Monday May 18
I shiver.
Central Oregon's weather is always unpredictable and at ten minutes to five in the morning, when I step outside, it is cold, just above freezing. Mid-May should not be this cold, should it? Spring comes late at our elevation.
I stand on the porch in shirtsleeves waiting for my ride, ready to leave one world and arrive in another before the day is over.
Fortunately, my stay outside is brief—my driver is several minutes early, a good thing because I am scheduled to arrive at the airport a mere 20 minutes before my flight boards. Our airport is still small enough that we can trim the safety margin to the limit.
It is business as usual for Monday rush hour flight, busy terminal, longer than usual TSA lines, but nothing bad—I am through within five minutes and at the gate before boarding starts. Unusually, the plane is actually at the gate and boards without delay.
We land in Seattle on time. But those of you who have flown Alaska into SEA know the illusory nature of such things. We sit on a mid-field taxiway for thirty minutes waiting for a gate to open. Travel rule number one: do not fly Alaska into SEA without at least a two-hour layover. Wait and wait some more is the theme for this Monday morning.
I take my seat on the outbound 737 without hassle. I am traveling with only a small backpack that fits under the seat in front of me so I do not have to screw around with luggage. On the Philly end, I am to arrive at 18:15 and hope to have dinner with Ellie and Jolshua, so I want to get away from the airport and get to my hotel in Center City without delaying for baggage. I'd like some quiet time with them to celebrate her graduation from medical school, just the three of us.
Once in the air with time to relax, I start to feel bummed, a feeling that continues from yesterday. I never intended to make this trip solo. Ann is not feeling well and had to cancel. We had a date night chef's tasting planned on Tuesday. And, truth be told, I was really looking forward to showing her around Philadelphia. It's a city that I really like, a walkable, historic big city that does not get as much love as it should.
The older I get, the less I like doing things without Ann, especially discovering places. I think back to wandering the streets of Verona together, with no agenda beyond seeing what was around the next corner. Those are the moments I value most now—the shared discoveries, the conversations, the memories created together.
If I were not showing up for my daughter, I would have skipped this trip to stay with Ann. But I missed so much of Ellie's life while I ran the restaurant; I will not miss any more. And graduation from medical school is a big deal, even if she waves it off.
The flight to PHL is not bad, a bit choppy at times, but that's always the case crossing the Rockies. The flight crew is pretty liberal in their use of the "Fasten Seatbelt" light; perhaps they are getting warnings about turbulence that never materializes. This doesn't bother me; I ride with my seatbelt fastened always, a lesson from a lifetime of turbulent flights.
It does bother the couple in the same row across the aisle from me. They apparently need to go to the bathroom every fifteen minutes. And they have no mobility to speak of—bowling balls with appendages both. It is an excruciating process each time they try to unwedge themselves: their bodies take up all the space between their seats and the row in front. In my aisle seat, I get slammed each time they enter and exit their seats. This flight cannot end fast enough.
Eventually, it ends and we land. During the interminable taxi to the gate, I look into a Uber for the ride into Center City. Holy highway holdup! Surge pricing is ridiculous, so once off the plane, I head for the SEPTA platform to catch the train in. I'm headed for a hotel on Broad Street, maybe a five-minute walk from Suburban Station which is right on the airport line—no need even to transfer trains.
Opening the terminal door to head down to the platform, the oppressive heat smacks me in the face. Remember the near freezing morning in Central Oregon? Ten-and-a-half hours later in Philadelphia, it is still in the mid-90s. My glasses fog from the humidity that makes my shirt cling to my back within seconds.
My train arrives within ten minutes and after a ten minute hold, it starts into town. I text Ellie that I am heading into downtown. At Suburban Station, it's a long underground maze of passages to get up to surface level, prolonged by my staying underground as long as possible to avoid the sweltering miasma above.
As soon as I emerge at street level, I know I am in Philly. I smell weed, sweat, food, and garbage—these might be common to other cities but I associate them with Philly. It is not necessarily a pleasant combination of smells, but it is the smell of a place I have known through visits since childhood.
I walk through a crowd of teenage boys casually cheeching massive blunts, a cloud of skunky smoke all around. Philly cops stand around nonchalantly watching as three EMS crews attend to people down on the sidewalks, nodded out from narcotics or the heat, or both.
