Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #134: Overheated, Old Friends Reunion, Substitute Event, etc.

1. Who would have thought that walking over 10 miles in 100-degree heat would have some lingering effects on the body? As you might remember, in last week’s blog I did the walk I just mentioned while waiting for my car to get some work done. I slowly cooked myself over the course of a 3-hour walk. Now, over the weekend things seemed normal. I didn’t have anything to do, so I was sitting around relaxing. As soon as I got back to my day job and actually had to do things, I realized just how wiped out my body was from that walk. I was physically exhausted. If I could have laid down and slept on the floor of the gym, I would have. The best part is that I have to go get a little more work done on my car this week and very likely will do some sort of walk again. Don’t worry though, it won’t totally be like deja vu. It is supposed to be at least a few degrees cooler, with a lower heat index of around 85 instead of 101. I will still bring everything I need, but rather than walking 10 miles will probably go down the street to my friend’s bike shop and bother him until my car is finished.


2. With so many oars in the water when it comes to my life, it can be hard sometimes to know which ones will actually move my boat and which ones are merely decorative. I look at where I am putting my energy and effort and wonder what my return on investment truly is. I have so many projects I am working on. Podcasts, books, events to go along with those books, producing my first feature film, these are all important and satisfying. However, I guess the bottom line for me, and I am sure many of you reading, is to be financially secure. Yes, I have these projects I pour my heart and soul into, but at the end of the day I still need to work a day job to pay my bills to allow me to pursue these projects. In life, you don’t always get obvious answers. I wish it were in black and white which road to take, but it’s not. A lot of life is moving in the direction you think is right and hoping that there isn’t a cliff around the next corner. It is one part exhilarating and one part terrifying to have so many potential options lying ahead of me. Any one of these projects could suddenly blow up into a life-changing career. Then again, none of them could. There is no guarantee, and that is the risk I take. You only get one life. The best you can do is live it to the best of your ability, doing what you believe is right. Still, I wish there was a big flashing neon sign with an arrow pointing me in the right direction. Funny how, even as I near 50, I still look at my life as a puzzle I am still in the process of building. It’s the perfect storm of fear and freedom.


3. It’s funny how certain events remain vivid in your mind, but to others they are forgotten or at best a blur. One such event came up when chatting with my buddy Steve this week. During a trip over to Nantucket in 2014, we ended an amazing day with a stop at Cisco Brewers. I had finished up much of my research for a travel book I was writing about Nantucket, and it felt like the perfect cap on that chapter. We each got a beer. I got an IPA in a plastic cup. At this point, I had, I believe, an iPhone 6. I took a few photos of the bar and surroundings, including one that I thought was artsy, with the beer in the foreground and the Cisco sign above the bar in the background. Since Steve is a skilled photographer who taught me a lot of what I know, I wanted to show him the photo for his approval. I also wanted to actually drink my beer and not just leave it as an ornament on the bar. I turned around to him with the phone, but the hand with the beer hit the raised lip on the edge of the bar. The beer, in turn, spilled everywhere. I did manage to save maybe half of it, but it was a hugely embarrassing moment. People around must have thought I was already ‘three sheets to the wind’ as my Nana used to say. I believe Steve said the photo was good, possibly to make me feel better. The rest of the time at Cisco went off without incident. It still ended up being a great day, but going full circle, that moment with the beer Steve has no recollection of. I told him I think I stored it as trauma, which is why I remember it in vivid detail.

The infamous photo in question

4. I mentioned earlier about all of the projects I have going on. There can be a sense of uncertainty over the path I am currently on. Obviously, there are no guarantees, and anything worth having is worth risking something for. I do often try to look for subtle signs or hints that I am on the right path. I got a good one this week. While driving to work on a beautiful morning, I opened all of my windows and my moonroof to get as much of the sunlight in. I was on the road when, out of nowhere, a ladybug came in through my roof and landed on my right arm. It was surprising, to say the least. I extended my right arm out, and the bug sat there for several seconds while I drove. You can believe whatever you choose, but I know that in many cultures ladybugs are seen as signs of good luck, wealth, and protection. Just as quickly and randomly as it landed on me, it was gone again. If it had only lasted a minute longer, I would have been in a parking lot and could have gotten a photo. Oh well, it made me feel a little more secure about the road I am on.


5. This week I had an event that could have easily gone sideways. The Cape Cod Maritime Museum in Hyannis reached out to me last week. They had an event Thursday of this week, and their speakers had dropped out. They said I came highly recommended and asked if I could step in. I have learned that when it comes to opportunities, you say yes and figure things out later, so that’s what I did. I had one week to craft a totally new presentation. It ended up being what it was like to have a summer vacation on Cape Cod in 1926, a century ago. There was a lot of research and hours spent putting together a suitable presentation and copious notes. Despite being really happy with my work, I knew that there could still be issues. People had ordered tickets for a certain event. What if they didn’t want to keep their tickets to see me? I was cautiously optimistic but still keeping in mind that it might not be as good as I’d hoped. Boy was I wrong. Not only did people keep their tickets, but the event was sold out, with people waiting on standby just in case seats opened. The Maritime Museum holds events in a really neat, rustic downstairs library overlooking the harbor. It was so packed with chairs that I was wedged in a corner behind a podium. In the end, the event turned out to be one of the best I’ve ever been a part of. It went so well that the staff is already setting up a return event for January. I left the museum feeling grateful, validated, and a bit overwhelmed at the support I got.



