritty dirt sandwich ought not be attempted lightly. We sought instruction from experienced and patient hang gliding aficionados who understood the theory and practice of human powered flight. While we knew what we wanted to do, we wanted to leap off a sand dune and end our day without a hospital visit, we didn't know what we didn't know. As a professor, I find that aspect to be most critical to the learning experience. Students are sure they know what college is about, getting the required credentials to do what they've always planned to do. Any kind of instruction that doesn't seem to correlate directly with those goals appears superfluous to a large number of students ("Will this be on the test?"). And yet, even though I had no interest in learning about the proper technique for gripping the cross-bar, I had no idea of how important that skill would be until I found myself over-compensating when the lift carried me up and I crashed quickly thereafter. A spirit of inquiry and a search for patient and knowledgeable help augmented my enthusiasm with experience and helped me improve quickly.

Run Fast

A necessary component of human powered flight is a hard working human, at least at first. Our glider required about 25 miles per hour of wind to take flight. With a light breeze, we needed to add the extra energy to gain any altitude. That required a fast run, even though we came to fly and not to jog. I watched some people make a few half-hearted plods before hoping that the wind would take over and lift them up. Those folks generally ate dirt. Since we were students, we had the help of experienced instructors who ran alongside us, contributing their energy to ours. But I frequently heard an instructor explain to a frustrated student who crashed after only a few steps, "You stopped running on me!" I've seen the same thing in the classroom and elsewhere in life. Many people hope that hot air will lift them up, or that kind people will help them along. But all of us eventually must run alone, and it's best to begin that run early. Looking back, I remember wasting my high school years and having to sprint during my twenties to catch up. But getting up to speed eventually results in a strange circumstance: the harder you run at first, the less you must pump those muscles later. Eventually the wind of good luck, good friends, and good circumstances will keep you aloft for a long, long time. And the whole flight will seem effortless. You'll look down on the dune and see folks sorrowfully running from place to place, even though their paths lead only in circles. That's why it's best to exert the effort to run early and run fast in order to get anywhere.

Look Ahead

Our trainers repeated one mantra over and over: keep your eyes on the direction you seek to go. It's a simple enough principle. When you're driving a car, if you turn your eyes to the left, you'll tend to turn the wheel in the same direction. If you turn your eyes to the right, the car will follow. With concentration, you can look one direction and turn another, but doing so takes particular attention. Hang gliding calls for attention to multiple details, so many in fact that you'll find it almost impossible to counteract your instincts; you can therefore pretty much count on your direction following your eyes. Like I said, it's pretty simple. Yet there's a meaningful lesson to be learned when trying to leap off a sand dune. If you keep your eyes on the ground, you can count on landing soon, sooner than you may like. Oddly enough, lifting your eyes perpetually skyward leads to similarly troublesome results: you'll pull the glider at too sharp a pitch and stall. But if you concentrate upon a goal ahead of you, and if you keep your eyes on that point, your body will tend to follow your vision. Your ability to get anywhere requires that you know where you want to go. It's not blind optimism that keeps your eyes facing forward. Far from it, this kind of focus trains your body to submit to your desires.


Adjust Gently

Hang gliding forces you to abandon the human-made desire to find drama in every decision. Think about the summer blockbusters or romantic dramas you may have seen at the movie theater. Every decision seems to drip with meaning. Every move, every turn, every action must be big, big enough to make an impression within the blink of an eye. Soaked in this media bath, many of us seek similar drama in our daily lives, almost as if we imagine ourselves to be living some sort of movie to be viewed by others. Serving as our own narrators, we tell stories that seek to compete with the ones we see on the screens of our lives. Walking through a city, we can be forgiven for such hubris. Jumping off a dune, we learn quickly to be more delicate, eventually. For me, the process involved many mistakes. During my training, when I was given an instruction to pull the bar in, I'd pull in, sharply, dramatically. When given an instruction to let the bar out slightly, I'd let it out a lot, movie-style. Result? Dirt sandwiches, lots of 'em. Eventually I saw more successful flyers practicing what I continue to learn. With their joyous leaps, they demonstrated that most complicated procedures require a delicate touch. With hang gliding, a tap of one inch or less is sufficient to adjust the pitch. A delicate pull to the left or right can alter the course. You want to do more; you think you should manage this gangly device. But if you've selected the proper equipment and received the appropriate training, it's best to trust what brought you to this place. Adjustments must be made, of course. Winds change, forming tiny bursts of energy that demand small modifications. But overreacting to these natural phenomena creates vicious feedback loops that end badly. With most things, whether in hang gliding or in life, the lesson is the same: Make your initial choices with precision until you have a good feel for the wind -- and lots of space between your position and the ground. Then, you can be as dramatic as you like.