Broad Street is crawling with people and by their dress and posing for selfies, they seem to be out-of-towners like me. Inside the hotel, I have to climb to the second floor to the reception desk where I inquire about the crowds. Drexel, Temple, and Thomas Jefferson are all graduating simultaneously.
Check-in goes without a hitch and I pause in my room, breathing in the cold air streaming out of the air conditioner. Finally, my shirt starts to detach from my torso and I start to feel more comfortable. The heat, but more importantly, the humidity makes me thankful to live in the high desert in Central Oregon. After a career in a steamy restaurant kitchen and stints on the Gulf Coast, I can never move back East.
Ellie texts that she is glad I am in town, but nothing more. I am eager to see her, but I assume she has other plans. I am disappointed. I haven't seen her in a year and I have just flown the breadth of the country to see her. I text Lillie to see if she and Stephanie want to go to dinner. No joy: they do not arrive until tomorrow just before the dinner hour.
Left to my own devices, I scour the map for restaurants where I might get a cold beer and a bite to eat. Even though it is approaching 21:00, my stomach is on West Coast time and not really itching for food. I find a Belgian brasserie called Monk's Cafe just a couple blocks away. Moules frites and a beer sounds just about right for dinner.
I sit at the bar chatting with the other patrons for a couple of hours while sipping a blonde ale. The tap list of brews from Belgium is impressive but beyond my comfort zone. I put myself in the hands of the bartender, explaining what I do and do not like about Belgian brews. The ale he serves me is good but alien: I come from the land of the West Coast IPA.
I came for mussels. I place an order with the bartender and soon enough, they and a bowl of frites arrive. They are not huge mussels, but they are plump and tasty. Living in Central Oregon, access to fresh seafood is extremely difficult and the mussels I can get at the store are awful. I would cook mussels once a week if I could get them. Although Monk's offers many styles of mussels, I am a purist. I order them steamed in ale, fish stock, garlic, and parsley—the classic moules à la bière. Savoring the mussels, I cannot help but reflect how much Ann would have loved them and how much I would have loved her by my side.
I force myself into bed at midnight, but I do not fall asleep until after 01:00. Good thing I have nothing to do tomorrow, yet. Maybe I can get coffee with Ellie in the morning.
Tuesday May 19
I sleep fairly well and am up and in the shower by about 0900. Before that, I check my phone for texts from my daughter. Nothing. After I get dressed, I text her and ask about her plans. She tells me about timing for the graduation ceremony tomorrow.
A bit exasperated, I start thinking out my day. I give up on Ellie and text Lillie, thinking maybe she can motivate her sister. In the absence of communication with Ellie, I make TBD plans for dinner with Lillie and Steph before heading out.
Given the brutal heat (near 100F predicted), I am not going to do a big explore of downtown. I have a list of things I want to eat here and a corned beef on rye from Hershel's in the Reading Terminal Market is in my near future. At 11:00, I take the elevator down and as I push through the door, the heat and humidity smack me once again.
Out on the sidewalk, I head for the market, happy to be back in Philly. Philly is diverse and alive in ways that are alien to my part of Oregon. I do not take a lot of time to look around, wanting to beat the lunch rush at the market. After I get my sandwich, I can and will take my time.
The line is brief. I order corned beef on rye with mustard and none of the other things that they might want to put on the sandwich. I am a purist. Bag in hand, I wander through the market taking in all the sights and sounds. I spent so many years thinking about ingredients and dishes that I cannot walk through a market like this without my mind immediately assembling menus from everything I see: the meats, seafood, cheese, charcuterie, and produce on offer.
My plan is not to eat at the market, but in a favorite quiet location in downtown Philly near Independence Hall, the Rose Garden. As I wander there at low speed to keep the sweat to a minimum, I marvel at the history all around. Downtown is the hub of the events that led to independence from Britain and historic sights are on every block.
The Rose Garden, planted by the Daughters of the American Revolution and managed by the National Park Service, is rarely visited and offers gorgeous roses in May, shady trees, and a quiet place to sit and eat lunch. Just across the street, hordes are descending on Independence Hall, but I have the entire garden to myself, very much my plan, a bit of peace in the maelstrom that is urban Philadelphia.
My sandwich is not what I remember. It's not bad, but it does not rival Katz's in New York like I once thought. The rye is a bit stale and the corned beef is a little dry too. I manage to eat half despite this and the overpowering heat. As I slowly eat, I watch several robins grabbing bugs from the rose bushes and ferrying them into nests in the trees.