6. This week was also the second half of the exhaust repairs on my car. For those who didn’t read last week’s blog, I brought my car in to get the loud noises of my exhaust fixed. It turned out there were a lot of leaks and weakened pipes and joints in the exhaust system, thanks to New England winters. It took six hours before I got my car, and even then I was told there was more that needed to be done. Technically, it might have been finished last week, but there was a chance that it might not have been finished by closing time. If so, I would have had to leave my car there over the weekend, which wasn’t going to work. So here we were at part two, deja vu. Again, I dropped the car off and started a long walk on the bike trail. This week the weather was a little cooler and a lot less humid. It made the 9.5 miles I walked feel like a breeze compared to cooking myself over 10 miles last week. It didn’t take as long for my car to be finished. When I got back to the mechanic, he started going over new things that needed to be fixed when they started trying to fix other exhaust issues. In my mind, the dollar amount kept on climbing. My wallet was whining like a scared dog in my pocket. Then I got the bill. After all of the things they did to repair my failing exhaust, it was still several hundred dollars less than I anticipated. My stress level dropped, and I was once again thrilled with the folks at Ormon Automotive in Harwich. I will never bring any car anywhere else for repairs. They are always thorough, fair, and trustworthy. If you find a mechanic where you feel respected and taken care of, you don’t ever let that go. One thing to know, though, their sparkling reputation means that you need to call a week or so ahead to get your vehicle in. Just a heads up.


7. It is always a blessing to get to see old friends of more than 35 years. This week I was lucky enough to not just see one, but three. First was Barry, who I’ve known for forty years. I hadn’t seen him in person in close to three years. His wife, Rachel, is an accomplished author and someone whose dedication to the grind I really respect. She was part of a festival a few towns over, and I was able to go and hang out under their tent for a few hours. It was a fun mix of catching up on life but also chatting and brainstorming ideas as far as promoting and marketing our work. Anytime I can spend more than a few moments with Barry, it’s like the perfect hit of dopamine. It’s all of my beloved childhood memories rushing back. But it’s also a shot of inspiration when looking toward the future. It’s funny because it always seems like we can catch up pretty quickly, but we also both end up admitting to needing to catch up more often. Each time I feel like we’ll actually follow up on that declaration. We’ll see if we do this time.


8. Second was a meeting nearly 35 years in the making. I have known Tim and Hasan since 1989. I actually met them both within weeks of each other. Despite my having seen each of them several times in the last few years, it had been since 8th grade that the three of us were in the same place at the same time. We met by the pool at one of Tim’s motels on a perfect summer afternoon. It was as if time had just skipped from 1992 to that moment and we were right back to being teens. Hasan’s son Elijah, who just turned ten, was a fun ball of energy and has been raised so well by his dad, but I am not surprised. We all sat around and talked about old times, people we hadn’t seen in ages, and a lot about life as guys creeping toward fifty. It was the first time I’d swum in a pool in years. I loved every second of it and didn’t want it to end, but Elijah was getting hungry, so that was the cue. I hope to see Tim once more before he closes up the motels and heads back south. We all did make very early plans for next summer with the possibility of inviting more people. I truly am blessed and lucky for the friends I’ve made in my life.

A summer afternoon by a pool is always good.

9. The show du jour this week for me from Netflix is The Four Seasons. I took a bit of a break from the suspense, supernatural, scarier shows that have made up the majority of my viewing habits. This is a comedy-drama, dramedy? It features Tina Fey, Steve Carell, and Will Forte, among others, as middle-aged couples and their friendships and how they evolve. The show will have a pair of episodes as a season, ie: spring, and when each of the four seasons is done, that’s a season of the show. So far, there are two seasons with eight episodes in each. I love the humor that is also mixed with real-life issues that anyone can relate to. For me, the standout of the show, though, is Colman Domingo, who cracked me up with virtually everything he said. I only knew him from Fear the Walking Dead, so to see him as a funny, sassy, smart-ass gay man made the show even funnier. The best part is that it got picked up for a third season. The only downside is having to wait until some time next year to watch it. Don’t worry though, I have already jumped back into my typical psychological and suspenseful stuff as I just began Glitch. More on that when I finish it.

