Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #87: Dumpster Transformer, Memory Full, Surreal Validation, etc.

1. Maybe I’m just getting old, but I’m not a fan of people who have Bluetooth headphones hooked up to their phone and then walk around loudly talking. It is one of the most obnoxious things possible. The only thing that makes these types of events worse is when the person talking loudly has a voice that makes your ears bleed. I heard this woman shouting in the aisles of a supermarket, having a conversation. Her voice was one of those nasally, ditsy, Valley Girl voices. Then I saw her and she looked like a Transformer but instead of being some kind of cool machine, she was a dirty old dumpster that also became a human. I couldn’t unsee, or unhear, that.


2. This week, I got an email reminder that my Audible subscription was renewing in a few days. That sounds like a mundane line until I tell you that I totally had no idea I was paying for an Audible subscription. I had likely been getting these payment reminders all along, but the one thing I wasn’t paying was attention. It turns out that what I thought was a free-tier membership, where I got 1 free credit toward an audiobook per month, was actually $14.95 per month. Oh, and it gets better, or worse for me, as this membership has been going on for nearly 2 years. You can do the math. I immediately canceled the membership so I’m in the clear now, but man, that was like a long, drawn-out setup for a joke that wasn’t funny. Oh well, at least I can keep the audiobooks that I got when I thought I was on a free tier. Wicked smart.


3. Getting older means things that were simple when you were younger can now turn into secret injuries. Several weeks ago, I was walking the beach at low tide with some friends. Not wanting to get my shoes wet, I jumped over a little inlet of water still flowing out. I cleared it and felt accomplished, but knew I’d landed a bit awkwardly on my left leg. Flash forward to this week and my hips and lower back were hurting. While getting adjusted by my boss, I mentioned an exercise I did this week that might have caused the pain. He said the issue was likely something from a little while back and we’d just reached the tipping point. That’s when it clicked. Jumping that little stream turned into me needing my left hip to get adjusted. The problem is my mind still thinks I’m 17, or 27, or 37. I feel like I need to forget everything I knew about fitness and diet, while we’re at it, and learn all new stuff. Or just buy clothes made of bubble wrap so I can safely navigate through life.


4. Speaking of getting older. There are times I feel like I have reached the tipping point with the amount of knowledge my brain can hold. I feel at times like a pitcher filling with water, and now any new info is just water flowing out of the pitcher into the sink. Where I notice it the most is at my training job. I have worked with enough different people there that I now can’t remember every detail about each client. This means equipment they might have at home, specific exercises that we have or haven’t done, things like that. On the other hand, I can still remember in great detail a lot of random music and pop culture items from the 1980s and 1990s. So maybe at this point in life, my brain is prioritizing certain knowledge and memories over others. Yes, that random nugget of wisdom about a random song in 1987 gets saved, but whether a client has an injury doesn’t. I’m kidding, by the way, I would remember injuries, just not my own, as seen in the last post.


5. I am used to there being some sort of ambient noise when I record my podcasts. When the weather is nice I have my window open, which is only a few feet from my desk, where I record. Countless vehicles are going by, and way too many large trucks for the road I live on. This week took the cake as far as noises I will need to edit out of the final product. There was a steady barrage of angry blue jays squawking at each other in the trees just outside. It got so bad that I had to mention it on the show in case people hear them, and I can’t edit them all out. The only way I got them to briefly stop was to find hawk calls on YouTube and play them out my window. Sadly, that only got them to go away for a few minutes before it was angry blue jay party time again. Foolish birds.

6. It’s a strange feeling that the Boston Red Sox are likely going to make the playoffs for the first time since 2021 but I really have no interest in it. In fact, this year feels like the least interest I’ve had in sports in general in my lifetime. I’m not sure why that is. It may be because I am always so busy with work that I just don’t have time to become invested in sports. With the Red Sox, I’ve been off the bandwagon with them ever since they traded Mookie Betts to the Dodgers after the 2019 season. The Bruins, I have no interest in, as I really don’t watch hockey. The Patriots have struggled since Tom Brady left, but I do keep my eyes on them from afar. I think the local team I’ve been most invested in over the last 5 years is the Celtics. Basketball was a sport I played growing up in school, so that makes sense. Part of it is that for nearly 20 years, New England had a string of champions, and now all of the teams are mediocre so I feel like I was spoiled for all of those years. It’s kind of like the 1990s all over again, except I’m way past high school age.


7. Provincetown is the only place on Cape Cod where, when I go there, I feel like a tourist. Maybe it’s because it’s an hour drive so I don’t get out there more than a few times a year? I was up there for a wedding this past weekend and took more photos of the scenery than of the event itself. I love my time in Ptown. It’s sort of like visiting Nantucket but without having to get on a boat. It’s interesting how I think of distance. Like I said, it’s an hour to drive to Provincetown, but I’m still on Cape Cod. In less than an hour in the other direction, I can drive to Plymouth, Bridgewater, Fall River, and nearly to Scituate and the Rhode Island border. Yet, all of those places feel so much farther away when I think about it.

