My dad recently turned 80, so his friends wanted to throw him a party. Due to a history of altitude sickness and a dislike of mountain driving, I really don’t visit Mammoth frequently, but I was particularly motivated for this trip.

Dad recently mentioned that United had seasonal flights from San Francisco to Mammoth (airport code: MMH). Back in the day, there were only flights from the commuter terminal at LAX, and for quite a few years, there weren’t any commercial flights at all. So the revelation was a surprise to me.

So Rick and I booked a trip to visit my dad, flying out Saturday morning and flying back Monday morning so we’d get some good time with him.

My usual allegiance is with Hilton, but there are no Hilton properties in Mammoth, and the only Starwood property is a Westin at rates higher than I’m willing to pay.

Normally, I use TripIt to track flights and hotel reservations.. This has been a real boon in many cases, especially with schedule changes. This trip is the first time it’s ever led me astray: TripIt said the flight was leaving out of Terminal 1, but it turns out the flight operates out of Terminal 3. Neither United’s iPhone application nor the web site had info, nor did the departures board, so, after Rick picked up coffee for us, I actually called United on the house phone to get the information.

Later, people on FlyerTalk explained it for me: it’s a frankenflight. It’s caught in something of a contract issue between United Express, United, and Continental where the flight was operated by Continental but had to be sold as United, and that kind of pain has made its way all the way through the system.

You may recall from prior adventures that I’d flown a lot last year, though a good chunk of it wasn’t on United or its partners, and I flew enough to earn what used to be called 2P status, but, in the post-merger world is called Premier Silver, United’s lowest status tier. Technically, that would waitlist me for Economy Plus, but it wasn’t offered to me on this particular flight even though there was not only Economy Plus, but also First class on the small jet. Oh well, it was a 37-minute flight, no big loss.

The plane was a Canadair regional jet, and it was nicely quiet, surprisingly so. Flying over the Sierras, we saw just how bad some of the snow fall had been this year, sadly.

Our flight was on time into Mammoth, which is a super-small airport with one gate and one waiting area (so they can only have people waiting for one flight at a time). We picked up our rental from Hertz, then went up to my dad’s place past the village near what used to be called Warming Hut 2 but now has a much more high-falutin’ name. It was really great to see dad again!

Dad’s favorite place for breakfast and lunch in town is Good Life Cafe, which had a dauntingly large menu. After determining that my first two choices could be made gluten-free, I had an Eye Opener with mahi mahi. Rick had the Chile Verde. I can’t recall what my father had. The food was good, and we were stuffed through to the dinner party dad’s friends had set up for him. One of his friends got him an awesome 80th birthday cake with ginormous strawberries. On the way there, the weather changed a bit and we had a light dusting of snow, which was welcome by my dad and all his skier friends.

We finally checked into the Shiloh Inn, which was decent enough but a bit drab. We didn’t use the pool, though I regret that choice now. After years of being a pool fiend, I haven’t been using them nearly enough, and this pool was open 24 hours. However, the side effects of the altitude medication meant I was in significant pain.

The following morning, we again headed to get my dad and again went out for brunch at Good Life Cafe, and several of dad’s friends joined us. It was great really getting to spend some time with people he’s known for years and talked about a lot, but whom I’ve barely met before. This time, my dad tried the Chile Verde. I had the same Eye Opener, just because it was that good. My dad was recovering from some illness, so he bowed out for the rest of the day.

Rick and I were feeling up for some extra altitude, so we took the gondola to the top of Mammoth and walked around the top of the gondola. We’d gone up pretty late in the day, so we had about half an hour up there, then went to the bar at the midpoint. Previously, I’d always had a hot chocolate, but none was available, so I had an Irish coffee instead.

We tried to find one place that seemed promising on Yelp, but couldn’t find what we were looking for, so we went to Red Lantern, where they were able to come up with some really tasty gluten-free food.

The following morning, Monday, was our flight out. Catch was, we woke up and it was completely clouded over and snowing. Now, there are quite a few microclimates there, and where my dad lives is a different microclimate from the center of town (where we were staying), which is a different microclimate from the airport. I checked my messages and the flight status and it looked like our flight was still on, so we ate our free breakfast downstairs (which basically only a piece of fruit for me as nothing else was edible) and drove to the airport.