10. When I was at my peak as a distance runner ten years ago, I had a very low resting heart rate. According to the American Heart Association, the average resting heart rate is somewhere between 60 and 100 beats per minute. 100 beats per minute is in the average zone? That sounds crazy to me. When I was distance training, though, my resting heart rate was routinely right around 40 bpm. When becoming a personal trainer, I remember doing heart rate readings with a partner. Mine popped up at somewhere in the low 40s, and my partner had never seen a heart rate that low and assumed something was wrong with the heart rate monitor. Then I said I was a marathon runner, and it all made sense. Years passed; hip issues made distance running, and sometimes running in general, a memory. My resting heart rate, while still good, in the high 50’s, was nowhere near what it was at my peak. Flash forward to this summer. With better training habits to deal with my hip, I have been able to slowly increase my running distances. As you already saw, I did a 9.5-mile walk this week, and a 10-mile walk last week in the heat. Amazingly, the last six weeks or so of exercise has done wonders for my resting heart rate. When just sitting and watching something on TV, I happened to check my Fitbit. It showed my heart rate at 42 bpm. That’s right in line with my peak as a distance runner. The only thing is I am not a distance runner. In fact, I typically only run a half-mile or so before stopping to do some walking. So what’s up? I think that my body is just remembering how it used to be, and getting back to that lower resting heart rate is muscle memory. My goal now is to continue increasing my running to see if I can drop that resting heart rate into the 30’s, safely, of course.

Sunset at Englewood Beach in West Yarmouth, MA

Wait, Did I Just Almost Get Robbed?: A 1990s Summertime Tale

Wait, did I just almost get robbed?

That was the thought that was swirling through my head after one of the strangest encounters of my teenage years. The answer was, maybe? I guess?

For this story, we need to take a trip back to the good old days of the 1990s. The summer of 1995, to be more specific. It was nearing the end of the summer, at least the part of the summer where kids were out of school.

I was seventeen years old and getting ready to begin my senior year of high school. Being that it was the 90s, and I was a nice, responsible young man, I had already been working during the summers for the last five years.

Granted, I wasn’t raking in loads of cash as a dishwasher and food prep boy, but it was good enough that I was looking to secure a little bit of a status symbol. No, it wasn’t a car, or some fancy sneakers, or anything like that. What I wanted was something different. I wanted something to show off my minuscule financial wealth to my friends. I wanted an ATM card.

ATM cards, debit cards, whatever you want to call them, had been popular since the 1980s. Before then, you had to go inside the bank and write a slip and go to a teller to withdraw money.

Being an introvert, having a way to get money from my bank account without having to talk to anyone was a dream come true. The bank I had my account through was Cape Cod Bank & Trust. They went out of business after being bought in a merger in 2004, to show how old I am.

Typically if I was out riding bikes with my friends, I’d stop at a CCB&T ATM so I wouldn’t incur a ridiculous user fee. However, for this story I would have had to have gone in the opposite direction to where I wanted to go to find a branch. I decided the dollar surcharge, which I believe is what it was at the time, was worth it.

It was later in August. The sun was setting around 7:30pm on Cape Cod. I wanted to get some money from the ATM and then hit up the nearest convenience store for some surely healthy snacks. It was probably some bottles of Jolt Cola to fuel late-night outdoor adventures.

My friend Rob came along. It was getting close to dusk. We had been having fun messing around after dinner, so we started off from my house later than we should have. Our neighborhood was always quiet, so we rode right down the middle of the road as the streetlights began popping on over our heads.

At this time in 1995, the nearest ATM I knew of was a branch of Cape Cod 5 located on the outer edge of a shopping plaza near a highway entrance. The ride to that ATM was roughly 1.5 miles. We were in the parking lot in a little over ten minutes.

The bank in question.

Rob and I laid our bikes in the grass. This ATM was an indoor one. I had to slide my card into a reader to get the door to open after hours. Being teenage boys, neither of us looked around as we did this.

I slid my card through; the door beeped, and we both entered. I was laughing at something funny that Rob had said. I wish I could remember what it was. Suddenly the laughter was cut short by banging on the door.

We both spun around, and standing at the glass door was a man. It was hard to tell how old he was, as the light was brighter inside the bank than outside, so he was silhouetted. What was for sure was he was trying to get in.

He banged on the door again, and this time he began shouting.

“Access the door!” He screamed. Rob and I were both confused and scared. I believe one of us shouted, ‘What?’ This only angered this guy more. “Access the door!” The man shouted again.

This was 1995. Neither Rob nor I had cell phones. There were payphones nearby, but this would have meant having to go outside and past this stranger who was furiously trying to get inside with us.

We needed one of these inside the bank.

Looking back, I don’t know what the best course of action would have been. Fear took over a little, and I foolishly opened the bank door to let this person in.

Why was he there? Because he believed that we were thieves who had somehow stolen someone’s ATM card and were now going to use it to steal their money.

How do I know that? Because he said as much as he angrily demanded that I give him my card. That was a bridge too far. I refused and told him it was mine as he accused me of being a thief.

This man had to be over fifty. I have no idea where he had been or what led him to think that pursuing a pair of teenage boys into a bank after hours was a good idea, but it was irrelevant at that point. We were trapped as he stood looming over us.

“I’m going to watch you as you make this transaction,” the angry man said. I think he thought he was calling my bluff. Rob stayed facing the man while I turned my back. I punched in my code, hiding it from the man.

