Everyday Magic

            On September 16, 2023, I started out on a road trip that was a combination of professional and personal pursuits. I was giving 20 talks at 17 different campuses around the country. I also planned to do some sightseeing as well as visiting with friends and family along the way. The result was a 51-day, 9200-mile adventure.

            Many wonderful things happened to me during the journey. Some of those things I had planned to do, such as visit the Badlands, Crazy Horse, Devil's Tower, and the Pacific Coast. However, I also found that other things happened on the trip; things I hadn't planned, thought about, or intended. Taken individually, most might not stand out, but the sheer volume of these occurrences opened me up to the positive, magical karma that seemed to follow me on this trip. It also made me think a lot about magic and how one might bring such magic into one's life.

            The magic began before the trip commenced. Several years ago, I bought 70 calendars as gifts for my staff from a company called Escaping Adulthood. Escaping Adulthood is a family business comprised of motivational speakers, Jason and Kim Kotecki. The purpose of Escaping Adulthood is to encourage adults to bring more fun, joy, and laughter into their lives. Each year Jason and Kim host a big event called Wondernite. This year's Wondernite took place on the Friday of the last weekend in September, in their hometown of Sheboygan, Wisconsin. As it happened, I was speaking at The School of the Institute of Art of Chicago (SAIC) on that Friday. I spoke at SAIC on Friday morning. After my talk, I drove the 150 miles to Sheboygan, attended their lovely event that evening, and returned to Chicago the next day. I marveled at the serendipity of Wondernite coinciding with the closest stop of my tour to Sheboygan. Little did I know that this was the first of many magical occurrences.

            After Chicago, I traversed a huge swath of the country, driving from Dubuque, IA through South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana, eventually reaching the Pacific Northwest with speaking stops in Bozeman, MT; Spokane, WA; Portland, OR; and, finally, Eugene, OR. My partner, Lisa, flew into Portland for a five-day visit with me, starting in Portland and ending in San Francisco where I'd drop her at the airport. We got to Eugene on Sunday before my Monday speaking engagement at the University of Oregon.

            I am a lifelong competitive runner, and one of the American patron saints of distance running is Steve Prefontaine (Pre). He was a runner at the University of Oregon in the early 1970s, set a bunch of American distance running records, and competed in the 1972 Olympics. He was at the height of his fame when I was just starting to get serious about running in high school. Unfortunately, he was killed in a car crash in 1975 at the age of 24.

            I knew all this when I arrived in Eugene and I planned to run by the famous track, Hayward Field, while I was there, but there was another surprise. Lisa’s brother Dave lives in Eugene. We met up with him and his wife to go to dinner. He suggested a slight detour to visit Pre Rock. I had never heard of Pre Rock. It turns out to be the site of the accident; the rock that killed him has become a memorial. There is a plaque there, and runners come from all over the region and the world to pay tribute and to leave behind memorabilia, including race bibs, medals, and running shoes. As a runner, it felt like a holy place.

            The next magical experience occurred at the end of Lisa's visit. The backstory is that when it was just me and Bayley (my dog) traveling and I needed a room for the night, I would go online and find the cheapest dog-friendly hotel. As we approached the end of Lisa's visit, my plan was to find an inexpensive room close to SFO and certainly not right in an expensive city like San Francisco. She argued that we should stay in San Francisco to see at least part of this iconic city in the brief time we had there. I was unsure, concerned about cost, traffic, and leaving my car parked on a city street with my loaded luggage container on top. She proposed to pay for the room in San Francisco if I let her choose it and I would pay for dinner. I took a deep breath and agreed.

            As we drove south on Rt. 101 towards San Fran, she found a room at a hotel on Lombard St., one of the most famous city streets in the U.S. Now, my only concerns were traffic, as we'd be arriving in this major urban area during rush hour, and parking in the neighborhood.

            As we approached the city from the north, it dawned on me that we'd be entering the city over the Golden Gate Bridge. I mentioned this to Lisa. She asked, "Are you sure?" "No," I said, "but the bay is over there," gesturing to my left, "and we need to cross over water to get to the city, and it IS a bridge." Within a minute, we came around a curve and the iconic red towers loomed ahead of us. It was a sunny, blue sky day, but there was a cumulus cloud blowing through the superstructure of the bridge. It was like something out of a fantasy movie. That experience alone would have been enough magic for me!

            We proceeded over the bridge and towards the city. Much to my surprise, we ended up parked in front of our hotel THREE MINUTES after we crossed the bridge. So much for rush hour traffic!

            The Marina Motel was a delightful, pre-WWII place that would not look out of place in a small town in southern Europe. It was terminally charming! The next surprise came when we checked in. Lisa asked about the "limited" parking they’d described on their website. The front desk clerk informed us that the room we had came with a garage. "A space in a garage?" I asked. "No, a garage," came the response. They weren't kidding. Our room was at the top of a flight of stairs up from the street and under the room was a one-car garage secured with a combination lock. Wow! I had had never seen anything like this in all my years of travel.

            Things kept getting better. The hotel was a short walk to The Presidio, a former military base that has been converted to a park. It was a great place to walk and was right on the water, so we got to visit the Palace of Fine Arts, and see the San Francisco Bay, the Golden Gate, Alcatraz, and the city skyline in the afternoon before heading to dinner.

            And what did this hotel room set Lisa back? $141.

            How much did I pay for dinner? Over $200!

            The hotel she got us in San Francisco was a grand slam home run!

            Speaking of baseball, I'm a fan, so as I travelled around the U.S. I followed the end of the baseball season, the playoffs, and, finally, The World Series. It turned out that the Phoenix-based Arizona Diamondbacks won the playoff series that put them in the World Series WHILE I was driving to Phoenix to stay with a high school friend before speaking at Arizona State in Tempe, AZ.