It is now 12:30 and I am starting to wilt a bit, despite the shade. I cross the street to another favorite little park, Magnolia Park. Unlike the roses that are in peak form, the magnolias have long since bloomed, but still I peek into the park out of habit. The fountain at the far end is spraying high and I see that the breeze is wafting the spray onto the sidewalk. I stand for a couple of minutes letting the gentle spray tumble onto me. A couple of college age girls giggle, then join me. The mist is so refreshing.
Washington Square is next on my agenda. It too is a favorite patch of green in downtown, though I might rate Rittenhouse Square a bit nicer. Despite my damp shirt, the heat is intense in the sunny areas as I wander. I stop at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the American Revolution before exiting diagonally to Independence Square. I will wander around Independence Hall before taking a peek at the Liberty Bell on the way back to the hotel. It is 13:00 and the heat has me beat and wanting to hole up in the air conditioning to recover.
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| Washington Square |
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| Tomb of the Unknown Soldier |
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| Independence Hall |
Lillie texts me from the road with plans for dinner, sushi at a restaurant near where she used to live and where Ellie still lives. We agree to meet in the lobby—she and Stephanie are staying at the same hotel—later before walking to the restaurant. As we walk, Lillie says we need to stop at the liquor store to get wine. The restaurant is a BYOB and a BYOB is something of a Philly institution. Thanks to quasi-draconian Pennsylvania liquor laws and punitive liquor license costs, bringing your own is a way of life. The selection at the store is crap, but I manage to get a bottle of Petit Chablis that should work with sushi.
It is light when we arrive at Kinme and dark when we leave. I leave it to the girls to order and they get a couple of maki rolls. I am a diehard nigiri or sashimi fan. For me, it is all about the fish—yep, that purist thing again. American style maki is not sushi in my book, but I am going with the flow. I wish Ellie were with us, but that child seems to be off in her own world. The three of us have a great time catching up; we last were together a year ago at Jolshua and Ellie's wedding.
Somehow, Lillie convinces Ellie and Jolshua to meet us at a nearby bar for an after dinner drink, so I am finally going to get to see her, 27 hours after arriving in downtown. On the way there, Lillie notices that a classmate from medical school is in town—knowing the physical location of their friends is natural for her and her generation, but wholly alien to me—and invites him too. It is hard to really catch up in the din of the bar, but it is better than nothing. Our night does not last too long; we are all tired and have graduation to attend in the morning. I did not expect graduation to be first thing in the morning.
Wednesday May 20
I wake without issue or an alarm and manage to get showered and ready in plenty of time to meet in the lobby. Now that Lillie is in town, we have plans and a schedule, starting with meeting for coffee before walking to the Kimmel Center for graduation. And Lillie even has a place for coffee selected. Two kids, night and day.
Coffee is at a tiny hole in the wall just across the street. The coffee is surprisingly good, I think to myself as I try to wedge myself into the thin sliver of shade against the building on the sidewalk. Hot coffee and hot sun is not a favorite combination. After coffee, we join the throngs in line to get into the Kimmel Center and ultimately make our way up to the balcony level where we have excellent seats, seats that I understand are randomly distributed.
After much ado, the thousands of attendees are seated and the graduates finally march in. From above, we finally spot Ellie, the first we have seen of her today. She had to be at the venue at O-dark-thirty for rehearsal. Really, they need a rehearsal for graduation? By the time graduation from medical school rolls around, do you not think that they will have been through enough of these ceremonies to pretty much have the idea down?
In any case, the Kimmel Center is a beautiful performance space, multi-tiered in flowing mahogany-colored wood with a huge rack of organ pipes on the back center wall. Philadelphia is lucky to have such a building.
The commencement address is one of the better ones that I have ever heard and is head and shoulders above the droning nonsense at Lillie's graduation. The ceremony starts after the address and as the young doctors walk across the stage, I am impressed at how racially diverse Ellie's class is.
More than halfway through the ceremony, Ellie walks across the stage to receive her diploma. Everyone else sees her as the doctor that she is, but I cannot help but remember the little girl whose instinct was always to put everyone else first. She is the embodiment of the commencement speaker's request of the graduates to remember that they are humans first and doctors second.
After the final graduate marches across the stage to enthusiastic applause from the audience, the new doctors march out. Following suit, we make our way slowly through the throng into a sea of people in the lobby. After many minutes, we finally find Ellie and take the obligatory photographs.