I believe I withdrew ten dollars. The machine spat out the cash. I quickly grabbed it and stuffed it into my wallet along with my card again. At this point I turned around and faced the man.

Seeing that it was indeed my ATM card and that we weren’t thieves, he muttered ‘ok’ or something dumb before getting out of there as fast as he could. He must have had an epiphany of how the whole situation looked and knew he had screwed up.

Rob and I waited a minute or two before stepping out into the darkness. It was a beautiful, if humid, night on Cape Cod. We were thrilled that the lunatic hadn’t done any damage to, or stolen, our bikes.

I can’t remember what exactly we said to each other after, but I am sure it was something along the lines of ‘what the hell just happened?’ We had gone to grab a little cash for a snack run and ended up in the middle of a scene from America’s Most Wanted.

Teenagers are resilient though. We hadn’t been hurt. We hadn’t been robbed. So we chalked it up to some idiot thinking he was going to be a hero but ended up being a complete jackass.

We still did our snack run. We returned to my house, and there were a few other kids around. In the 1990s and in that neighborhood, darkness didn’t mean everyone went inside. Rob and I dropped our bikes in the wood chips at the very edge of the front yard near the quiet street.

Loads of bikes in the front yard were common in the 90s

The retelling of our story likely began with ‘you won’t believe what happened.’ I remember telling the story to at least one of my sisters, maybe one of Rob’s brothers and my brother, and also Mikey, who was down visiting Cape Cod during weekends in the summer as he did back then.

As the years go by and some details, like what we got at the convenience store after, get hazy, I still firmly remember the sound of the banging on the glass door and that guy shouting for us to ‘access the door.’

The other kids looked at us in shock and awe. We had survived a brush with death, or at least we made it sound like we did. It was certainly not an average adventure that I was used to on Cape Cod.

I can’t remember when I told my mother about what had happened. I know that when Rob told his mother, she was livid. She wanted to go to Cape Cod 5 the next business day and ask them to check the security footage to see the guy who had caused this trouble. Nothing came of it, though.

It has been thirty-one years since a man shouted at me to access the door of a dark and relatively isolated ATM. I have never had an experience like that again. I will say that I didn’t go back to that Cape Cod 5 ATM for any withdrawals for many years. It was like I expected that weirdo to be lurking in the bushes waiting for me to come back.

For as much as Rob and I made jokes about that guy after the fact, there is no denying that it was a scary situation while it was happening. Until he vanished into the night, there was no telling how things were going to end.

He could have been an addict trying to get some cash for drugs. He could have had a gun, or a knife. He could have been a whack job looking to get his rocks off by assaulting teenage boys. These were all real possibilities as we stood face to face with an angry older stranger.

Luckily it never got to that. I stupidly accessed the door, and then he watched ominously while I used my ATM card to withdraw some of the money I had earned by working. Then he scurried away after realizing what a stupid mistake he had made.

I do wonder if we had tried, if Rob and I could have beat the hell out of him. It would have been the ultimate irony. This guy thinks he’s going to foil some thieving kids like he’s a Scooby-Doo villain, but we end up not only not being thieves but then whopping his ass.

That Cape Cod 5 location is still in business, and on the off chance I go by there, I can still hear ‘access the door’ ringing in my ears. I wonder what ever happened to that guy? Did he ever tell the story to someone? He probably didn’t. Or if he did, in his version, he thwarted a pair of giant meathead guys trying to rob a little old lady.

I am so blessed and lucky to have grown up when I did. There really will never be another time like the 1990s. It was the last decade where you weren’t bound by technology. When you spent summer outside until the streetlights came on, and sometimes even after.

It was a time I wish I could go back to. A time that I wouldn’t trade for anything. Even if every now and then you had to deal with creepy older guys looking to chaperone your bank visit. But hey, that’s a fair trade for all of the good stuff.

The 90s on Cape Cod were something else.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #132: What’s Old Is New, Fire Lanes, Slow Demolition, etc.

1. Sometimes everything clicks and what’s old feels new again. This is about running. The week began with the latest installment of Monday Runday. The weather was perfect, but my legs were feeling like lead after two 5-mile runs in the preceding three days. But sometimes you just need a little motivation, and running with my old friend Mike did it this week. He has become the runner while I have regressed into a walker over the last few years. Granted, it’s due to injury, but still I look at him and wish I could magically morph back into my running peak. I pushed through the initial fatigue and ended up doing 5 miles in 52 minutes, my best overall run in probably three years. It gave me three 5-mile runs in four days. I know I haven’t done that since probably before Covid. I have no idea what my ceiling might be in the latest return to running. My knees were aching the day after Monday Runday, so rest was in the cards. That being said, I do feel pretty good about my chances of running a race again, maybe even before year’s end. I likely just jinxed myself and will fall down the stairs next week for daring to have hope.


