LONGWALKABOUT

I’m stoked for the Walking Dead season finale on Sunday. It seems like post apocalyptic is in right now.  Sometimes I think that I would enjoy the silence if I was the only one left on the planet.  It might be nice.  Nevermind the crushing loneliness that would set in on day four.

Here are the top ten things I would do if I was the last person on earth.

10.  Live on a boat.  I don’t think I could live in an abandoned town or city.  Super creepy.

9.    Drive to New England, take all of the Patriots Superbowl trophies and throw them in Boston Harbor.

8.   Take my dog for all the walks that he has deserved to go on for the last three years.

7.   Visit several jewelry stores to get a large collection of gold chains.  Then I would shave my hair into a mohawk and walk around saying “I pity the fool” for a week straight, just to know what it felt like to be Mr. T.

6.   Spend a night in the White House.  Get some pictures of myself behind the desk in the Oval Office wearing shorts, flip flops, and a t-shirt that says Leader of the Free World.

5.   Finally get around to watching Game of Thrones.

4.   I’m not really a car guy, but I’d like to try out that Magnum P.I. Ferrari and see how fast I could make it from New York to Key West.

3.   Remember when Tom Hanks made a friend for himself out of a volleyball.  I would do the same thing, but I would use golf balls.  Golf balls have better names, like Callaway, Dunlop, and Slazenger.  Hanks ruined Wilson for me.  Also, it would be way easier to tote my posse around.

2.   Make a bronze statue of myself and put it in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

1.    Take a nap whenever I felt like it.

LINKS

• Today is the anniversary of the first sighting of the Yosemite valley by European explorers.  Here are some National Geographic photos of Yosemite.
• An astronaut once snuck a corned beef sandwich into space.  Of course, politicians got upset.
• The other day I dusted off my metal detector and found twelve cents in our yard. Cha-ching!  Here is a list of the coolest things ever found with a metal detector.
• I don’t care how many couches the guy jumps on, Tom Cruise makes solid movies. The new Mission Impossible trailer is awesome.

The first college that I attended had a pretty good sports program, as far as religious schools go. I was a member of the baseball team. We were NCAA division II. Since we live in an age of participation trophies and feelings that must not be hurt, I’m not going to say that we weren’t very good. I will, however, say that we were imbalanced in the win/loss department. By the way, I do have a killer participation certificate. Yes, a participation certificate,,,,,,,, from an institution of higher learning. They handed them out right after we finished our orange wedges and Capri Suns. On the bright side, it is actually worth as much as some bachelor’s degrees.

Baseball is a spring sport, so in college, that meant that you had to spend spring break at the school, while everyone else went home or to the beach. Me and the other guys from the team were stuck in a nearly empty dorm for a week. We had several games scheduled, but the rest of our time was unaccounted for. During one two day gap, me, my roommate who was our catcher, and our buddy, the second baseman, decided that we were bored enough to use the limited funds that we had on a short road trip. My roommate was from California and had never seen the Atlantic Ocean. Okay, we could check that off of his list fairly easily.   From the school, it was about two and a half hours to Rehoboth Beach in Delaware. It was a late afternoon in March. We threw some blankets and sleeping bags into my 1988 Honda Accord, and we were out. The road trip is a time-honored tradition. I don’t know how people live without cars and the freedom that they provide. The ride to Rehoboth was uneventful. Rural Delaware is lonely. We arrived after dark, and since it was still cold and none of the boardwalk shops had even thought about opening, parking was not a problem. The three of us got out of the car, and with some excitement, walked up onto the boardwalk for a view of the beach and dark expanse of ocean. It was choppy and windy and couldn’t have been more unimpressive. We stood there for maybe three minutes. Then my roommate said something like, “That’s it huh”. And,,, we left.

