“The boat swings you. The shell wants to move fast: speed sings in its lines and nature. Our job is simply to work with the shell, to shop holding it back with our thrashing struggles to go faster. Trying too hard sabotages boat speed. Trying becomes striving, and striving undoes itself.”

These words made me remember how struck I had been while watching the championship singles race at the Head of the Charles, how surprised I had been to see what looked like ease instead of effort in the swinging back and forth of the rowers.

Everything I read seems brilliant at 2 a.m., but this book by Craig Lambert also stands out in the light of day this morning. We have a corner room on the sixth floor of the HotelVetro, and sun is pouring into the floor-to-ceiling windows. Darlene and Claire are ready to hit the road for a quilt shop in Grinnell and then on to Omaha. Driving across country has its own rhythm. I could easily blog away for another hour here, but the boat is leaving. I need to be mindful of this admonition from Lambert:

“On crews, some rowers are called anchors, human impedimenta who slow down boats. Anchors lack grace, partly because they try to do it all themselves. The isolated mentality cuts supply lines: it blocks supportive energies from boat, oars, teammates, opponents, spectators, and the forces of nature. Anchors set up an ongoing struggle of self versus environment. Disconnected individuals to DO not swing.” (p. 126)

Or, to put it into the words of my traveling companion, “Claire and I are going to the car, and if you make us wait too long, we’ll leave without you.”

Okay, okay! Note to self: Don’t be an anchor today.

Note: Stephen Windwalker of the inimitable Kindle Nation Daily asked me to live-blog the Amazon press conference tomorrow in NYC, at which there will be some kind of announcement involving the Kindle. We’ve set up this Google Docs page that I’m posting to, and Steve will port some of the posts to KND.  I thought I’d cross-post here as well, for the benefit of those of you who are subscribed to this blog on Kindle.   –Len

Aboard Amtrak Acela Express 2163

noon

As the Acela zooms through the woods of Rhode Island, providing an occasional glimpse of the sea, I want to turn to what we think we know about what Amazon is going to announce tomorrow at 10 a.m. at Stage 37 in New York City.

Of course there will be a tablet, the one that TechCrunch’s MG Siegler held in his very own hands and has since learned its name, the Kindle Fire.  Kindle Chronicles listeners may remember that Forrester Research’s James McQuivey had a code name for the tablet he predicted Amazon should create, way back in February of 2010. The name was, uh, the Kindle Flame. So there’s a backstory to tell some day about that one.

I like Flame better than Fire, but what I’m really hot for is some action on the E Ink side of the house. Siegler suggested that wasn’t going to happen tomorrow, but there is new intel out this morning that I was delighted to see at Andrys Basten’s Kindle World.  Via AppleInsider, she relayed a report that there will be not one, but two new Kindle E Ink devices announced – one with a touch screen and one with fewer features, like no audio, for the magic price of $99.  These babies have even cooler code names than the Flame. The new touch Kindle is codenamed Whitney, and the bare-bones model is Tequila, according to AppleInsider’s post.

This makes a lot of sense to me, because I couldn’t figure out how Jeff Bezos was going to spend an entire press conference extolling a new tablet device that reads books and plays movies and plays musicand runs all the apps in Amazon’s Android app store.  Wasn’t he the one whose voice quivered with passion whenever he talked about a device purpose-built for reading?  That seemed like a pretty tough pivot to make, and the only way out of it would have been, as I saw someone suggest, to announce tomorrow that Amazon is dropping the K3 with special offers price to $99.

But there’s no need to give an inch on the importance of the dedicated E Ink readers if Amazon tomorrow announces two brand new devices for that line.  That would show they still believe they created something wonderful for the minority of Americans who read more than a book a year. For that group, and I’m pretty much a member, it’s nice there will be a new tablet, but we’re not really expecting to switch our reading of books from E Ink to a color LCD screen.  I know there are many serious readers who are just fine with LCD screens, like my friend from the U.K., Eolake Stobblehouse.  A lot of this comes down to a matter of taste and aesthetics.