After we arrived, I got an email from my mother and a phone call from United that our flight was canceled — after we’d returned the car. Several people were having meltdowns about that. Skiers who were happy about it were thrilled to change their flights. We were there early enough that we got rebooked for a later flight. By the time all that was done and we re-fetched the car keys from Hertz (who said we couldn’t drive the cars to San Francisco, not that I wanted to), the weather was starting to clear. Of course it was.

We got cocoa in the little refreshment hut, and then headed back to town, where we once again picked up my dad and went out to you-know-where. After that, we finally had enough time at our leisure to check out a place a couple doors down that Jaym Gates told me about: Looney Bean, one of those most beloved kinds of places where you can get good coffee and great atmosphere. Rick and I sat transfixed in front of the fire, mugs in hand.

Now, one of the challenges of Mammoth is altitude. It’s at 7,000 feet, is a difficult takeoff, and skiers are not known for being light packers. Weight and balance are always issues on regional jets, and this one actually has a first class and economy plus to make the load lighter (fewer seats and all that). But sometimes, that’s not enough. Due to the canceled flights earlier, the flight was oversold, so they’d had to involuntarily deny boarding to some people. They’d asked for four volunteers before boarding. After that was done, they began boarding us.

Due to my status, I was upgraded to first, and they accidentally gave Rick’s seat away (he wasn’t upgraded as he doesn’t have status), so they put him in first too. Because they couldn’t move anyone else forward, but because they needed more weight forward, they moved some of the luggage into the other four seats in first class; luggage weighs less than people do. Still, three more people volunteered to be bumped, and, after all that changing people around, we were finally under the projected weight by two pounds.

We had a beautiful and uneventful flight back, and I was happy to see more snow on the mountains on the way back. My full photo set is available on flickr.

Later, she mentioned something to Rick, who then set off trying to find the sound’s source. A few seconds after he passed the TV, there was another beep. A few seconds after that, another.

It was the show. Specifically, it was profanity being cut. Of course, I hadn’t noticed it because of the context in which I was hearing it.

Rick reports back to my mother, who asks, “Why the beeping?”

Rick says, “It’s Anthony Bourdain.”

Which made me laugh.

For what it’s worth, the Amsterdam episode of The Layover is one of the funniest pieces of television I’ve ever seen, though the clips on the web site are dramatically cut from the iTunes episode.

In my blog post about transiting through Amsterdam, I forgot to mention a detail that sticks with me: the couple ahead of me at the transfer desk were clearly stoned out of their gourd and had, accordingly, managed to miss their flight.

I mean, the Dutch are super-efficient, so I was a wee bit gobsmacked by the relative size of their transfer stations (though it is the 14th busiest airport in the world), at least right up until I realized that part of the underlying issue was also oh-so-Dutch.

Here she is in 1966 with Art, Rick’s father.

I got to East West early [2], so I was noodling in a notebook about Disbelievers and got some good ideas. One of my standard noodling ideas is: Imagine what 100 cool things in this universe might be and write them down. You likely won’t use all 100, but the goal is to get a few new ideas that will help you. In this case, I realized what a big tentpole scene about 3/4 of the way through the book will be. It is something that’ll create an aftermath, and it’s the big scene that forces the climax.

Catherine’s stories are often about relationship with the land and environment, living as she does on a farm in northern Minnesota. They reminded me of the Vermont writers I’d heard speak on similar topics. She read a wonderful piece about a woman being taken away from her farm into community housing.

There’s something about these stories, though, that always make me feel like the weird child. Don’t get me wrong, I am the weird child, but most of the time my life feels normal to me.

Back when I was in college, we had a group writing session where we sat around a conference table and wrote on the topic of “my mother’s cooking.” We then read our entries out loud to each other. I came near the end, so I got to hear everyone’s tales of white galley kitchens and sizzling poultry, and canning.

My piece was titled “Pounding Abalone.” Here’s an excerpt.