2. At my age, when I start to feel momentum in life, I tend to keep calm and just let things play out. Sure, I get excited when my fitness ticks up, or I have great author events, or I have days with lots of podcast downloads, or even the growing anticipation surrounding my upcoming film The Cabin. I shudder to say I am ‘older and wiser,’ but even 10 years ago I’d have felt this positive trend and gone right on social media to post all about it. It was like I needed to let people know something good might be happening soon. Now, even though there might be some good things happening soon, I’d rather keep it to myself. It just means it’s more of a surprise when it happens. Plus, life can be a rollercoaster. If you post about every single good and bad thing that happens, it makes it look like your life is either very exciting, or very chaotic, or both at the same time. Rest assured, when good things happen, they will be in this blog above all else. The bad stuff will too since it will make you feel better if you’re having a bad day.


3. If you enjoy the wacky comedy of Will Ferrell, you will like his new Netflix series The Hawk. I am a big fan and thought it was hilarious. It is about a washed-up former great golfer who is attempting a comeback to the PGA tour. I will admit that I initially thought it was a movie. I was excited to see it was a 10-episode series. You also get SNL alums Molly Shannon as Hawk’s wife, and Chris Parnell as his rival. There are tons of classic Will Ferrell scenes. I won’t spoil them, but I will say watch for the storyline with his hand, as it’s pretty damn funny. I wasn’t surprised that it’s gotten subpar ratings. Like I said, if you like Will Ferrell, you will like The Hawk, but if you don’t, this series won’t do anything to change your mind. This won’t be at the top of my list of shows I’ve watched since returning to Netflix in December. That honor probably goes to Dark, or 11.22.63 because of my little crush on Sarah Gadon. Think of The Hawk as a 10-part SNL sketch, and I mean that in a good way.

4. I take every opportunity that I can to promote my podcast on social media. It is the main way to try to bring in new listeners. That being said, I also understand that in addition to bringing in new listeners me promoting my podcast also can entice scumbag scammers to show up. Nearly every time I share my podcast to a few Facebook podcast groups, I end up getting followed by one of these jackass people. It never fails. They follow me on Instagram, or try to friend me on Facebook. At least on Facebook, I take one look at their profile and see that it says they will promote my podcast for whatever low sum of money they say. I know to immediately block them. This week I had some jerk follow me on IG, like 15-20 of my recent posts, you know, to look like they’re not a scammer. Then they commented on one photo to tell me they DM’d me to tell me how they can promote my podcast. The comment was deleted, and they were immediately blocked. These morons make it so easy. The funniest part is they go on about their prowess at social media marketing, but they have a handful of followers. I almost want to say, look dude, I have 100x your followers on IG. How about you give me money to promote your rinky-dink crap profile, or just stop wasting me time? I will never, ever, give one cent to some weak loser begging for money to promote my content.


5. Once and for all, is it illegal to park in a fire lane? I ask because I see all the time vehicles parked in clearly marked fire lanes in front of stores. Looking it up, yes, it is 100% illegal. It makes me wonder if anything is ever done about it. This week I saw some young guy in an SUV parked in a fire lane in the rain. The vehicle was blocking the rampway where you can easily roll your cart onto the parking lot. People had to go around and push the cart off of the curb. In the grand scheme of things, parking in a fire lane is not a huge offense. Still, why even bother having it as a law if 99.9% of people who do it have nothing happen to them? The fine is supposed to be up to $100 in Massachusetts. It might not sound like much, but I bet if someone got caught and fined, they’d think twice. They need to put some low-ranking cop on fire lane duty, either driving around to check, or watching security footage. Or just get rid of the fire lane altogether if the law is never enforced.

6. Having a mechanic that you trust and who does a great job is worth a lot. The trouble with that is once word gets out that you’re good and fair, everybody wants to get their vehicles worked on by you. I bring my car to Ormon Automotive in Harwich. They always do a great job, and their prices are better than fair. I’ve needed exhaust work on my car for a few months. There was no doubt I was going to Ormon. But like I said, they’re always busy. I dropped my car off early one morning and went to walk the bike trail, which is nearby their shop. I ended up walking 3.5 miles, which was great. However, they were only able to give me an estimate on my car. This was because of how busy and backed up they were. Sure, I could have left my car all day and gotten it the next day, but I had things that needed to get done. We set up a time for next Friday to get the work done. I don’t mind waiting because they are worth it, plus the things I need done aren’t going to destroy my car in the next week, so there was little risk. I highly recommend Ormon Automotive if you live in the Mid-Cape area. You will hear about them again in next week’s blog, I’m sure.


7. We all were kids once. I think as we age, a lot of us forget that. We see kids doing things that we used to do and chastise them for it. Obviously, if it’s something super heinous, then they should be stopped. I am talking about little mischievous things that in the grand scheme of it all don’t matter. I say this because I put that into practice this week. I finished a beautiful afternoon run and arrived at my car parked at a recreation area. There were loads of kids passing by on the bike trail or playing on the playground and fields. I sat at a picnic table stretching some and recovering. A few hundred feet away, I spotted a teenage boy. I could tell he was planning something. I watched as he sneaked over to a small power shed, which I think is used to turn on the large floodlights for the sports fields. Once hidden from view, except by me, he scaled the side and climbed up onto the roof. I lost sight of him but figured he was just sitting up there. Did I rat him out? No. Like I said, I was a kid once and scaled my share of things I shouldn’t have. Of course I was usually smarter and didn’t do it during the day at a crowded park, but hey, if he gets caught by someone else it’ll be his own fault.