In any event,  I hope AppleInsider is right on this and that tomorrow morning I’ll have a chance to get my hands on two new E Ink Kindles as well as the Torch, I mean Fire — oh, whatever.  They can call it Baboon Breath if they want, and it will still probably sell out in the first six hours it’s available.

The Acela has slowed down a bit, perhaps to give us a better view of a lovely harbor filled with white boats and a forest of masts on water calm as glass.  The woman next to me is eating a big salad out of a plastic bowl and looking at a paper Atlas with a map of the U.S. All’s quiet here in the Quiet Car, except for the tapping of a totally wired Kindle enthusiast riding the rails to a big dose of What’s Next.

11:15 a.m.

That’s an on-time departure as the train wends its way carefully through a maze of tracks and overhead electric wires. I simply can’t imagine a better way to travel. If we arrive on time, I’ll be at Penn Station by 2:45 p.m. I plan to host a Google Plus hangout once I reach the GEM Hotel, so if you’d like to participate, please send me an email at PodChronicles AT GMail.com and I’ll add you to my TKC Hangout circle. If you are not on G+ yet, let me know, and I’ll send you an invite.

11:05 a.m.

At Boston’s South Station, I just took my seat on the quiet car, where passengers are asked to please refrain from loud talking or using cell phones. Sounds good to me. Most of the car is empty, so I’ve spread my gear on the aisle seat. ” Your seat is now a hot spot,” a decal on the window says, and sure enough, I’m surfing just fine on the iPad 2.

I read a post by Andrys Basten with word that two new E Ink devices will be announced tomorrow at the Amazon press conference, along with the tablet . That’s VERY good news for those of us intrigued by the new color tablet but devoted to our E Ink readers.

Henry was officially welcomed to Massachusetts yesterday morning, and now he’s unpacked from the trek from Denver, settling into life in Cambridge.  We haven’t had a chance to see if he can digitally wiggle into a Harvard Square parking space yet or find his way to Whole Foods on River Street.  But he seems content, if a little out of place with the Colorado tags.

It’s gorgeous weather here – mainly sunny, fresh air instead of muggy, and green the way green is supposed to look. I remember my first visit to Casper, Wyoming, 30 years ago for a job interview, when the woman giving me a tour of the area exclaimed, “It’s so GREEN this year.” That was in May, and to her eyes the prairie was bursting with color. To me it looked tan.  I grew to love the subtle changes in color in Wyoming and the west, but out here color knows how to claim its place in nature, no fooling around.  It may have inspired Darlene to think color inside the house, as well.  I see tell-tale swatches taped to various walls, a sure sign that she is plotting a change.  In our apartment in Denver, there are about 40 different colors, and few walls even in the same room are the same hue.  I thought it would drive me crazy when she did the job a decade ago, but instead it’s enlivened the space and energizes us when whenever we’re there.

My plan is to mix biking and rowing here in Cambridge until our migration to Maine in August. I discovered this morning that if you leave Harvard Square at 5:30 a.m. for the Minuteman Bike Trail there is hardly any traffic on Brattle Street, Huron, and the Fresh Pond rotaries. This makes it easy to get to the trail at the Alewife T station, and then it’s clear sailing all the way to Bedford.  My morning rides take me just past Arlington Center.  I love it. It will take some gumption to head over to the Cambridge Boat Club after a long absence and see if I remember how to get a club single into the Charles. But there’s nothing like slicing along in calm water in a shell. Aerobic exercise, check. Joy of being alive, check.

So that’s the end of our Travels with Henry.  It’s a long drive from Denver to Harvard Square. I’m glad we’re here.

Yesterday we took a ride on the Thousand Islander IV out of Ivy Lea, Ontario. The St. Lawrence River was calm and dappled with sunlight as we picked our way among just a few of the thousand islands that give the area its name, along with a salad dressing invented there. We arrived in time for the 10 a.m. sailing, along with a busload of German tourists and many Asians, but the total passenger list left the boat nearly empty, it was so big. We snuck Claire aboard in her little black shoulder bag, without incident. It was a lovely bit of tourism amidst our more destination-oriented trek East, and we’d both like to return some day when there was more time to linger.

