Dear Family,
April began with our first visit to Greece and ended with our first experience on Southwest Airlines since its switch to assigned seating.
Greece was fun, but let’s start with the more consequential item.
I have yet to meet anyone who is a fan of Southwest’s move away from open seating. Even though my “status” on Southwest (to the extent Southwest has such a thing) consistently landed me “preferred” and “extra legroom” seats near the front of the plane, I still prefer the old way. What they have now results in a boarding process that seems to take twice as long and officially robs Southwest of the one remaining thing I used to like about it.
On fully half (2 out of 4) of our Southwest flights to/from Utah last week, I boarded the plane and had to kick someone out of my seat.
The first time looked like an innocent mistake. They guy in my seat (6C) was supposed to be across the aisle in 6D. It seemed innocent, at least, until I realized that 6C (my seat) was an extra legroom seat and 6D wasn’t.
Nice try, pal.
The second time, I boarded to find what appeared to be a mother and her two young children occupying my entire row. I asked her if it was possible that she had inadvertently taken the wrong seat.
“Oh, right, they’re reserved now,” she replied. She looked at her boarding pass, slowly collected her children and their many, many belongings scattered across the row, and made the long walk of shame all the way back to a place far better suited to young seat-kickers — row 26.
All this is to say that my preferred airline — not unlike my preferred political party — is not one that I actually like all that much, but rather one that I choose only because I hate it less than the alternatives. And just as I yearn to one day live in a political system that does not force me to choose between communists and the Gadianton robbers,1 I’d like to think that the free market one day will deliver me an airline I can fall in love with again. Alas, neither thing seems all that likely right now.
Still, I’ll continue flying Southwest whenever I can for the foreseeable future if for no other reason than because they let Crystal fly with me for free. If/when my “companion pass” benefit elapses, sadly, it’s probably going to be adios, Southwest. So sad. You used to be awesome. Now you’re pretty much just like everybody else.
Greece
Some of you may recall that last month’s letter came near the beginning of our (Crystal’s, Ari’s and my) week in Greece.
Southwest does not fly to Greece (yet) and so we had to resort to legacy carriers (out on KLM, back on Delta, which, even though I complain about it all the time, is usually not terrible — as long as you’re not on a tight schedule).
Last month’s letter included pictures from our first couple of days in Athens, and so I won’t recycle those. Here’s how the rest of the week turned out.
After spending a third day in Athens, I feel safe in asserting that two days in Athens is plenty. It’s a cool place, but once you’ve been to the Acropolis (and maybe the Agora and the gardens), it doesn’t take long for all of the other archeological sites in the city to start looking alike.
One Athens highlight that did not make it into last month’s letter was my morning run to the Panathenaic Stadium, host of the first modern Olympic Games (in 1896) and purportedly the world’s only stadium built entirely of marble. Like most outdoor tracks, it’s a 400-meter oval, but with longer-than-normal straightaways, and short, very tight curves. I’m not sure why they built it that way, as it also makes for a narrow, pretty much useless infield. But for the low, low price of just 12 euros, they’ll let you come in and run on it. (The 12 euros gets you admission to the stadium — once you’re in, you can run on the track or just pretend to, which is what most visitors do.)
The stadium is just a couple of miles from the apartment where we were staying in Athens’s Monastiraki neighborhood (home to Hadrian’s Library, various other ancient ruins, a vibrant square that makes a lot of noise until well past my bedtime, and a bustling flea market). And so I ran to the stadium from there, did a dozen or so laps on the track (I basically did four hard 800s with 400m jogging recoveries in-between — which worked out to about a euro per lap or 4 euros per mile — not great, but not bad, considering) and then ran home. (If you follow me on Strava, you already know all this and have seen the pictures.) It was certainly one of the more memorable 7-mile drizzly morning jogs of my life.
There’s a lot more to Greece than Athens, and I feel like we barely saw any of it. But what we did see was stunningly beautiful.