Commercial Street, Provincetown

8. Speaking of that wedding, it was for the son of the Lady of the Dunes and his longtime girlfriend. It felt like the cherry on top, completing my story arc in a wild true crime story. The ceremony was at a church at one end of the narrow, busy Commercial Street, and the reception was at a resort hotel on the other end. Lucky for me, the hotel was right next to a parking lot. On a Saturday afternoon, even on the last weekend of summer, that lot was packed. I felt like I was going to end up having to park a few extra hundred yards away, which would mean I’d need to rush to walk to the reception, which was nearly a mile away. I still drove all the way to the end of the parking lot, which was next to the hotel. I was pleasantly surprised to find one open spot right on the road. It was as if I was meant to be there. Oh, and at the end of my time there, when I went to pay to leave, it turned out I had been parked for 2 hours and 56 minutes. Another 4 minutes would have cost me an extra $3. I guess you could say everything was coming up Milhouse, if you get that Simpsons reference.


9. Beyond the parking victory, the wedding was a validating yet surreal experience. I grew up with the mystery of the Lady of the Dunes. It was a story I knew well. If you had told me when I was young that someday the Lady would be identified, I’d have said that’s great, she and her family deserve the closure. If you had told me that I’d be involved in the case in a small way, I’d have said that sounds like it could be a possibility. If you would have told me that I’d be involved in the resolution of the case, her identity as Ruth Marie Terry, oh and that she had a son, oh and you will meet him, get to know him, he will invite you to his wedding, and tell you that your book about his mother’s case was very meaningful and important to the case’s resolution? (Catches breath) I’d have said it sounds like something I’d have written, but was highly unlikely. Yet there I was, sitting among family and friends, at a small, intimate wedding. It was in the front of my mind the entire time I was there, just how surreal and yet fulfilling and validating the experience was.

The church where the wedding ceremony was held.

10. The only downside to the wedding day in Provincetown was my Fitbit being skimpy on calories burned. I don’t know why but I thought that walking 4 miles throughout the afternoon would have earned me a few hundred extra calories burned for food. Nope, not a single one. I love my Fitbit Charge 6, but at times it feels inconsistent. It will register steps when I am sitting and moving my arm, yet its distance calculator will typically be less than what my running app will say if they are both going at once. It does a lot of calorie calculating based on heart rate. I figured I’d have gotten my heart rate up, especially when hustling a mile to get to the wedding ceremony. Oh well, even if the Fitbit didn’t give them to me, I know I burned enough calories to earn that pumpkin cake square. Yes, that was what I wanted to use the extra calories on.


11. For me, I don’t understand how in this day and age people walk on regular roads with their dogs off leash. I saw two on a walk this week. One got leashed once the owner saw me coming, which I appreciated. The other was actually off-leash while its owner was walking along with another dog that was leashed. I have no idea. When it comes to unleashed dogs, first off, you don’t know if someone is going to be driving poorly, and your dog could wander into the road and get hit. Secondly, there is the fact that your dog could get spooked, or just be a menace, and go running after a person, or someone on a bike. Unleashed dogs are every bit as dangerous as distracted drivers. They’re both unpredictable. I’ve had several experiences on bike trails on a run or ride, and some idiot has their dog unleashed, and it either jumps at me or wanders in front of me. I like dogs, I don’t love dogs. But of course, I’ve said it before in this blog, many dog owners are simply selfish and entitled, and believe your world revolves around their dog.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #76: Party Boat, 4th of July, Hairy Observations, etc.

1. While out for a walk on a sunny morning, I stopped at a favorite spot. It is a small dock on Bass River, approximately 1.5 miles from where I live. As luck would have it, a boat was coming down the river, so I waited to get a photo of it at the end of the dock, sort of a perspective shot. This was one of those pontoon party boats, which you can see in the photo. Within seconds of me snapping the photo, the boat got wedged on a sandbar in the river. They must not have been from Cape Cod because those familiar with Bass River know that there is some shoaling in that area. They were going full throttle in reverse, trying to break free of the sand. They got free and went on their way. I didn’t stick around. There was nothing I could do since they all had phones and it didn’t seem so dire that I needed to run for help like Lassie.

The moment before they got stuck

2. Updating my hand injury. It ended up with the back of my hand being a massive bruise for days. For those who don’t know, I got my right hand smashed between 2 steel bars that are a part of a piece of exercise equipment at my day job. Anyway, we’re almost 2 weeks out from the injury, and I can finally attempt to use my right hand to lift things heavier than 3 ounces. The interesting thing is that the better my hand felt, the more the enormous bruise on my hand started looking more like I had done a bad fake tan on it.