I had thought we might do some hanging out in Utica, New York after crossing back into the U.S. But when we reached the hotel I’d chosen yesterday afternoon, it didn’t seem very compelling, and downtown Utica did not whisper “stay here” in a convincing way. So I canceled the reservation, and we headed out on the highway again, ending up here in the Albany area at the best Comfort Inn so far.  Our room even has a vaulted ceiling in addition to the full monty of accessories – fast WiFi, fridge, coffee maker, microwave, and two comfortable queen beds. We found a great Thai restaurant and brought a takeout dinner back to the room.

The power house at Boldt Castle

I’m struck by how easy our border crossings were in and out of Canada on this trip.  At each border, there was no waiting and justa few chatty questions asked as the immigration officer scanned our passports. It was well worth the detour to spend a couple of days in Canada, listening to CBC Radio, almost hoping the Canadiens CANUKS might pull off a Stanley Cup win. Now that we’re back in the US of A, I’m glad the Bruins prevailed, and I’m also glad we didn’t give into the temptation to drive all the way home to Cambridge amidst the celebration. It’s weird how the simple act of driving across a national border changes everything.  The money, the Internet access, the look of the highway signs, the sound of the local speakers. And when you return, everything clicks back into place. So I like the going and the coming home, as far as international travel goes.

I’ll blow Darlene away if I’m packed and ready to go when she returns from walking Claire. Let’s do it!

This coffee shop still life comes to you from Coffee & Company at 53 Pricess Street in Kingston, Ontario. Impressively, it has no web site. Which is not to say it’s unwired; most of us are bent over screens of one size or another. “The password is bagel,” the barrista answered when I asked if there was Wifi. He spoke to the side, as if SMERSH agents might overhear us. “All lowercase?” I asked, lowering my voice as well. He nodded. So I’m back on the net after a frustrating 24 hours at the periphery, ever since we breezed past the border at Port Huron/Sarnia yesterday. Nothing to declare. No WiFi at the Comfort Inn last night in Oshawa, and spotty results at the one today in Kingston, where we checked in early at noon and napped.

The Profession by Steven Pressfield dropped from the Whispernet to my Kindle today. I have paper proofs and now the much-preferred Kindle version. Darlene left her colorful sunglasses case and Claire (unseen in photo) behind while she checks out the shops on Pricess Street. That triangle shape is the case/stand for my iPad.

Travel is disorienting, especially on a trip like this one that won’t have time to develop much of a routine. When we used to travel in a small motorhome, a Rialta, we’d pick out an RV campground sometime in the early afternoon and arrive before dark, so there was plenty of time to hook up the water, electrical, and other connections. No hauling of suitcases and gear up the stairs of a Comfort Inn. No packing and unpacking. On this trip, we try to stay a day ahead of ourselves for hotel reservations. Since tonight will be our second stay at a Comfort Inn, we’re due to get our next night free, thanks to a special promotion I spotted on the breakfast table in Joliet, Illinois. So disorienting, yes. But that’s what travel’s good for – to shake things up and see what remains. For me, perhaps sadly, it always comes back to the net. Gotta get back online. First thing I do in a new hotel room is fire up the devices. I get jumpy when I’m offline. So sue me.

I’ll have the full interview up tomorrow at The Edge of the Road Podcast.

This morning we’re packing up at the Comfort Inn in Oshawa, Ontario, which is just east of Toronto. I would have loved to explore downtown Toronto yesterday, but instead we sat through rush hour on the 401, inching our way East. Next stop: Kingston, Ontario, to explore the Thousand Islands.

After 440 miles on the road, we arrived in Joliet, Illinois, at about 5 p.m. today. I’m becoming a connoisseur of the punchy, disoriented state that settles in after a long drive.  In the photo above, Darlene is unpacking stuff from Henry’s trunk.  Within 20 minutes she has our room at the Comfort Inn all arranged, with Claire’s popup tent on the king bed, food arrayed on the bureau next to the TV, and perishables in the hotel room fridge.  She’s had a bath and is now reading her Kindle while Claire chomps on a chew. I’ve been doing I don’t remember what on the iPad, Kindle, and laptop, flitting around happily from one digital daisy to the other. I’ve had ringing in my ears ever since I can remember, and it’s louder tonight than usual. Doesn’t bother me, though. We’re hunkered down in another very pleasant hotel room for the night, and tomorrow we’ll loop around Chicago for a relatively short hop to Dearborn, Michigan – 287 miles.

