I had no idea how great a short work commute would be

Until the outbreak of COVID in March 2020, I maintained a daily schedule much like that of millions of other Americans. Five mornings a week, I would get in the car and drive to my workplace. For a full decade of my professional life, that drive was a considerable one – at least by Northeast Ohio standards – of 30+ miles each way.

For more than a year, I drove a few days a week down to Akron, a distance of more than 40 miles.

There are some advantages to a longer commute, as I enumerated in a blog post  in 2015, but for the most part, it was a big hassle. It gets tedious, you're constantly having to fill your car with gas, oil changes become more frequent, there's always construction, accidents and other traffic snarls, and on and on.

Then, in June 2022, I accepted an offer to join Materion Corporation, a global company based in the nearby city of Mayfield Heights. Let's set aside the fact that, professionally speaking, it couldn't have worked out better. I love the team members with whom I get to collaborate, and the work itself is interesting and challenging.

From a purely logistical point of view, this change has been a godsend. My commute to work, which I make three days a week, is rarely longer than about 15 minutes and involves no highway driving at all. On light traffic days when the stoplights cooperate, I can get there in 13 minutes.

The days I broke 45 minutes to Akron always felt like a win. And 40 minutes was pretty much the norm for the 1,000 or so times I drove to the Vitamix corporate headquarters on Cleveland's southwest side over my eight-year tenure there.

Being so close to home makes it much, much easier for me to get to my various sports PA announcing engagements. It means far fewer times when I need to bring a change of clothes to work and run out of the office at 5:30 to drive straight to a field or gym.

On the other end of the day, not having to leave the house until 7:30am is...well, I know it's an overused word, but I can confidently say it's amazing. Life-changing, even.

An extra half-hour may not sound like much, but it allows me to do everything I've wanted to do in the mornings for many years but couldn't squeeze in without having to wake up every day at 4:30am.

Again, I'm not saying long commutes are all bad. I don't get to listen to the same number of podcasts that I used to, and it's harder for me to feed my classical music habit unless I'm very deliberate about carving out dedicated time for it.

But on balance, for me, short commutes win hands down. I had no clue what I was missing.

Even 20 years later, most of us have a 9/11 story

NOTE: The following post ran six years ago today. I was going to write something comparing the relative societal impacts of COVID and September 11th, but then I realized I have no idea what I'm talking about. So instead I hope you don't mind if I recycle this little missive. I do wonder, though, how we'll all look back on both events (if you want to call COVID an "event") 30 years from now. Time and memory do funny things...

Fourteen years ago today was one of the strangest 24-hour periods I've ever experienced (ANOTHER NOTE: Again, remember this post first appeared in 2015 when it had been only 14 years since 9/11.)

It was the day of the September 11th terrorist attacks, of course, and it was one of the few times in life when virtually nothing that happened would have surprised me.

I was working at the Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital for Rehabilitation, and the first inkling my office-mate Heidi and I had that something might be wrong was when a nurse came running down the hall saying, "They bombed the Pentagon!"

That wasn't quite true, but close enough. First came news of the World Trade Center being hit, then being hit again, then a tower collapsing, then the other tower following suit. Then reports of a plane crashing into the Pentagon, which I recall it took a while to confirm.

Then came rumors that a plane may be headed for Cleveland. In truth, the plane flew over Cleveland and eventually crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

If you didn't experience it, you have to understand how all of these events happened one on top of the other. Bad news followed by bad news.

After a short time, we would have believed almost anything.

Offices in Downtown Cleveland closed in case the city really was being targeted (no one knew for sure), and I think they eventually shut down our hospital, too.

Rumors were that the price of gas might triple or worse, so my family and I waited in a long line at a local Shell station that evening to get gas in our minivan before the jump, which never actually occurred.

The entire U.S. air traffic system was shut down. No one could fly in and out of anywhere for a few days.

That night we attended a prayer service at our church. There was a lot of emotion but also a stoic courage in the eyes of fellow believers that I'll never forget. Jesus could have returned to earth and I wouldn't have been shocked.

Eventually life returned to something resembling normal, though it seemed to take weeks and weeks, and the world hasn't been quite the same to me since.

It was, I suppose, my generation's "Where Were You When JFK Was Shot?" moment.