During the whole process, I am people watching and noticing what they are wearing. I am most impressed by the flowing robes and headdresses of traditional African garb. I am less impressed at some of the outfits that would make a hooker blush.
As we try to make our way outside, I get a bit separated from the group but I don't worry. They can always see me, a half a head higher than the rest of the crowd. A commotion starts outside the lobby doors and five cops to my right are trying to get through the crowd with little success. An illegally parked Uber driver is trying to start something with a cop who is asking him to move out of the fire lane. Handcuffs appear as I make my way across the street for more photos.
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| Born and Raised Here Does She Need a Photo of City Hall? |
The girls decide we need lunch after changing. Somebody selected Penang, a Maylaysian restaurant, in Chinatown. My choice would have been Spice-C a few doors down for their fantastic shaved noodle soup, but it was not my choice. I plan to have a bowl tomorrow before hopping the train at Jefferson Station for the airport.
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| Roti Canai |
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| Chow Kueh Teow |
I love how Maylaysian food is a mishmash of Malay, Indian, and southern Chinese cuisine. The roti canai is delicious but my chow kueh teow is lackluster, almost flavorless, and made with the narrow rice noodles rather than wide sen yai. I am hungry with no breakfast under my belt, so I eat most of it. I relish the chance to sit and chat with the girls in the AC before heading back out into the blazing heat.
The girls want bubble tea at a nearby tea shop; I tag along. The ability of their generation to spend money on coffee and tea drinks never fails to impress me. As a black coffee drinker, some of the concoctions that they drink make me queasy when I think about them. Again with the purist thing: black drip coffee with nothing else is my jam and only in the morning. Sweet tea with tapioca pearls? No thank you.
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| Bright and Sunny in Chinatown |
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| Roses and a Mural in the Gayborhood |
After lunch, I learn we have dinner reservations at an Italian restaurant called Osteria on north Broad Street, a dozen or so blocks north of the hotel. I would be fine walking, but because of the threat of severe thunderstorms to which I am oblivious, Stephanie says she will book a Uber and we can all go together if we meet at 17:30 in the lobby of the hotel. I look at my phone; it is already 14:00. It is a good thing I did not fill up on lunch with dinner at 18:00.
The sky is black by the time I get downstairs to the hotel lobby, a 180-degree change from the bright sun under which I walked back from Chinatown. As we step outside the hotel, gusts fling trash and paper from the sidewalk swirling through the air. The temperature has dropped at least ten degrees, perhaps fifteen. These are all the hallmarks of a no-joke East Coast summer thunderstorm.
As we are unpiling from the Uber, raindrops start to fall and they are serious by the time I am in the door of the restaurant, the last in our party to get under cover. The host seats us in a side room, a glass greenhouse appended to the side of the building. This is a perfect place to watch a thunderstorm and I am not disappointed. Lighting flashes, thunder bounces wildly off the buildings downtown, and the rain drums on the glass roof so hard that it drowns the music in the restaurant. We do not have thunderstorms like this in Bend. Truth be told, I miss their fury a bit. Dinner and a show, who could want more?
While the crew ponders their menus, I look for wine. My menu offers perhaps six bottles of red and six of white—I am surprised that a high end restaurant has no wine list. I order a bottle of Erbaluce from our server who has the deer-in-the-headlights look and knowledge of someone on her first shift.
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| Erbaluce to Start |
The somm arrives with the wine about five minutes later and I ask if the six bottles of red on the menu are the extent of their list, that I would like some Nebbiolo with dinner. She realizes that the server has not brought a wine list and hurries to rectify that.
On the heels of a late lunch, a large meal is not our future. I get grilled octopus and a pasta special (tortelli or agnolotti) that was well done, but forgettable, so forgettable that is long gone from memory. Somebody else gets a pizza and another a chicken. We order lightly; ours is not a high-dollar ticket.
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| Grilled Octopus |
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| Uncommon Red: Freisa |
In scanning the real wine list, the selection of Nebbiolo is fairly strong, but weighted to Barolo. I am afraid the tannins might be a bit much for the table, so I keep looking and in a section of odds and ends, I spy a bottle of Freisa. This is just what I am looking for: light-bodied, good fruit, mild tannins, the Nerello Mascalese of the Piemonte. The somm is happy that I have ordered an unusual bottle and when she pours it, I remark how dark it is, unusually dark for such a wine. She says she too was surprised when she first tasted it. We discuss how much we like Freisa and how seldom we encounter it.