Our initial excursion out of Athens was supposed to be to the Island of Hydra, where we had booked a hotel for Thursday night. But forecasted heavy thunderstorms in Athens (which only partially materialized) cancelled all of the fast-boat ferries on Thursday, and so instead we booked a bus tour to the Peloponnese, where the weather was a little nicer. There we visited the Ancient Mycenae, a major center of the Mycenaean civilization (c. 1600–1100 BC — something you have to get used to in Greece: you can pretty much assume the “BC” in all of the dates).
With dates that old, it became interesting to me, listening to the tour guides, the extent to which history and mythology/religion are basically inseparable from one another. While in the Peloponnese, we ostensibly visited the remants of Agamemnon’s citadel and tomb — even though I don’t think anybody knows for certain that Agamemnon was an actual person. It’s easy for me to get hung up on the problematic nature of “histories” that don’t get recorded until many centuries after the fact. (That is, until I contemplate the Bible — which I believe in — which has pretty much the exact same problem.)
We also ventured down to the charming port town of Nafplio, Greece’s first modern capital, which looks more Italian to me than Greek…
…and visited the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus (built on the side of Mount Kynortio in the 4th century BC) and got to experience its near-perfect acoustics — by listening to Ari sing in it.
The weather cleared enough the next day for us to “sail” (i.e., take a high-speed ferry) to Hydra — a picturesque, car-free (my kind of place — you have to strap your suitcase to the side of a donkey if you don’t want to carry it up to the hotel yourself) island in the Saronic Gulf.
The island is primarily known for its elegant stone mansions, narrow, cobbled streets, and waterfront tavernas, but we mostly enjoyed just drinking in the views of the Mediterranean — whose turquoise hues look almost fake to me.
We wrapped up our trip with a day jaunt to Delphi — the famous religious sanctuary atop Mount Parnassus, dedicated to Apollo, and once considered the “navel” (i.e., the center) of the whole world (something about Zeus and two eagles meeting there, and I can’t remember the details).
We saw what was left of the Temple of Apollo (where — for the right price — various oracles delivered prophecies), the stadium that housed Pythian Games (the second most important quadrennial games in ancient Greece after the Olympics), treasuries and various other stuff that I have already forgotten the significance of.
But whatever it all means, it’s a really pretty spot high up in some beautiful mountains.
All in all, it was a fun week. The food was pretty good, but I honestly don’t think I had anything I liked any better than what they serve at The Big Greek Cafe. (Big Greek, you may recall, catered Sophie and Luke’s wedding.) Actually, I take that back. I may have had some moussaka in Athens that was unmatched by any moussaka I’ve had in America. But the gyros and souvlaki at Big Greek are better than any gyro or souvlaki I ate in Greece.
So Greece is cool. But if you want really good Greek food, then come to Maryland!
58 hours in Utah
Watching Sophie and Luke graduate from BYU was surprisingly unobjectionable.
Both of them technically graduated in December, but last week was their opportunity to walk. Commencement (the university-wide ceremony that required tickets) was on Thursday, and Sophie and Luke’s college convocations (the smaller — but still very large — events where individual graduates are recognized by name and walk across the stage) were both on Friday.
Neither event was even close to as annoying as I anticipated, though both naturally had their annoyances. Rampant, illicit seat-saving at commencement made finding a place to sit nearly impossible, and listening to the interminable roll call of graduates at convocation is never going to be anything but tedious — even though it feels like they have streamlined and automated that part of it as much as it can be — right down to the AI voice reading each name as the graduate walked across the stage and their name and degree was flashed on the jumbotron. I can honestly say that I did not hate either meeting, and for me, that’s saying a lot.
Part of this may have had to do with the addresses, which were crisp and more engaging than the formulaic fare that typically gets served up at graduations. Say what you will about our people, we know how to give a speech. (Some of us are better at it than others, but from childhood on up, we all get a lot of practice at it.) But my enjoyment may have had more to do with the Marriott Center itself.
It is entirely possible that, before last Thursday, I had not set foot in the Marriott Center since I walked out of it following my own graduation ceremony there 30 years ago. (I’ve been on campus several times since then, just not in the Marriott Center.) Back in my day, the arena sat just under 23,000 very uncomfortable patrons. The seats back then were horrible and it always felt like my knees were wedged into the seat in front of me. (Not as bad as a Broadway theater, but close.) And that’s only if you were lucky enough to get an actual seat. Most of the seating in those days (as I recall) was bleachers.