The worst part about a dream vacation? Not being on vacation anymore

One year ago today, my family and I boarded a plane and took off for a week in sunny Orlando, Florida, during which we threw large wads of cash at various reprepsentatives of The Walt Disney Company, in exchange for which they provided us with highly fun and memorable experiences.

It was a good trade.

We had such a nice time on that vacation. It was great for the seven of us to spend a week together, though having only two hotel rooms (in the name of cost savings) was at times a bit challenging.

Then we came home to Cleveland and there was snow on the ground. It was awful. And it was cold. Also awful.

And now that we've reached the one-year anniversary of that vacation, my thoughts aren't, "What a great memory!" They're more along the lines of, "I want to be in Florida again. Right now. My existence is horrible."

Any time you travel, you have fun while you're actually there. But after you get back, all you have are (with apologies to Jim Croce) photographs and memories. Both are nice. But neither matches the experience of actually being there.

Which is a terrible attitude to take toward anything, I realize. There you have it, though.

If only I could escape your judgment and condemnation by escaping to Disney World...

Most people have a 9-11 story...

Fourteen years ago today was one of the strangest 24-hour periods I've ever experienced.

It was the day of the September 11th terrorist attacks, of course, and it was one of the few times in life when virtually nothing that happened would have surprised me.

I was working at the Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital for Rehabilitation, and the first inkling my office-mate Heidi and I had that something might be wrong was when a nurse came running down the hall saying, "They bombed the Pentagon!"

That wasn't quite true, but close enough. First came news of the World Trade Center being hit, then being hit again, then a tower collapsing, then the other tower following suit. Then reports of a plane crashing into the Pentagon, which I recall it took a while to confirm.

Then came rumors that a plane may be headed for Cleveland. In truth, the plane flew over Cleveland and eventually crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

If you didn't experience it, you have to understand how all of these events happened one on top of the other. Bad news followed by bad news.

After a short time, we would have believed almost anything.

Offices in Downtown Cleveland closed in case the city really was being targeted (no one knew for sure), and I think they eventually shut down our hospital, too.

Rumors were that the price of gas might triple or worse, so my family and I waited in a long line at a local Shell station that evening to get gas in our minivan before the jump, which never actually occurred.

The entire U.S. air traffic system was shut down. No one could fly in and out of anywhere for a few days.

That night we attended a prayer service at our church. There was a lot of emotion, but also a stoic courage in the eyes of fellow believers that I'll never forget. Jesus could have returned to earth and I wouldn't have been shocked.

Eventually life returned to something resembling normal, though it seemed to take weeks and weeks, and the world hasn't been quite the same to me since.

It was, I suppose, my generation's "Where Were You When JFK Was Shot?" moment.

I would be interested to hear your memories of that day, either in the blog comments below, on Facebook, or through a Twitter response. Even 14 years later, I think there's some a degree of healing when we share our individual experiences.

This is my hometown

As I type this, I'm sitting in a hotel room in Boulder, Colorado, with rain falling outside and thunder crashing off the mountains that wreath the city.

I'm here on a business trip, and I cannot deny the beauty and attraction of this wonderful place.

Boulder comes by its liberal-leaning, green-focused consciousness honestly, and whatever you think of their politics, you have to acknowledge the earnestness of the hippies who make the city what it is.

Tonight I walked back from dinner along pedestrian-friendly streets while sipping a Starbucks mocha frappuccino light. Well, actually, I didn't walk...I strolled. I never stroll. I walk purposefully almost everywhere I go.

But in Boulder, you stroll because you can't help it. There are invisible waves of laid-back energy flowing everywhere, and doing anything quickly or with a sense of urgency just seems so out of place.

I'll admit, I love it here.

I'll also admit that I would never live here in a million years.

Not that I can really find anything wrong with Boulder. It's just that I wouldn't want to live anywhere other than where I do now.

I would say the same thing about London, New York, Toronto, Paris and Beijing – all cities I've visited and enjoyed, but places that will never be more than temporary destinations for me.

I have lived my entire existence in Northeast Ohio. And specifically, in a little town called Wickliffe, about 15 miles east of Cleveland.

We get made fun of a lot by people around the country. People hear "Ohio" and think "hicks." And when you tell them you live within short driving distance of a major city, they realize you're talking about Cleveland and laugh.