8. It amazes me when someone else is clearly a bad driver but gets mad at you for pointing it out. At a busy intersection, there was a line of cars trying to turn left on Cape Cod during the summer. The thing about intersections and traffic lights is that they have intervals where they change to let people go in the other directions. I know you know this, but apparently some people don’t. There was an idiot lady who was three cars deep to turn when I got a green arrow to turn at the intersection. Rather than just wait for the next signal change, this jerk pulled right in front of me a good five seconds after she would have had a red light. Naturally, I beeped and yelled because she was an entitled idiot. Her dumbass reaction was to be shocked that I dared to call her out for her poor driving and lack of intelligence. She easily could have hit me, and it would have been her fault since she ran a red light. It doesn’t matter if she was next up to turn; this isn’t Human Centipede; you’re not connected to the car in front of you. These types of stupid people are a big reason that I don’t like summer. Before you say ‘it happens everywhere,’ I’ll counter by saying 99% of the bad driving I see on Cape Cod is during the summer.


9. This week saw the birthdays of my youngest and twin sisters Lindsay and Ashley. At my mom’s, we were able to have a little celebration for one of them, Ashley. It was a classic family memory. I sat with Ashley and my oldest niece, Kaleigh, and enjoyed a huge batch of garlic bread pizzas. It was both English muffin and Italian bread. Those were amazing. The festivities became legendary, though after. I got a small cake for Ashley. It was Cookie Monster, complete with googly frosted eyes and a cookie in his mouth. My mom put in several candles, probably ten or so. She wasn’t sure if they were old, but they ended up being the icing on the cake. My youngest niece Sylvie called in to be on FaceTime to help sing Happy Birthday. Once the candles were lit, we began to sing. A problem came when the candles decided they didn’t want to cooperate. Ashley blew them out, only they kept coming back. So the candles kept relighting themselves. Next, they started heavily smoking. We were all cracking up. The entire moment ended with the candles being pulled out of the cake and dumped into the sink where they finally stayed out. The cake was good; the birthday festivities were better, though.


10. It is okay to step back and relax every now and then. In fact, it is recommended. Days can blend together in a wash of productivity, rushing, hoping that you’ve done enough to justify a few moments of peace and quiet. Get up early, go to work, work hard, go home, or go to the gym; maximize every moment you have. It is good to have drive and determination, but doing it day in and day out without stopping to recharge leads to burnout. Over the summer, I have been getting better at forcing myself to take time to do absolutely nothing of consequence. I have content work I could be doing. Nope, it can wait. I really want to go for a run. Nope, let your body relax. At first it feels like you are wasting precious time. In reality, you are reclaiming it. It indeed feels like time goes faster the older you get. So why not stop speed running through life and stop to enjoy it a little more? Even writing this right now is doing too much, but since I felt this way, I thought I’d get it out. There are plenty of days to grind from sunrise to sunset. Just make sure that you make time to watch that sunrise or sunset rather than using it to light your candle that is slowly fading out.

Sometimes you just need to stop and go with the flow...

11. A fascinating story to watch over the coming few years is the slow demolition and replacement of the Bass River Bridge. It is located just down the road from me and allows traffic to pass over Bass River between the towns of Yarmouth and Dennis. The current bridge is not the original and is nearly a century old. It has needed replacement for years. The decay is so bad you could see exposed rebar. For the last few months, one side of the bridge has been closed, with traffic being squished into barely more than a lane of traffic. The actual demolition of the bridge has begun. They are starting from the east end of the bridge and very slowly tearing it down. The entire side will be replaced, widened, and have a multi-purpose path. Then the same job will begin on the other side. Before any Cape Codders get excited, this process isn’t expected to be finished until 2031. Until then, it’ll be interesting to watch the bits and pieces get removed and replaced. Here is a quick video I got while out on a run.

In My Footsteps Podcast Episode 243: What Was A Yuppie?, 1990s Educational Kids Shows, TV Themes That Were Chart Hits, First Spam Email(5-6-2026)

 

Watch my acting debut film for free, Cape Cod Cthulhu!

What in the world was a Yuppie? What are some of the beloved 1990s educational children's TV shows? What television show themes were also chart hits?

Episode 243 brings the May flowers and the GenX nostalgia.

It begins with an answer to the question of what a Yuppie was. Synonymous with the 1980s, Yuppies were of a certain mold and lifestyle. They dominated the landscape of America for a few years and slowly faded away. We dive deep into their reign in the 1980s.

Barney, Bill Nye, Blue's Clues. These and more made up the must-see list of educational children's shows of the 1990s. It was a decade dotted with familiar favorites, soon to be legends, and oddities that screamed 90s. 

