8/14 I would never be able to go to a writers’ retreat, because rather than sitting at a table with other writers, at the first prompt or technique that cracks something open in me I’d have to get up and start pacing around violently. People would look at me and ask if anything’s wrong with me. I would not be able to focus on anything new as soon as something got me going.

Brought the Jeep in for recall, always an embarrassing situation. Advisor takes the key and walks out to the car, unsure if I should follow him, which I do, for no discernible purpose. Could have waited inside, with even less purpose. Then several minutes waiting while he types away at his keyboard, prints a document, then another document. I am waiting whether I might be required to sign something, which I’m not, I just keep standing, helplessly trying to find something to look at.

None of this would be so bad, if it weren’t for other customers walking in totally at ease, speaking a code of masculinity that I do not understand, cannot follow, and cannot get myself wanting to follow besides out of embarrassment about my inadequacy. I am glad they don’t offer me a ride home by their resident driver, because I’d have to talk to him for ten minutes and teach him some favorite German swearwords, probably the same ones as last time.

I wait for an Uber in the parking lot, alone, looking at some of the Jeeps on offer there, wondering about the mystery of picking some new rims and tires for my Jeep, which I’m planning to do, but which will require a lot of research to even understand the codes and the interplay of rim design, rim size, tire size, and lift.

It is through J that I learned so much more about my autistic tendencies, which is both disturbing – I realize that my behavior in many situations must come across as quite odd –, and soothing – I have a word for it now, and understand myself to be one of many with similar neurodivergencies.

8/13 Unusual confidence in writing. I would be able to write about anything I choose. The projects I’m working on will turn out alright. I want to start many new ones.

8/12 The screaming about AI is getting deafening.

8/11 Back in Newburgh. As I took my seat on the AMS – JFK flight, I saw the guy next to me pour vodka from a bottle purchased in the airport (in the clear bag with the red tape on it) into a plastic water bottle. I have seen highly unpleasant things happen with people who got drunk on flights, and sitting next to someone seemed a very bad outlook for the next eight hours. 

Quick check with AI. It recommended I’d tell the cabin crew secretly while we were still at the gate. I did, and I didn’t feel good about it. They walked past our seats a couple of times, seemed to shuffle some people sitting close by, maybe an air marshal involved, and that was it.

The guy turned out to be okay, even friendly, even such that we talked more than a few standard phrases. He was suffering from debilitating pain from a slipped disc, spent a lot of time standing near the restrooms, and probably – although he didn’t say that – the vodka was an insurance against how his pain might have developed on the flight. Or maybe just a functioning alcoholic; the vodka didn’t seem to affect him in any noticeable way.

8/10 I should write down this thing from Cedar Point. The children wanted to know if I still remembered how, when we were at Disney World – then still with their mother, a few months before our breakup –, I had forgotten where I had parked the car and we had to search for it all over the place. Quite stunning how the children still remember that, it must have been a formative moment. 

I told them that in this family, our new family, when someone makes a mistake, we don’t spend time pointing out that mistake. Everybody gets something wrong sometimes. In our family, rather than assigning blame, or making fun, everybody steps in to have each other’s back.

And so at Cedar Point, we used five or six lockers in various parts of the park over the course of the day. Enter your secret code – I always use the same four digits –, the system assigns you a locker, you put your stuff in and remember the number of that locker. It had worked great, we had become good, even routine at it. For the last locker of the day, as we left it with our stuff inside, I realized, and remembered, that its number was just a permutation of my secret code, so that was an easy one.

We did our last rides, it had already gotten dark, and the park was about to close. We got back to the lockers, and I remembered our number was just a permutation of my secret code. But it didn’t work. Tried it again, didn’t work. Well okay, so the locker’s number must be a different permutation of my secret code. Swap around the digits, try this other locker. But that one didn’t work either. 

In quick succession I got embarrassed, then panicked. I tried to hide my panic from the kids, but they quickly realized what had happened. I gave them my secret code, and we ended up trying all the lockers in the cabinet, one by one, up and down, over and over. None of them worked.

The thing of beauty which then happened was that my son used his Garmin watch – which I had handed down to him a year earlier – to locate his phone which was in the locker. The watch would light up in a circle of indicators, red if the phone was far away, orange, yellow, green as he got closer. I had no idea this function even existed. I tried it on my watch too, and yes indeed, still in panic, we got closer and closer to the area where our phones had to be.

And it was my daughter who finally shouted: “I’ve got it!” I looked at the locker’s number, and yes, indeed, it was a permutation of the digits of my secret code. I just hadn’t thought of that variant.

8/9 Very questionable with what justification I’m even writing that date. This is not a day, it’s something weird in between.

8/8 Flying the kids back to Sweden. I actually like these ridiculously short intercontinental trips because during my one-day buffer time I get to do nothing but sleep.

8/7 We were hoping to go to the Baylander tonight, on our final night in town. Heavy thunderstorms prevented that. We had watched the weather models in their uncertainty for hours, but at about 6pm, the sky darkened within minutes and the downpour turned the window screens into opaque walls. Went to the Japanese BBQ instead.

That could have been earlier: I asked AI for some American writers close to what I’m doing, and immediately got my mind blown.

8/6 Finally figured out how to rent three Citibikes together. Took them up the river side – it was already dark – to the Little Red Lighthouse. Bumpy ride, the bikes rattling like New York City cabs. 

That endless path with its endless succession of elements. The downward slope through the park from Riverside Drive, the long-stretched rectangle up to the Cherry Walk, and the winded curves of that. The alley that climbs up to the only elevated point of the path, and then leads down to West Harlem Piers.

I guess because I ran this route so many times, and always faced the decision of whether I wanted to push for yet another stretch of the route, is why I remember all of these individual elements so well. Here comes that curve, here comes that marker on the road, here comes that streetlight, here comes that rock that I would set my foot on before turning back on the 11-mile run.

8/5 A few coaster thoughts.

It becomes more and more clear that I like vast coasters that stretch out into the landscape. As such, obviously Millenium Force was my favorite at Cedar Point, the large but aging Magnum, and also the Gatekeeper. This was the first coaster we took on the first day on our way in, and the last one on the second day on our way out. The difference was big – while the first ride still had traces of apprehension, the second one was pure, almost geometrical enjoyment.

Another category are the complex fast coasters built on small lots, with Maverick being legendary but for us a totally unexpected surprise. You’re gasping for air as the train rattles to a halt and you try to figure out what just happened. And then also Siren’s Curse. Everybody is, understandably, focused on the spectacular drop with the track that ends in mid-air and then tilts ninety degrees downward, keeping you hanging for five seconds and then releasing you into free fall. What you wouldn’t expect is the long, complex and well-paced track that comes after this drop, which would be a remarkable coaster all on its own.

A surprise, for me, was Steel Vengeance, legendary and considered by many to be the best coaster in the world. I was skeptical because I’m not really into wooden or hybrid coasters, but this one combines the vastness of deep drops, the smoothness of a well-engineered steel track with the stubbornness of a wooden lattice having to carry it. So every inversion or corkscrew is a surprise because among all the other things it is unbelievable – for a fraction of a second, while you are heading into it – how this can be done in a wood scaffolding.

I taught myself, quite deliberately, to ride better. First, it is no longer necessary for me to scream, roar, or laugh loudly to frame the experience as joyful and not allow myself to be afraid. I am simply not afraid of anything anymore. Second, I was able to teach myself explicitly to not duck my head when we seem to be smashing into a beam or scaffolding. We are not. I can tell myself that, and condition myself to trust the engineering. I find it quite remarkable that this is possible even in such split-second moments that are designed to trigger a primal fear.