It used to make me angry when people mocked Cleveland, a city I love. But now I realize they do it out of almost total ignorance. And I think to myself, "Good. That will keep it less crowded for those of us who already know how great it is."

I'll be the first to tell you the weather in my part of the world isn't always ideal. And we don't have the same cool vibe as Boulder. And our economy has been limping along for several years now.

But Northeast Ohio has beautiful changes of seasons. And largely unknown cultural and restaurant scenes. And it has salt-of-the-earth people who work hard, raise families and live their lives in a straightforward, genuine way. Seriously, it's like a Ford Truck commercial come to life.

It also has my family. And wherever they go is where I go. As long as it's not Siberia. Or Pittsburgh, which has the Steelers and therefore may as well be Siberia to me.

But really, even if I didn't like where I lived, I would stay in order to be close to my family. They're my tribe, you know? I could no sooner separate myself from them than I could separate myself from my right arm.

Nor could I separate myself from good old Wickliffe, which almost inexplicably has seven or eight nice parks  for fewer than 13,000 people living in four square miles. What's that all about? We don't have a real community rec center, but by gosh, we have more swings per capita than any town you care to brag about.

I often say that Wickliffe is like Mayberry without Otis the town drunk. Or Floyd the barber. But we did once have Chicken and French Fries Charlie.

Chicken and French Fries Charlie was an unshaven mess of a man who used to hang out at the snack bar of the now-defunct Zayre's discount store. He always seemed to be there when my friends and I walked in, and he always seemed to be eating (you guessed it) chicken and french fries.

This was back when discount stores all had snack bars, you understand.

I don't know what ever happened to Chicken and French Fries Charlie, to be honest. I'm not even sure he had a home to go to when Zayre's closed each night. But somehow he had enough money to buy those paper containers of chicken and french fries, so I guess he had a job.

The point is, Wickliffe has always been full of characters like Charlie, which is another reason I love it.

Many of the people my wife and I grew up with have left, but we choose to stay. And I wouldn't be surprised if we end up staying until the bitter end.

Or until the entire city becomes one gigantic park, I guess. Whichever comes first.

LIVE BLOG: Walking 16 miles to Downtown Cleveland...again: FINAL UPDATE: 2:25 pm

So today we're going to try something different.

I plan to walk this morning from my house in the beautiful metropolis of Wickliffe, Ohio, to Tower City in not-quite-as-beautiful-but-still-nice downtown Cleveland, Ohio. A distance of about 16 miles.

I've taken this walk twice before. I actually enjoy the experience, particularly having several hours with just me and the iPod.

Only this time I'm going to chronicle the journey for anyone who, for whatever reason, might care. Check back here throughout the morning as I attempt to navigate the thumb-breaking process of Blogging by Smart Phone while I walk.

I'll post updates throughout the trip, which I expect to begin around 8:30 a.m. EDT and to take somewhere in the neighborhood of four hours.

I'll try and change the headline to this post every time I update it (with the approximate time of the update). That's assuming I can walk and type at the same time without killing myself and others.

I hope you'll join me!

8:29 am -  And we're off! Game time temperature: 41 degrees. The shorts may or may not have been a good idea...

8:43 am - Are we there yet? Walking and typing = hard.

9:14 am - 3.16 miles down. About 14:15/mile. No chafing. Yet. Hello,  Richmond Heights!

9:54 am - Will be meeting my wife and daughter for lunch at Tower City.  Brought snacks, but that Subway sub sounds awfully good about now. 5.75 miles covered in 1:23.

10:45 am - In beautiful Cleveland Heights. Always seems like a nice place. Also, I have to pee. 9.01 miles down.

11:15 am - Crossing into the City of Cleveland proper. Next up: Little Italy. 11.06 miles covered.

Noon - East 71st and Euclid. Legs hurt a little. 13.72 miles down. People looking at me strangely. Need a second wind!

12:45 pm - Done! 16.58 miles. 4 hours, 10 minutes. Just over 15:00/mile for the walk. Let's eat.