Loosen Grip

I was surprised by how big and awkward a hang glider can be -- and I was particularly surprised by how little force was needed to guide it. Our training gliders were about 80 pounds each, full of wires and poles and straps. Yet our trainers reminded us, "A hang glider wants to fly. It's built and designed to catch the wind. Its natural inclination is to take flight, so don't get in the way." Again and again we were told this simple truth. Yet my inclination seemed constantly at odds with that of the glider. Running my hardest, pumping my body full of adrenalin, my fingers gained a death grip on the bar almost every time. Every jar, every bump, every jostle would then transfer itself to the wings, resulting in turbulence and, ultimately, rough landings. Here I am reminded of the planners in the 1997 film Contact who, ignoring the instructions they were given, insisted on bolting a heavy seat in a spacecraft designed to travel without one. The chamber shook with fury, almost tearing itself apart, until finally the seat dislodged and smashed against the ceiling. At once, the ride became smooth, frictionless. In both cases, the lesson is to unlearn social principles, to let go of our desire to direct things that remain only loosely subject to our control. This does not require abandonment of influence, only recognition of our limits. Any accomplishment takes initial effort, a running start, but once we become airborne, the real trick is to allow the forces around us to come to our aid, not to disregard them, or worse, to fight them. My young soul sees a single person flying a hang glider. The lesson from that limited vision is control. The more experienced flyer sees an intersection of forces that result in a hang gliding person. The lesson from that expanded vision is humility.

Try Again

Five tries. Five. And I only experienced one flight in which I landed on my feet. As any successful person will tell you, failure is a powerful incentive that leads to improvement, at least it is for those who have ambition. The taste of dirt after a ditched landing, the recognition that you screwed up and almost got hurt, the possibility that you might get hurt for real next time: these things lead us to avoid the dune cliffs of life. It's so much easier to watch other people take their leaps, whether sports heroes or cinematic action stars. They try and succeed and, vicariously, so do we. But eventually the game concludes or the movie ends and we are stuck once more with the undeniable reality that life will continue pretty much as it did yesterday. One more day gone, one more chance lost. And while we are genetically wired to ignore this reality as long as possible, one day we will run out of chances to fail or succeed or even try. I'll leave discussions of the afterlife to those inclined to such musings. As for myself, I am drawn to the heavyset woman I saw that day of training, the poor soul who leaped spastically like an electrocuted fish from the water, with no grace and no control. Time and time again she would crash to the ground. And I'll admit that I chuckled to myself, despite how foolish I myself must of looked. But she kept at it, pumping those legs as fast as she could. By her fifth try she caught some air and returned with the swagger of a fighter pilot. She looked silly, and so did I. Neither one of us was built for fight, and both of us needed plenty of help. But she persisted, and so did I. This is the final and most important lesson of hang gliding (or anything worth doing): falling comes before flying.

These are six lessons I learned while learning to hang glide. They're not profound, and they're hardly original. But I believe they provide useful insights that expand beyond one day on the dunes. It took Jenny and I ten years to return to Kitty Hawk and cash in our "wind checks," and it took gallons of sweat and hours of work to accomplish our goal. But we flew, even if just for a moment or two, and we saw the value of lessons taught by twenty-something college students working their summer jobs and trying to help clueless tourists get airborne. We saw the values of inquiry, effort, focus, precision, humility, and persistence. Leaving the North Carolina Outer Banks, satisfied that we hang glided at last, I looked back on this experience fondly and with a sense of completion. But not Jenny. She wants to skydive. I can only imagine what I'll learn then.

(Photos by Jenny and Vienna Wood -- and a friendly stranger)