The miles roll by, the hours roll by. We listen to podcasts, and while I napped Darlene queued up an Audible book, Rogue Island, set in Providence, which I know well from living and working there as a journalist from 1977 till 1981. I think I remember the author, Bruce DeSilva, but I may be conflating him with another of my fellow scribes at The Providence Journal-Bulletin. When I woke up I listened for a while and then begged Darlene to turn the book off, which she did. I’ve never really acquired a taste for listening to books on tape, and this one clearly is not going to be the one that will dislodge me from my preference for reading books with my own eyes.

Driving cross country is mainly about the passage of time, and time plays weird tricks.  Henry’s MyFord Touch screen froze up again, the second time it’s gone down while I was moving among channels in Sirius satellite radio.  We had to pull off the highway for a restart, and I forgot to reset the clock for Daylight Savings Time.  So we thought we’d arrived at 4 p.m. instead of the actual time, 5 p.m.  That was helpful, actually. We would have felt more tired if we’d known what time it was.  Thanks, Henry!

I thought we’d have a chance to tour a Ford assembly plant in Dearborn on Monday, but so far I haven’t received details from my contact at Ford, so maybe it will fall through. I hope not. I’d love to see the Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, where Henry rolled off the line on March 18th.

I’m reading an advance copy of Steven Pressfield’s The Profession, another tremendous tale of military history – this one set in the future, in the year 2032, when everyone is fighting everyone else mainly using professional mercenary soldiers.  I love Steve’s writing, because it has such substance. He researches the hell out of his topics, so you learn about the details of hand-to-hand combat at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. in Gates of Fire and about futuristic battle vehicles two millennia later in the new book. In each tale. Steven Pressfield makes the honor and character of soldiers gritty, believable, and ultimately inspiring. The book is available for preorder on the Kindle, with release set for just three days from now.  Highly recommended.

Some part of me is still rolling down the road. Henry waits outside our window for another day of turning miles into minutes, and for a celebratory return to his native city.

Even though we only drove 150 miles today, I feel fried and disoriented tonight, glad we can crash for the night at Darlene’s sister’s home in Omaha. Claire enjoyed prowling Deb’s lush garden in the back yard, as shown in the photo above.

It may be that I overloaded the circuits by banging on the Kindle podcast all morning in Room 117 at the Quality Inn at Grand Island, Nebraska. Or we haven’t quite found our road legs this early in the trip. In any event, I’ll be winding down early tonight with From Russia With Love on my Kindle. I never realized that Ian Fleming was such a stylish, enjoyable author.

Jumping around here. The gear is the thing. I travel with a MacBook Pro, iPad 2, iPhone, Kindle 3G with Special Offers, and microphones, external speakers, and a Zeo sleep machine. Plus a few clothes. Darlene bought a clever auto fridge that plugs into the cigarette lighter and keeps food and drinks cold for the road. I resisted this improvement every step of the way, arguing that I need to stop regularly at truck-stop junk-food joints for Cheetos and coffee, in order to be a safe driver.  She wasn’t buying it. And now I’ve already become a big fan of the fridge, because I can make a nice ham and cheese sandwich with pickles any time I want, like on a sidewalk this afternoon in Lincoln, Nebraska.

The flooding has already affected our itinerary. Tomorrow instead of taking I-680 over the Missouri River, we’ll detour south to I-80.  Somewhere between here and tomorrow night we’ll be dealing with the Mississippi River, if my geography is right. I’d planned to stay in Davenport, Iowa, now that we have the prospect of a tour at Ford in Dearborn, I want to get further east tomorrow.  Maybe Joliette, Illinois.

There you have it. Road notes after a barbecue supper out on Deb’s patio, by the garden.  Till tomorrow, then.

