aging

It is more than twelve years since I left Germany and I have given up hope of ever returning. That's not to say that I wouldn't like to, but if I found a job there and moved, it wouldn't really be returning. After such a long time, it would more realistically be another largely unknown country. But that's ok, that's been the story of my life so far, and I'm happy with it. I have no urge to buy a house and tie myself down. Life is a journey, after all. Like all journeys, life leaves imprints, memories, friends, experiences and treasured moments as it passes. The balance between going back to these memories and moving forward is the spice of life, the fire that drives and moves.

When I moved to the US in the summer of 1998, it was my first time on a plane, and I was absolutely clueless – in retrospect even more so than I realized at the time. When I got off the plane at Salt Lake (International) Airport, I had finished my third flight segment and felt seasoned and accomplished. My friend (another thing I didn't know at the time) Sean had come to pick me up but was outmaneuvered by my exuberance. While I was already at the luggage carousel, steeling myself for an epic tug-of-war with my 90-pound suitcase, Sean was still at the gate (those were innocent times), eying weary travelers and guessing who might be me. The one he finally approached because 'he looked German', had, coincidence of coincidences, my first name but wasn't me. I had won the battle with the blue monster by the time Sean ambled in from airside with a slight worry, and somehow we met.

The first person I met at work was Frank, then an experienced post-doc, who was an important scientific guiding light for me. He supervised my first rotation and quickly became a friend, though he occupied a strange place in the hierarchy that seniority builds. He was married with a little boy and too old to be a mate to hang out with but too young to be considered a father figure. I guess I saw him as my favorite uncle, my dad's much younger brother. He tended to pay for the coffees we shared at least two mornings a week, and set the drab hospital cafeteria ablaze with his stories full of adventure and exaggeration, excitement and outrage.

Yesterday, Frank came to London, with his wive and (now two) kids. They won't stay with me, but I'm excited to see them, spend time with them, and show them around. We visited the British Museum today and quickly split up. The family, mostly the kids, had an agenda, things to see, attractions to tick off. They grabbed a map and took off. Frank and I took a more leisurely pace. That wasn't owing to the attention with which we studied to exhibits – I don't recall one thing we saw beside the Lewis chessmen, one of my favorites in the collection – but because of all the catching up we had to do. It's been so many years!

Later, we went for lunch in a nondescript sandwich place just outside the museum, and it was there that Frank showered me with Mexican salsa, handcrafted honey extracted from hives placed on the roof of the Salt Lake City Public Library, and a bottle of the finest Utah Whiskey. It was this last gift that really took my breath away. I'll have to redefine the word unexpected. Utah has plenty of breweries – a T-shirt that I retired with a heavy heart the other day because it had become too threadbare to wear kept reminding me of Eddie McStiff's as Utah's oldest legal one – but I didn't know it had a distillery.

It does. High West Distillery opened shop in Salt Lake in 2007, a couple of years after I had left. Earlier this year, they finished refurbishing a garage on historic Main St in Park City and moved their operation there, giving the word upmarket a whole new meaning. The opened a little ski-in saloon in the process and started selling their products outside the state boundaries. One bottle sits on my table now, a 16-year-old Rocky Mountain Rye. The fact that it's 13 years older than the distillery itself show that age isn't always what it seems to be. Keep on rocking!