The new Top 5 looks at some of the television show theme songs that made waves on the music charts. Hit shows, forgotten favorites, middling, and downright terrible shows. Somehow, these themes became hits.

This Week In History and Time Capsule looks back to the first-ever spam email, the bane of many people's existence.

You can support my work by becoming a member on Patreon. 

Or you can Buy Me A Coffee!

Helpful Links from this Episode

• Buy My New Book, In Their Footsteps!
• Searching For the Lady of the Dunes True Crime Book
• Hooked By Kiwi - Etsy.com
• DJ Williams Music
• KeeKee's Cape Cod Kitchen
• MSFTS Community
• Christopher Setterlund.com
• Cape Cod Living - Zazzle Store
• Subscribe on YouTube!
• Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog
• CJSetterlundPhotos on Etsy
• Where In the World Is Carmen Sandiego: Classic Reload.com

Listen to Episode 242 here

Stranger Things Have Happened: A GenX Fairytale

The final episode of Stranger Things only aired a few days ago when I am writing this. I can say I have never had a television show, and more specifically, one episode of a television show, affect me so deeply.

I have realized that, as much as it is my connection to the show, I mean, we watched most of the main cast go from children to adults, it’s also how the show put a mirror up to me and to my generation.

I am a proud GenXer. Born in 1977. Stranger Things was set in the mid-1980s. I lived it, so seeing so many products, hearing so many songs, and feeling the vibe of my childhood was comfort food for the soul I didn’t realize I needed so.

The problem with any television show is that it inevitably comes to an end. With the final episode came emotions that I don’t think I had felt in forever. I am not alone. On social media, I have come across literally hundreds of posts from people my age feeling the same way.

The youngest of GenX will be turning 45 this year. We were the last truly wild and free generation. The way the kids are portrayed on Stranger Things is reality. My friends and I would be all over the place on our bikes. We’d get into adventures and maybe a little trouble, but never anything too overly dangerous. Many younger people wonder how we dealt with the lack of convenience and technology. I feel bad for them as they will never know that type of freedom.

We were the generation that rolled with the punches. We became adults early and have felt like we’ve been so removed from our childhood innocence for so long. I began working at age 12. That means, as of writing this, I have held a job for 36 years. Still, I always had time for my friends and our growing up together.

GenX were the people who said ‘whatever.’ Like it was a badge of honor to never feel or care. Hell, they even created OK Soda in the early 1990s to try to appeal to our sense of nonconformity. There was one problem, though. We only kept our love and emotions below the surface. It feels to me like Stranger Things opened a door we had thought was long-since closed.

I will say now that I am going to share some spoilers, so if you haven’t seen the final episode, just beware.

My high school

2026 marks the 30th anniversary of my high school graduation. I think my emotions were ready to explode; they just needed something to light the fuse.

Stranger Things fittingly ends with the main cast graduating high school in 1989. The way that Mike, Lucas, Will, Dustin, and Max all act and feel as their time draws near, I felt it because I had been there.

It’s a weird mix of peaceful emptiness and quiet desperation. When the final weeks were ticking down to graduation, it didn’t feel like anything was changing. We still had class, we still had homework. The difference was that many of my peers had college acceptance letters rolling in.

The peaceful emptiness comes from the sad reality that you cannot change what was coming. I couldn’t stop us from graduating. I couldn’t stop my friends from slowly being pulled from my orbit and into a new one. It was resignation.

The quiet desperation came after graduation. We didn’t all just vanish the day after we threw our caps into the air. There was a final summer. This is where I scratched and clawed, trying to get those last memories stuck under my fingernails. I still remember the days when my two best friends left. Barry left first, John left second. I can see those final moments of that chapter of our lives. I enjoyed them, yes, but I also desperately tried to memorize the last jokes, the last places we went. I knew it would never be the same again, and it wasn’t.

When the Stranger Things kids skip a party they are invited to so they can play Dungeons & Dragons, I felt that. I didn’t want new adventures with different people. I wanted final adventures with my ride or die brothers. Those tears they shed as they returned their D&D binders to the shelf were real, as that scene was the last ever shot for the show.

It was a symbolic leaving childhood behind and entering the unknown door of adulthood.

A confession. I didn’t apply to colleges in my senior year. I planned on skipping a semester and then going to the local community college. For someone who took his SATs when he was 13, it was a major step back. Why did I do it?

First, I had been going so hard trying to be the best student I could since I could remember. School got harder in my junior and senior years as I wanted less to do with difficult subjects like trigonometry, calculus, and chemistry. I wanted to craft funny (in my opinion) videos with my camcorder and my friends. That was my ultimate dream.

Second, I had a girlfriend who was still going to be in school. In my mind, I needed to stay behind since our relationship was obviously going to last forever. It didn’t. It lasted 2 ½ years. At the time, though, as I was losing my closest friends, I still had her. I hung on in quiet desperation to what was familiar.