FINAL UPDATE 2:25 P.M. - SAFE AND SOUND AT HOME:
Terry, Elissa and I had a very nice lunch. We dropped Elissa off back at her dorm (she joined me for the last mile or so of the walk) then drove back here to Wickliffe. My quadriceps muscles are killing me. Good gracious they hurt. Hamstrings, calves, etc. are all fine, just the quads. Ouch. That's going to take a few days to recover from.

I have to say that while it was fun, I have to retire that particular walk after three successful attempts. It's not the safest route (parts of it, anyway), and I think I want a new challenge. Maybe a 20-miler. We'll see. In the meantime, thanks for checking in! We'll see you tomorrow for a post in which I mindlessly complain about red lights...

Apparently I'm supposed to hate the snow

I have lived my entire life in Northeast Ohio. More specifically, I have lived my entire life in one small city in Northeast Ohio.

You can say a lot of things both good and bad about the place I call home. But the one thing out-of-towners always mention is the snow. And they don't say it in a kind way.

"Cleveland? Oh....You guys get a lot of snow, don't you?"

Yes, I suppose we do. The annual snowfall totals vary drastically (less than 40 inches some years, over 100 others), but the average is about 57 inches a year. Multiply that by 43 (my age), and you get roughly 2,450 inches of snow that have fallen here in my lifetime. That's more than 200 feet. That's a lot of snow.

And I love it.

Very rarely do you hear me complain about snow. I am a graduate of the school of thought that says, "It's Cleveland. In February. Snow is going to fall. If you don't like it, go someplace else."

A lot of people do just that. It's fashionable for Ohioans to head south in the early months of the year. Some even have winter homes down in Florida, where they flee for several weeks until the snow (mostly) goes away, then they return.

These are not, in my estimation, real Ohioans. At best they're honorary members of the state. You're an Ohioan - and more to the point, a Clevelander - only if you stick it out winter after winter. Anyone can live here in July when it's 80 degrees every day and we get relatively small amounts of rainfall. That's enjoyable. But if you scurry off to Tampa at the first flakes, then you're not really one of us. Sorry, that's just the way it is.

Our precipitation totals are padded every year by what meteorologists call "lake effect snow." It has something to do with the moisture from the relatively warm lake being swept up into the atmosphere and adding a few inches to every snowfall.

But honestly, we still don't get nearly as much snow as they do three hours east in Buffalo or the rest of upstate New York. Syracuse averages 115 inches a year. When we get that much (which is rare), we act like we've survived a nuclear holocaust.

The snow really only affects my life in two ways:

(1) A few times per winter, it makes my drive to work (you know, when I actually am working) a little slower

(2) About 10 times per winter, I have to go outside and snowblow and/or shovel it away

And really, that's about it. I don't think that's too much of a reason to complain. But complain we do. Oh my goodness, people here whine and moan about snow like it's some completely new and entirely unexpected climatic phenomenon. Can you believe it? FROZEN WATER FALLING FROM THE SKY? WHAT?!? NO ONE SAID ANYTHING ABOUT THAT!

I get especially annoyed by people who used to live here and post snarky comments on Facebook like "It's 85 degrees here in Phoenix! Hope you Ohioans are enjoying the ice and snow!"

Guess what? I am enjoying the ice and snow. And I really don't care how warm it is in Arizona. Or Florida. Or South Carolina. Or whatever southeastern and/or Sun Belt state you moved to. I've chosen to live here. I have the means to live virtually anywhere I want, but I want to live here. I like it here. It's nice here.

Because it really is. Cleveland is a great place to live, despite what you may have heard. The people are friendly, the change of seasons is enjoyable, the amenities are nice, etc. I've traveled to a lot of different places, and I've liked nearly all of them. But you couldn't pay me to live anywhere else.

Yet societal expectations dictate that I should complain about a weather pattern that established itself here centuries ago and is not likely to drastically change anytime soon (even with the warmer winters we've been experiencing). It is what it is, people. Deal with it.

My, my, I am cranky today, aren't I? Must be the cold and snow that's making me irritable...

Street walking

Because I'm stupidly competitive, I walked nearly 17 miles to work the other day.

If you think that sentence is absurd, you're right. So is getting up at 4:50 a.m. for an almost-four-hour walk to work. I don't necessarily recommend it.