After dinner, the girls want gelato so they have the Uber drop us near a place that they know. Other than being lactose-intolerant, I don't really have a taste for sweets, so I pass despite several sorbetti on offer. We all head home soon after.
On the way back, Stephanie asks about my plans for tomorrow. I muse that I will sleep in a bit, then go on the early side to Spice-C to soothe my craving for their noodle soup, then hop the SEPTA for the ride to the airport. I have a mid-afternoon flight tomorrow. She mentions she and Lillie are going up to visit her parents in North Philadelphia in the morning and that I am welcome. I demur. I do not see how to get to their house and to the airport on the south side of Philly by noon to stand in the TSA lines, which, last time I was here took two hours.
Thursday May 21
The thunderstorms that rolled through last night continue today. They are so bad that PHL is on ground stop; all flights are delayed a couple of hours. I am returning through PDX rather than SEA, for some reason that I no longer remember, then on the last flight to Bend out of PDX for the evening. I fear having to spend the night at the airport and catch an early flight out tomorrow. I am so used to travel surprises that annoyance does not even register.
With rain and the flight delays on my mind, I hear my phone buzz. Stephanie offers me the chance to go to her house and have bagels. At this point with my flight on a long delay, why not?
I check out and meet them in the lobby. The plan is to meet Ellie at her house and help her load some larger items into her car and into Lillie's car. Now that she has graduated, she is moving to Charlottesville, VA for residency at UVa Hospital. She and Jolshua are moving Saturday, which happens to be the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. It does not seem to be an ideal time to be traveling on I-95, but hey, not my problem. They are young and will survive the move, even if it proves to be an ordeal. I sense they are both excited by relocating back to where Ellie went to college, to my hometown.
We drop into a nearby coffee shop for a much needed cup of coffee. Then we are off. The plan is for Lillie to take her mother in her car and for Stephanie to take me in Ellie's car. After coffee and bagels with Bob and Marsha, Lillie will head straight back to Richmond and Stephanie will drop me at PHL. Ellie and Jolshua will drive a U-Haul down on Saturday.
Ellie is not a fan of hugs but as her father, I reserve the right and give her a big one on parting. I have no idea when I will next see her and the thought saddens me as does the imminent close to my trip. On the other hand, the guilt is strong at being away while Ann is sick and I cannot wait to get back to her. Jolshua is at work. I said goodbye to him last night.
Stephanie is a speed demon heading up I-95. Despite the rain and traffic, it seems like we arrive in Huntingdon Valley in no time. I introduce myself to Bob and Marsha, both incredibly nice folks, and it does not take too much insistence on Marsha's part to get me to take a cup of coffee. We sit at the table for bagels and chat the morning away.
Stephanie seems to think that cheesesteaks are in order and who am I to turn that down? When in Philly and all. She asks me what I want—provolone wit—and places an order over the web. I know the locals like Cooper Sharp, a processed American cheese, but I love the funk of an aged provolone. We head out around 11:30 for nearby Café Carmela to pick up the order. This is the point where I say goodbye to Lillie as she heads for Richmond and Stephanie and I head for the airport.
As I watch the airport status throughout the drive, the delay comes down from two hours to 90 minutes, then 75 minutes and an hour. The sky though gray is brightening slightly. Things are looking up for not having to spend the night at PDX.
At the airport, I say goodbye to Stephanie and then make my way to the TSA line where the agents actually look bored. I whisk through in two minutes tops, then find my gate which proves to be extremely close to the security screening area.
With three hours to kill before my flight, I install myself in a chair at the small gate. Though I promised myself I would save the steak for later, the smell is killing me. In unwrapping it, I see sesame seeds on the roll. That's definitely different. The steak is massive: two full meals for sure. I take a bite. It is delicious, the second best cheesesteak I have ever had! The best: click here. I eat half and I save half for dinner during the ride home.
The two flights home go without a hitch and my driver awaits me as I exit security. I arrive home at midnight and collapse into bed with Ann, happy to be with her and in my own bed, tired from traveling, happy to have seen my daughters, and sad that I had to leave them. As I slowly fall asleep, I feel proud of my girls, not because they are doctors, but because they both put their minds to something that they wanted to do and put in the terribly hard work to accomplish it.