Nobody told me that if you’re going hard for years and you take your foot off the gas, it can be tough, damn near impossible to get that momentum back. Once I went to college in the spring of 1997, it was like pulling teeth to get a 2-year degree. I resented my choice, I missed my friends, I felt like a child still, despite being told I was entering the real world.

As the years go by, you get bogged down with daily life. Job, bills, responsibilities, maybe a family, they all become your focus. As I draw closer to 50, there are days when 18 feels like yesterday. There are days when I think I turned 40 a thousand years ago. Time gets warped. I am sure that I am not the only one of my generation who feels like we packed away our childhoods like a bunch of torn garbage bags thrown into a garage. We never really went through everything to celebrate or grieve like we should have. But how could we have known that was necessary?




The finale of Stranger Things flung the garage door open and launched our bags of emotions out onto the lawn for us to go through, whether ready or not. I was definitely not.

That moment when the first chord of Prince’s legendary Purple Rain hit, as Mike and Eleven stood together, I shattered. I knew what was coming. There was no happy ending for them. Yes, I know, it’s a fictional show, but it hit me because I related to Mike the most.

In the final scene, he is regaling his friends with the stories of their futures, but in the guise of their D&D characters. Mike was the storyteller. I was the storyteller of my group of friends. I spent my savings on a camcorder so I could create stories with my friends.

As he shared their stories, I saw bits of my high school friends in them. Then it hit me, hard, I am Mike. The other characters all get happy endings. Maybe Mike does, but it’s not in the obvious way. He loses his love and falls into the hole of grief. Later, he uses that grief and the love he lost to formulate stories of his friends' adventures.

Mike is the character I related to most.

I am writing this blog as we speak because of my own lost love. Back in June 2025, I wrote a very detailed post about this lost love named Wendy. I called it peaceful emptiness, much like I described my feelings after Stranger Things ended, and after graduating high school. I’ll link to that post at the bottom, but of course will give you the Cliffs Notes.

I met a girl at my lowest. I was battling severe depression, and she dragged me out of it by being who she was. She rebuilt me and made me feel like a full human years after my graduation. Then, almost as suddenly as she arrived, she was gone. The time, and our lives, just didn’t match up. She was a supernova of love that made me feel a way nobody else has before or since. I went hard into my writing career as a way to cope with losing her. In a way, I continue on that path because it makes me feel connected to her still.

In Stranger Things, we see that very likely Eleven did survive but had to fake her death and travel far away without anybody knowing. For close to 20 years, I was where Mike ended the show. I had no idea where Wendy was. She was basically off the grid. All I had were memories. Then the timing lined up, and I found her last June.

It was that peaceful emptiness because I found her and got that closure, but in doing so, I saw that she was where she needed to be. She was living an important and fulfilling life. There was no chance of my swooping in as a white knight. There was also no point in reaching out, as there was no good that could come of it. So I got my closure and just had to be happy with that.

Wondering how high school ended 30 years ago.

Stranger Things ending held a mirror up to me, and probably to many other GenXers. It’s forced us to reconcile with the fact that our childhoods were so long ago and that maybe adulthood hasn’t been anything close to what we felt we were going to get. Ironically, the finale threw me harder into a midlife crisis than anything in my own life has.

I look in the mirror at my gray hair winning the war on my head, and I think to myself, Is it too late? I never found a love to replace Wendy. I never found a job that gave me the satisfaction that creating my skits in high school did. I see so many friends who are married, with kids, and houses, and living lives they deserve. What do I deserve?

Do I deserve to be the de facto storyteller of my friends? Do I deserve to be Mike, sitting and writing said stories and dreaming of the love he had but knowing he likely will never see her again?

Even close to 50, I feel like I’m walking the halls at Dennis-Yarmouth High School, looking at the different students and wishing I were them, or wishing I were with them. I am deep in that pit of emotion. It's both a good and a bad thing.

I wanted so badly for all of the characters on Stranger Things to get their happy endings. The fact that it was Mike, the one I connected with most, who didn’t, hit me hard. The show might be officially over, but that doesn’t mean the story is. Remember that years after Rick was presumed dead on The Walking Dead, he was reunited with Michonne, Judith, and RJ. Maybe years down the road, it happens for Mike and Eleven.

It comes back to my life. Certain chapters have ended, but books can be reopened. I firmly believe that I am where I am in my life for a reason. Unmarried, no children, the freedom that if I wanted to, I could go virtually anywhere. There has to be a reason for that, right? I go into each day thinking that it could be the day that the next amazing adventure in my life begins.



Circling back to where we started. Stranger Things made me, and a lot of my generation, feel things we hadn’t in a long time. It perfectly encapsulated our 1980s childhoods so much so that when the show ended, it felt like our childhoods did again. It shows the power of a well-crafted television show. It also shows that the peaceful emptiness and quiet desperation we have felt is the telltale sign that what we had was something unique and beautiful.

To my fellow GenXers, we had a good thing. I’m glad we got to experience it. Maybe we can never go back to our childhoods, but there are always photos, videos, and, of course, a Stranger Things rewatch.

Peaceful Emptiness: Finding Closure After 20 Years