The few times mom and I collaborated on a meal were usually on a boat working in cramped quarters. Mom and Bill [my stepfather] were avid scuba divers; I preferred to snorkel. I remember sitting up on deck while the others sought food, sitting under a light blanket (to reduce glare) while reading a book. Once, a shadow of a lobster caught my attention under the blanket, startling me. It turns out that the lobster had crawled up the blanket about four feet before I noticed it. I got my revenge though —- I boiled him.

Mom would make a great bouillabaisse, simmering the sauce all day while out catching the fish for the soup. We usually had mostly shellfish—lobster, abalone bits, tiny shrimp—rather than fish.

By far my favorite sea dish was the one I usually got to prepare -— abalone. Abalone clings very hard to rocks and has to be pried not only off the rock but out of its shell. Once out, it doesn’t have the decency to just sit there and behave. No, it has to crawl all over. Abalone is inherently tough, so I would pound it with a meat tenderizer as it crawled across the cutting board. I’d stop wailing on it with the metal tenderizer and watch it to see if it had stopped moving, but it would curl up its edges and slide away.

When we were getting ready to cook, I’d cut the abalone up, but even that didn’t prevent it crawling. It would move in my hands as I rolled it in the batter mom made. Then, when she put it on the sizzling pan, only then would it stop moving.

Since the last time mom and I went out boating together, I’ve never had abalone properly prepared. I’m not sure if it was my pounding or her cooking, but perhaps it was simply the magic of shared experience.

I think everyone was horrified, but then I never heard tales of plucking chickens….

One of the people at the reading was a licensed therapist who asked some interesting questions. She specifically asked about ego in writing. I can’t remember the exact question she asked because my mind was already racing with the question’s implications, but it made me realize what it was that bothered me about the “thou shalt outline” writers: they’re ego and super-ego writers. I’m an id writer. I describe my writing as backing into a story with blinders: I can only see where I’ve been — at least until the story catches, and at many points thereafter. That is, by definition, id writing. It’s also why my first drafts can be so craptastic.

This is, btw, one of two reasons I dropped out of James Gunn’s workshop: it simply wasn’t compatible with my process.

Also, one of the writers who’s been on an e-mail list of women writers said that, for years, people were discussing craft issues. About a year ago, this flipped, and now most of the discussions were about marketing. This has depressed me as well; I’ve been noticing it more and more.

[1] A big thank you to Shweta Narayan. When I was having a rough emotional time a couple of years ago, I asked her for recommendations for a light book to help me through, and she recommended Karen’s Wit’s End. It was perfect, just exactly what I needed, and it was really nice to be able to tell Karen that.

[2] Due to a short in a power strip that tripped the circuit breaker to my office. Great.

Today, I got a CD with scans of the photos (some of which I’d taken), including some I’d never seen.

One of those photos was of Richard at Newgrange.

I’ve got to say, it’s incredibly weird to see new photos of someone who’s been dead ten years. It’s even weirder to tweak them in Photoshop.

Here’s the photos with Richard in them. And here’s all the Ireland photos. At the moment, the two sets are the same, but I have about 80 more pictures to put up.

She didn’t actually get it on her birthday, which fell on a Thursday, but we did get it to her shortly thereafter. A good thing, because mom was told she had cancer on her birthday.

She’d put it out in one area of the front yard, one that people come and steal plums from (because no one’s really known who the land belonged to).

Naturally, with cancer surgery and recovery and then the rainy season setting in, it was still in its pot, though put in its appointed place.

She last remembers seeing it this weekend, but noticed today that it had gone. Lacking locomotion of its own, that means someone nipped our palm tree.

It went like this:

October 19, she called the Kaiser advice nurse.

October 20, she had an appointment to see her Ob-Gyn.

October 26 (her birthday, unfortunately), she gets the news she’s got endometrial cancer.

Nov 1, she has an appointment with the gynecologic oncologist.

Nov 7, she has surgery.

Later that week, it’s confirmed by the pathologist that they got all the cancer.

Nov 20, she returns to work.

There’s so many bad stories about cancer out there, I figured someone could use a good one.

This is one of them.

I woke up early, drank coffee, took vitamins, drank more coffee and soda with lunch, took more vitamins, and I’ve been yawning all day. The effects aren’t emotional so much as physical: the body remembers.