Party and Exciting Ride Home

As I mentioned earlier, I spent the weekend in Ithaca celebrating The 10th Annual Jofish / Robbie Burns Birthday Party. He posted the photos I took on his website; they include a few shots of the drive out, portraits of haggises, and various shots of the celebration.

As I discovered while hanging out, Jofish (at Cornell) has built a large circle of friends who are interesting, smart, cool people. Including beautiful, intelligent, talented women. Jump back ;).

Anyway, one of the requirements of the evening was a ceremonial reading of Robert Burns' Address To A Haggis. That's what he's reading as he was gesticulating with a very sharp knife near his guests. The first stanza is reproduced here.

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o' the puddin-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy of a grace
As lang's my arm.

Damned if I know what it means either.

This was followed by poetry readings by the guests. There were some great readings that evening: selections of Vogon poetry, ridiculous Marxist verse (which actually included the phrase, "Kill the Fascists! Power to the people!"), and a delightful reading of Donald Rumsfeld poetry.

As for myself, I chose something by Dana Gioia, who is a pretty interesting character--he spent fifteen years as a businessman at General Foods (becoming a VP), pursuing poetry on weekends and evenings, and then doing it full time when he left the firm. I read an incredibly depressing (but good, IMO) poem titled Insomnia. After finishing, I apologized and promised a more amusing one for the second round.

The drive back was very different than the drive out. First of all, it was at night (from 6 PM to 12:30 AM). Second, it was after a fair amount of snowfall in upstate New York. The highway (I-90) was fine, however, the 30 mile drive from Ithaca to the Interstate was a royal pain in the ass. In fact, I ended up driving off the road twice. Fortunately, I keep a tow strap in my car, and the locals are pretty generous about helping people out.



The worst part is that I went off the road trying to be a nice guy. There were a few people piling up behind me, so I wanted to pull over to let them pass. The first time, I pulled over too fast for the snow accumulation on the shoulder, and skidded off the road. The second time, having learned this lesson, I slowed down much more. However, the plows do a very good job of disguising where the actual edge of the road is--including the 6" drop-off from the road surface.