            My tour then wrapped up with a talk at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, TX. I ended up staying with my son's future in-laws who live in Grand Prairie, less than 5 miles from the stadium the Texas Rangers play in, who were the other team in this year's World Series. So, my travels overlapped with the World Series AND the cities of each of the two teams while they were playing in the World Series DURING the World Series!

            That wasn't the only magic associated with my visit to Texas. When I started planning this tour in November 2022, my son, Conor, was dating a woman from Texas (which, as I am sure the reader is aware, is a really big state!). He was stationed at an Air Force base in California at the time. I knew he was taken by this woman, but who knew what might happen with such a long-distance relationship. In my very early planning, I had drafted an itinerary for the tour, and it included a possible stop at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.

            Fast forward a year. Conor and his girlfriend, McKenzie, are engaged, and her parents live a mere 20 minutes from Texas Christian University. They welcomed me to stay with them while I was in the area.

            As the weekend approached, I learned that McKenzie and Conor were flying in for a friend’s Saturday night wedding in Austin, TX. We ended up rendezvousing for lunch in Granbury, TX, the location for their own upcoming wedding. After lunch we visited the venue and went to a wedding cake baker's house to taste 10 different types of wedding cake.

            While I sat there savoring the chocolates, vanillas, coconuts, and hazelnuts, I wondered how I got there, in this woman's house eating wedding cake?! How did it come to work out that I was there in Texas, staying with my son's future in-laws, seeing my son and his fiancé, seeing the venue where they will be married in April, and tasting wedding cake? How does something like this happen? It was while sitting there that I started to see the pattern of magic and coincidence that had been following me throughout this trip.

            And the magic wasn't finished!

            On the original itinerary, I planned to present to the TCU staff on Monday, but eventually the coordinators asked if I could push it off a day to Tuesday. It turned out that that Monday was the day Conor was available to spend time together, while McKenzie and her parents worked. It was a Monday and many of the various museums and indoor sites in the Dallas-Fort Worth area were closed, but I knew one outdoor place that wouldn't be closed - Dealey Plaza, the site where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.

            On the way there, we talked about JFK's assassination being my "9/11" moment as a child. I was 7 when he was assassinated and Conor was 5 1/2 when 9/11 happened. I was teaching at NYU in 2001 (we lived outside the city in New Jersey) and was barely a mile from Ground Zero when the towers came down, so Conor had a front row seat to the tragedy and its aftermath.

            Dealey Plaza was much the same as I recalled it from television all those years ago - the book depository where Oswald fired the shots (which is now a museum), the grassy knoll, and the roadway with markings where the limo was when the two bullets struck the president. It was a somber experience, but a meaningful visit.

            After I finished at TCU and said goodbye to Conor, McKenzie, and her family, I traced a path north and eastward through Little Rock, Memphis, and Nashville, heading for a visit with friends in Bloomington, IN, before driving home to Massachusetts. I wasn't staying in Memphis, so I decided that I would stop there briefly and see one site.

            I reviewed the various cultural and historic sites the night before and decided that I would visit Slave Haven, a house museum that was part of the Underground Railroad. I arrived soon after it opened but learned a visit wasn't to happen. Slave Haven only conducted hourly tours through the house and grounds, and the next opening in a tour was at noon. Well, that wouldn't work for me because it would get me to Nashville later than I wanted.

            So, I pulled up the list of historical and cultural sites in Memphis and settled on the National Civil Rights Museum. As I turned onto the street of the museum, I knew that this was a memorable place. The museum is IN the Lorraine Motel, the site of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. The outside of the facility, including the 60s style signage, has been maintained to look as it had on the April morning in 1968 when MLK stepped out onto the balcony and was shot dead. So, besides the museum itself, which is very well done, here I was at the site of another murder that impacted me as a child.

            Over three days, without having planned it, I found myself at the sites of the two most significant assassinations of my childhood. Again, I asked myself - how does something like this happen? When I started this trip I never considered visiting these places.

            My connection with death on this trip wasn't finished. On the very day I visited the National Civil Rights Museum, I received word that Bob Knight, the longtime and controversial former basketball coach of my alma mater, Indiana University, had died. He was the coach when I was in my doctoral program in the 1980s, and I was there when IU won their last national championship in 1986. Two days after his death found me in Bloomington, IN visiting with friends. Coincidently (magically?), the next basketball game for the IU men's basketball team was that very evening. Going to a basketball game wasn't on my itinerary, but my friends secured a ticket for me at the last minute when another friend couldn't attend. So being at the first basketball game after his death was significant, but crazier still was who they were playing - the Marian College KNIGHTS! Are you kidding me? The Knights!? I mulled on these magical moments all the way back to Massachusetts.

            What did I learn from these experiences?

            Simply, magic happens.

            Some of these things happened because I hadn't planned something! Instead, I went in a direction and was open to what happened, like going to Dealey Plaza with Conor.

            Some of these things happened because I turned over planning to someone else and let go of my concerns (e.g., staying and parking in an expensive city), like when Lisa reserved our room in San Francisco. I was nervous and doubtful about a hotel room in the heart of San Francisco but put those doubts and concerns aside.

            Some of it happened because I looked beyond the obvious and apparent (people have asked why I didn't consider visiting Graceland while in Memphis) and, instead, reached for something more meaningful (i.e., looking for historical or cultural sites).

            Some of these things were merely coincidental! However, by being open to magic in my life during this trip, even the coincidences felt magical.

            And, I believe, some of it was magic!