The capacity has since been reduced to just under 18,000, but the seats are actually something you’d want to sit in — far more comfortable than the seats at Washington D.C.’s Constitution Hall, where I had the privilege of enduring my children’s high school graduations.
Sophie’s degree in English education was granted by the College of Humanities, while Luke’s Finance degree came from the Marriott School of Business.2 Ordinarily, this would have them attend separate convocations. But husbands and wives who graduate together (which probably happens more often at BYU than at most other universities)3 are allowed to walk together if they want to, even if that means walking in a convocation other than their own.
Deciding which convocation to walk in is up to the couple, and I’m not sure how Luke and Sophie chose. Keith (Luke’s dad) and I agreed that the only sensible way would have been to select the smaller college (and therefore the shorter ceremony).
They opted to go to Luke’s, which felt like the wrong decision to me. I don’t how big the Humanities convocation was, but the business school’s was so large, it needed to be split into two separate two-hour sessions. It took a full hour to read the names of the graduates in our session alone. We, of course did not stick around for the second one.
But on the plus side, attending the Marriott School’s convocation enabled us to bump into the Hubers, who happened to be sitting three rows in front of us and the Wonnacotts. I spotted Aunt Lou Jean first, who was seated next to Uncle Warren, who was next to their son/my cousin George Willis Huber and his wife Leslie, who were there for their own child’s graduation. I was a little disappointed that my cousin, a professor at the University of Wisconsin with enough prominence to merit having his own Wikipedia page, was not wearing his fancy doctoral robes, but I guess you don’t do that when you’re just in the audience.
Campus of course was a zoo, and the Hubers were not the only familiar faces we encountered. We also ran into several Baxters, which occasioned this photo of BYU students and alums from the White Oak Ward:
We also got to see a fair bit of Hannah (and a little less of Emma, who unfortunately wasn’t feeling well but I understand is doing better now).
We first snuck up on Hannah in her office at Covington Senior Living in Orem, where she was busy meeting with someone:
Then we spent much of Thursday afternoon in Hannah’s office hearing from everyone there (residents and colleagues) about how Hannah is the best, and everyone loves Hannah, etc. Being her parents made us feel a little like celebrities and, it being Utah and all, people brought us lots of treats.
We’re already looking forward to Grace’s graduation from SVU next year, which promises to be a somewhat smaller, more manageable affair, and then we’ll be done with all this (at least until the grandchildren start growing up).
Speaking of which, Sophie and Luke are finding out the sex of their fetus on Thursday. So there’s that.
Shameless Self-Promotion
Because this is my letter and I can write what I want, I am using this last space to brag about having run the fastest 10-miler of my life earlier this month. (If you follow me on Strava, then you already know this, and if you don’t, then you probably don’t care, but I’m telling you anyway.)
I ran it in 77 minutes (and change)4 a significant improvement over my previous lifetime best of 80 minutes (and change), .
Is this good? Well, not exactly, but it’s the best I’ve ever done and, even though comparison is the thief of joy, it’s respectable for a person of my vintage:
Actually, what I’m most proud of is my splits. I somehow managed to get faster with each successive 5K. It might be the first time in my life I’ve crossed a finish line feeling like I’d run a race as well as I could run it. It made me happy.
So there you go.
I don’t think we’re going anywhere in May. That will probably be a more challenging letter to write.
I’ll think of something.
Love,
Tim
Managing Editor of The Famlet Monthly
- This is obviously a caricature/exaggeration. Not all Democrats are communists.
- Not everything at BYU is named after the Marriotts (a prominent Maryland family) — just the basketball arena and the b-school.
- Other things you are more likely to see at BYU graduation than at other graduations: Pregnant graduates and graduates carrying young children
- my watch thinks the course was 10.11 miles and believes I covered the first 10 miles of it in 76:31, but we’ll stick with the official time
I am super impressed with your run. Way to go. Getting faster, as well as older.