3. From the My Life Is A Movie Department. As many of you know, I developed a very close connection to Cape Cod’s infamous Lady of the Dunes murder mystery. I met producer Frank Durant, who created the Lady of the Dunes documentary that helped spur on the case’s resolution after nearly 50 years. I then wrote the book based on the documentary. I still consider it to be my proudest moment of my professional career. Through the resolution of the case, we found out that the titular ‘Lady’ was a real woman named Ruth Marie Terry. Not only that but she had a son. This is where the story becomes even more like a movie. This week I got a letter in the mail addressed to myself ‘and Guest.’ Inside was an invitation to Ruth’s son’s wedding. It is a surreal moment and an unbelievable honor. If you had told me even 5 years ago that not only would I play a very small part in the solution of the Lady of the Dunes case, but that I’d also be going to her son’s wedding, I’d have said you were crazy. But here we are. I might not be exactly where I want to be in my life but one thing is for sure: my life will be a pretty good movie someday.

4. Fourth of July can be fun with gatherings of family and friends, cookouts, and of course, fireworks. They are illegal in Massachusetts but of course, loads of people shoot them off every year. You’d think the drunken yahoos shooting off their boom sticks would be the ones to get injured, and sometimes that’s the case. This year in Mashpee, which is about 20 minutes from me, the town was setting up for a fireworks show later in the evening. So these are ‘professionals’ handling the fireworks. I don’t know what the cause was, but in the late afternoon, nearly the entirety of the cache of fireworks exploded in a massive plume of smoke and color. I know that several people were hurt, but luckily, I think none were life-threatening. The photos of the immediate aftermath are wild. It looked like a bomb had exploded on a golf course. It just goes to show you that accidents can happen whether you’re a supposed pro hired by the town, or some drunk stumbling around their backyard after their 10th Bud Light.

5. It was madness on July 4th. The weather was perfect so I went out for a run. On a favorite route, which is mainly back roads, I must have seen 100-150 people walking, running, or cycling. It felt like I was a part of a road race where I was passing people but also smiling and waving. It always amazes me how overcrowded Cape Cod gets in the summer. It’s like pouring 50 gallons of water into a bucket that holds about 5. In the end, the water gets everywhere and you have to run away to keep dry. Or something like that.

along my favorite running route on july 4th

6. During that same run, I ended up down at the local beaches. The craziness there was off the charts. There is a strip of beach with, I believe, 5 different parking lots down the entirety of the street. The line of cars to get into the first beach was at least 20 cars deep. It was like trying to park at a concert. The big difference was that unbeknownst to the drivers, there was a sign at the entrance saying the lot was full. It was a cluster to end all clusters. Me though, being a runner, was free and easy to go wherever. I thought of it like an episode of Seinfeld. I saw the sign, looked at the growing line of cars, and thought to myself, ‘well, that’s a shame.’

7. A funny observation. For about 14 years, almost straight through, I shaved my head probably weekly. I did it because I didn’t like my hair, plus it helped me stay cool when running. I know I got looks from people when I was super thin and walking around with a bald head. Now I have spent several months growing my hair out. It’s the longest it has been in I don’t know how long. I am getting comfortable with wearing it spiked up. This look gets me looks also. I’m not sure if it is people thinking of how good my hair looks, or if maybe it is people who remembered when I had no hair and are wondering what in the world is going on. Yes, I have a full head of hair. I didn’t shave it because I am going bald.

8. While out for a run on a different day, I had to stop at a porta-potty. It might have been the worst one I had seen yet. It was as if the people who had used it went out of their way to not use the actual toilet. I won’t get too graphic for those who might be eating, but you can imagine the horrors I saw. I felt so bad for anyone else who had to use it, especially women. When I walked out, I was only a few feet away when a woman walked up and went in. She’d have had better luck just going to the bathroom on the sidewalk. It was so awful. Yay tourists!

It really was this bad, sorry

9. I love fire pits. That being said I do feel like I am a magnet for smoke. It seems like no matter where I sit in the circle around the pit, the smoke from the fire finds me. I can change seats, and it doesn’t matter. I end up with a cloud choking the life out of me. So I am a smoke magnet. I’ve heard of guys being called ‘chick magnets,’ I guess I’m the first ‘smoke magnet.’ It does not evoke the same level of cool, however.

10. For as overcrowded as tourists make Cape Cod in the summer, they do pay the price when it comes time to leave. Fourth of July weekend is one of the worst for exit traffic, right up there with Memorial Day and Labor Day. There are two bridges leaving Cape Cod. Unless you’re flying out of the airport in Hyannis, you’re stuck going over one of those bridges. Before 9am on Sunday, traffic was either stopped or slowed down on the Mid-Cape Highway for nearly 35 miles. My goal on those types of days is to go the opposite direction and try to find an empty spot to enjoy a quiet moment, until they all come back the next weekend, that is.