Here's the deal: We're having this wellness initiative at work. There's a contest in which employees get a certain number of points each time they exercise, lose weight, etc. For no good reason at all, I decided I was going to do something really big that no one else would match.

Are there cash prizes for the winners of this competition? Not that I'm aware of. Any rewards at all? I don't think so. My only interest in winning is so that I can win. Does that make sense? No, it doesn't, but it's the way I'm wired.

I did the walk-to-work thing once before, back in 2008. It's actually sort of fun for me, if you set aside the fact that I stepped in a puddle three miles into the walk and covered the last 14 miles with soaking-wet feet. And the inevitable post-walk pain in my feet and ankles. And the chafing in those areas I didn't grease up with runner's lube. And the not-so-pleasant feeling of spending the rest of the day in work clothes worn over a body from which I could only minimally clean off the dirt, sweat and grime in the men's room at our office.

But other than that, it was great!

You have a lot of time to think on a 3-hour-and-45-minute walk. And to listen to your iPod. I went through a whole Seinfeld comedy album and a good chunk of the Dave Matthews catalog. But the thinking part was fun, too.

My church buddy Sarah Lansing suggested I recount some of the random thoughts I had during the walk. I'm not sure they're in the least bit entertaining, but here's what I remember:

(1) I AM A HOPELESS SUBURBANITE...AND SO ARE MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY: The route I took wound through the cities of Wickliffe, Willoughby Hills, Richmond Heights, South Euclid and Cleveland Heights before leading into the City of Cleveland proper. People who live in my suburb are generally scared to death of Cleveland. As far as most of them are concerned, it's filled with murderers and drug dealers. And certain sections are, I guess. Just not the ones I walked through. And yet I still kept my head on a swivel at all times, as if the Clevelanders waiting at the bus stops at 6:30 in the morning were going to attack me. I will never lose this fear of All Things Citified no matter how many years I work downtown or how many times I take this walk. This just strengthens my hold on the title of World's Biggest Suburban Dork.

(2) IT'S EASY TO PEE ANYWHERE WHEN YOU'RE A GUY: I took water and juice with me and drank it all. Some of it I sweat out. Some of it I didn't. The stuff I didn't sweat out had to go somewhere. I think you're getting my drift here. I took four bathroom breaks along the walk, and it wasn't difficult to find places to answer nature's call. Why? Because I'm a guy. Guys will pee anywhere. All I had to do was find a patch of woods -- stunningly easy to do in Richmond Heights and Cleveland Heights -- and voila, I had my own natural Port-a-Potty. At one point I wondered what I would have done if I was a woman. Probably suffer in silence the entire walk...or at least until I came across a McDonald's or a gas station or something.

(3) YOU KNOW WHO I LIKE? TOM HANKS: I spent five minutes thinking about Tom Hanks and what a nice guy he is. That's it, just a few intertwined thoughts on Tom and his nice-guyness. I told you, 3 hours and 45 minutes is a LONG time.

(4) THE LUBE THING I MENTIONED ABOVE? IT'S REAL: I have a tube of this stuff called Body Glide. You runners know all about Body Glide. It looks like a stick of deodorant, but the idea is to rub it on areas of your body before you go on a long run or walk to decrease friction and chafing. I did just that before I went out the door. I rubbed it all over my feet because I was afraid of blisters. My feet were fine. As it turns out, I should have done my thighs, too. Big mistake. I've been paying for it since then.

(5) I MISS BALONEY SANDWICHES: When I was little, my mom used to make me these generic baloney sandwiches on white bread. Nothing special, nothing fancy, sometimes with no condiments at all - just baloney (NOTE: As my buddy Wendy Skoch Hart so kindly pointed out when I was too lazy to look it up, the correct spelling of the lunch meat in question is "bologna." But I'm sticking with "baloney" because I'm sure that's how I would have spelled it circa 1978.) At one point in the middle of the walk, I had a powerful craving for one of those 70s-era baloney sandwiches from my mom. All I had were granola bars. Not the same thing.

And that is honestly about all I can remember. For the most part, when I wasn't checking Facebook or text messages on my phone, I was zoning out. I don't have the mental capacity or patience to maintain any sort of concentration or productive thought for every step of a 17-mile walk. So usually I would just fall into a state of half-consciousness as I walked.

Man, I really miss those baloney sandwiches.