We left Denver at 8:30 a.m., a half hour past our planned departure time. We lost another half-hour shortly afterward, when the navigation lady on our 2012 Ford Focus lost her voice. I hoped a call to the MyFord Touch call center would result in help that Darlene could implement safely from the passenger’s seat. But the first instruction from our Sync Agent was to pull off the road, because the settings would not be available to adjust if we were going more than 3 miles per hour. She tried to find a way to adjust the navigation voice’s volume, but in the end all she could recommend was a Master Reset. That worked, but it meant I had to reinstall my custom wallpaper photos, including the one of an African sunset that I chose for today’s drive.

…I thought I’d have time for a leisurely blog post, but Grand Island hove into view sooner than I expected. We’ve settled in at the aptly named Quality Inn, where the room is spacious and clean but the Internet speed is marginal. I hope it will be adequate to handle tomorrow’s posting of The Kindle Chronicles # 151 before we take a short leg of the trip, ending up tomorrow afternoon in Omaha.

Henry performed well after the initial hiccup. He’s offering us a smooth ride down I-80, with easy access to Sirius music and news, podcasts from my iPhone, and even today’s All Things Considered on Nebraska public radio. Time to wind down for a good night’s sleep, the traveler’s best friend.

Two thousand miles from Harvard Square, I’m having coffee this morning at a Starbucks in Casper, Wyoming. When I lived here, the very idea of a Starbucks was enough to provoke strong opinions pro and con. Now there are three – one on the west side of town, this one on the east side, and another in a Safeway supermarket. Casper is booming, feisty as ever, and windy as usual. I love it here.

Yesterday I hiked through snow and mud on Casper Mountain with three old friends to a cabin where we grilled steaks and shared lies, anxieties, hopes, and satisfactions as we pass, each in our turn, the milepost of turning 60. When this group of friends first began meeting 20 years ago at Darlene’s and my home at the foot of Casper Mountain, there was no plotting of retirement strategies and not much comparing of aches and pains. We used to pride ourselves on our terrible taste in food – Ritz crackers with Cheese Whiz and fake caviar were a favorite. For yesterday’s reunion I brought imported Carr’s crackers and a half pound of tasty Stilton cheese.

It’s been 10 years since Darlene and I moved from Casper to downtown Denver, so I recognize some of the people here but have no clue how I know them. Was that guy sitting at the counter from the gas company where I worked, or was he a neighbor? We lived in an area poetically named Bloody Turnip by a developer who had difficulty getting any money out of his original investment.

Compared with Darwin’s Ltd. in Harvard Square, this Starbucks has plenty of seats available. Most customers buy their coffee and scones to go. Of those who linger at a table, no one reads a newspaper with their coffee. Unlike most Starbucks that I’ve frequented, this one doesn’t even sell papers, not even The Casper Star-Tribune, which recruited me in 1981 from The Providence (R.I.) Journal-Bulletin to start an energy magazine.

I asked the family in the photo if I could take their picture and they agreed without any fuss. This is a difference. I can’t imagine approaching a denizen of Darwin’s asking if he or she would pose for an iPad shot. Too weird. But Orval Johnson and his wife Elisabeth and their daughter Ondriea, 3, were glad to oblige. They are visiting from Rifle, Colorado. Other signs that I’m not in Cambridge: University of Wyoming caps, shorter men’s haircuts, and lots of tanned faces. So far, I haven’t seen any cowboy boots, and there is only one pickup truck in the parking lot. I had both when I lived in Casper, plus a fine gray Stetson, the better to live my boyhood Massachusetts dreams of being a cowboy. This amused the locals and did little to hide my identity as someone from “Back East.”

A better spot for my Great American Coffee House Blog Tour would have been Casper’s proudly independent caffeine emporium, The Metro at 241 South David Street in downtown Denver, but they’re closed on Sunday. The Metro has comfy furniture, rotating exhibits of local art, and fast WiFi.

Darlene just called to let me know brunch is ready Chez Tom and Tish, who have hosted us at their welcoming home this trip, so I’ve gotta go. Enjoy the coffee!