Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site pucc-h Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxj!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!CS-Mordred!Pucc-H:aeq From: aeq@pucc-h (Jeff Sargent) Newsgroups: net.singles Subject: at long last, Trip One report Message-ID: <1498@pucc-h> Date: Mon, 19-Nov-84 20:08:21 EST Article-I.D.: pucc-h.1498 Posted: Mon Nov 19 20:08:21 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 21-Nov-84 01:04:48 EST Organization: Purdue University Computing Crypt Lines: 105 I'll try to keep this reasonably short.... Now that I've been back for 3 weeks, here's a brief rundown on the people I saw and places I met (how's that again?) during my 3800-mile October odyssey. Did you know that there's a mosque about 10 miles south of Toledo on I-75? Next time I visit a foreign country, I will check its holiday schedule before I go.... I arrived at Waterloo on Canadian Thanksgiving and could find no one, so I pushed on to Toronto, where luckily Chris Robertson (utzoo!nonh) was home and able to give me a place to sleep, not to mention a forum wherein to meet Laura Creighton briefly. Laura is not nearly so formidable as she might seem from her net articles -- intelligent and opinionated, yes, but not forbidding in person. Next day I backtracked to Waterloo and got to meet a fair crowd -- Sophie Quigley, the freshly married Judy McMullan, Tom Chmara, Peter Bain, and some of their non-net friends. (Alas, Dave Martindale was in the Yukon at the time, so I did not see him.) Interesting and friendly crew; and U of Waterloo has a very pretty campus. In the next couple of days I percolated down through New York state (noting the political acumen demonstrated by the signs at road construction projects: REBUILDING NEW YORK -- Mario M. Cuomo, Governor). I visited an old friend at Xerox in Rochester, saw some netters (e.g. Greg Taylor) at Cornell, then unleashed myself on New Jersey. ["Where'd you spend your vacation?" "North Jersey." "I'll call the men in white coats." :-)] Great crowds of Bell Labs people were clamorously awaiting my arrival -- well, quite a few, especially at Murray Hill -- and perhaps not clamorously, but awaiting. (I would be most pleased if the Murray Hill happy hour crowd, particularly Harry, would send me their net addresses.) Some people I met were well-known netters: Andy Koenig, Steve Bellovin, rabbit!jj -- I was even introduced to Dennis Ritchie -- Lynda Feng, Patty Carstensen, Mark Terribile, Greg Skinner, Rich Rosen.... Rich is actually a decent, likable guy in person; knowing this is going to make it much easier to avoid flaming at him in net.religion. Others I met were either people who do not post but with whom I correspond privately, or else my "public" -- i.e., people I'd never heard of before but who knew me. (You could not imagine a greater contrast between the songs charm!slag performed and those I performed at an informal guitar session in Hoboken.) North Jersey also served as a useful base for forays into Connecticut (Gary Samuelson) and Westchester County, NY (Julie Harazduk, better known in net.religion). Also, the wife in the couple I stayed with in Nutley, NJ is Chinese, and one evening she, her husband, and I ate in New York's Chinatown with a bunch of her relatives; it is a weird feeling to be at a table of ~10 people only two of whom are Caucasian, and whose fluency in English varies.... Incidentally, for the Christian crowd in northern NJ and surrounding areas, I highly recommend a Mountainside-based group known as Shekinah Glory; catch one of their concerts if you get a chance. Seeping southwestward from the urban sprawl, I arrived at Princeton, where co-ed dorms really work. (Perhaps the ultraconservative Purdue Residence Hall Administration could borrow a leaf from Princeton's book; as the guy I stayed with, Dan Levin, put it, "It's not as though everyone's sleeping with everyone else" -- and since he seems to play father confessor to his whole dorm, he should know -- but rather, men and women get a chance to form friendships in daily life, a most salutary preparation for marriage, I would think.) The D.C. area contained friends old and new, respectively Dave Maxey (known to some of his Lafayette friends as Don Alhambra) and Liz Allen, who programs with a LISP, and whose intelligence can encompass both AI projects and the idea that we are ourselves in a sense AI projects, created by a greater Researcher.... Subsequent days found me visiting my old haunts in Downingtown, PA (a touch of nostalgia) and a friend from high school (!) now in Lancaster; passing by Pittsburgh (pity I didn't know Tim Maroney was at CMU; I could have met him); visiting more old friends in Wooster, OH; and finally arriving at yet another Bell Labs/AT&T/whatever outpost in Columbus, where I got to meet the quiet and thoughtful Paul Dubuc, the pleasantly spacy Karl Kleinpaste, and the mildly rowdy Steve Romig. My zigzag course the next day carried me to Dayton, to see a former boss of mine from Purdue; north to Lima, where (alas) my aunt's phone number was apparently unlisted; and west to Fort Wayne, where I dropped my exhausted body into a spare bed at my dad's brother's place after earlier visiting my mom's sister (relatives on both sides of my family, 2-3 miles apart!). Trekking across Indiana on the (actually rather dull) US 30 dragstrip brought me to Chicagoland, home of Mary Ann Zeszutko, and (for a brief period, yet) residence of Snoopy Seifert. A pleasant time was had by all when we three met for lunch, especially since the lunch special was headlined by four of the most beautiful words in the language -- "All you can eat".... Don't tell anyone that I managed to get from the far west suburbs of Chicago to Lafayette in about 2-1/4 hours, construction and all.... You know what one of the most encouraging things was that I noticed on this trip? Several people I met had kids -- and the kids actually liked me! The 3-year-olds were especially friendly. I was pleasantly surprised; my rapport with such innocent creatures usually is not so good.... Let me once again express my appreciation to all those who provided me with places to sleep, food to eat, guidance through the maze of back roads in the Northeast, etc. Let me also express my regret for missing certain people (at least some of them know who they are, so I won't embarrass them). But let me express my thanks to all whom I met; I really enjoyed the trip and getting to meet all of you. This VAX is going into stuck-pig mode, rendering "vi" useless, so I'll shut up now.... -- -- Jeff Sargent {decvax|harpo|ihnp4|inuxc|ucbvax}!pur-ee!pucc-h:aeq "I'm not asking for anyone's bleeding charity." "Then do. At once. Ask for the Bleeding Charity."