It was fairly late in the evening and I was too tired to drive back. Besides, we had kind of planned on spending the night somewhere. I drove all around town looking for an out of the way place to park and sleep. Finally we settled on a quiet residential street. We all stretched out as much as you can stretch in an Accord. I might have mentioned that it was cold out. It only took twenty minutes or so for the windows of that car to steam up like two people were having quite a rendezvous inside. I slept fitfully, worried that at any minute a police officer was going to knock on the window and say, “Hey what’s going on in there?” I would have to respond with something like, “It’s just us three dudes, officer, sir.” Luckily, no one bothered us. The next morning we headed back to school, sore from sleeping in contorted positions.

I know you may be like, “you guys didn’t even have enough money for a Motel 6 or something”. Look, we were all very thrifty (cheap).  And no good story ever ended with, “And then we checked into the Motel 6 and got a good nights sleep.”

When you become a parent, you join a club of sorts. You learn a surprising thing upon your entry into this club. All the other members are winging it, just like you are. Sure, there are plenty of books on parenting, but no one except for the most annoying overachievers actually reads them.   Lots of people buy these books. Lots of people read the first chapter of these books and then fall asleep. The book then goes on a shelf in a visible spot, so when visitors come over, they will see said parenting book and think, “Oh, what responsible parents.”

I have two boys. I would like to pass on some of the most important parenting lessons that I have learned. Here’s to everyone else who’s winging it, just like me.

•  When you teach your boys that trees are convenient places to relieve themselves, be aware that it will become the preferred relief location.  You may then receive emails from your sons school, informing you that you need to have a talk with your son about appropriate places to go to the bathroom.
• When your son watches “The World At War” with his grandpa, he will remember every country from the allied and axis powers.  In the future, if he meets anyone from a country that was an adversary of ours in World War II, it will create a super embarrassing situation.
• When your son is small, he will launch himself at your head and neck without warning.  Boys love to wrestle.  Wrestling matches can start at any time.
• Reading to your kids is one of the most important things you can do.
• No two kids are the same.  For example, you will have one kid that eats like a ravenous viking, and you will have one that doesn’t like the different foods on his plate to touch each other.
• Small children are basically parrots with a devious sense of humor.  If you listen to questionable music around them, I guarantee you that they will bust out into song at the worst possible time.  (And they will remember every lyric)  I’m fully expecting to have an Uptown Funk moment any day now.

LINKS

• These photos and videos of the world’s largest cave are pretty awesome.
• Here are 62 things to appreciate about everyday life.
• A Batman hotel suite.  Because,,,,,,, just because.
• Cool extreme weather photos.

My wife is my favorite person to travel with. She’s pretty much up for anything. That works well for me because I like to travel by the seat of my pants. I’m not an all-inclusive resort or a cruise ship kind of person. Travel should be an adventure, not a prepackaged, happy meal, strip mall kind of thing.

When my wife was three months pregnant with our first son, and I was long-haired and chubby, we took a trip to Costa Rica. We booked a flight and a rental SUV, and had a general idea of where we were headed. When the time came, we flew into San Jose, picked up our vehicle, and drove to Fortuna where we stayed in a lodge that used to be a Smithsonian research station for the Arenal volcano.  After being there for several days, we moved on to the Pacific coast where we stayed in a cabin that smelled like hippies.   The place was beautiful, but it gave off an unclean vibe.  My wife felt like the beach town was too much like Wildwood New Jersey, so we left the next day. That was all well and good, because I was scared of catching some kind of new age lice from the patchouli smelling bed in the cabin.   Our next stop was Santa Elena, a town in the mountains near the Monteverde cloud forests. We ended up staying in a simple, plywood walled building, made up of three one-room apartments. It was quiet, clean, and it had hot water. It was perfect. As a side bonus, the lady who ran the place invited us over for breakfast, and to feed the monkeys that came out of the forest every morning. We hiked every day while we were there. My wife swears she saw a black panther. I only caught a glimpse of it, but I believe her.  It is best to always believe her.  Argue at your own risk.

The experience that best summed up the whole trip, happened on our last day. We had already hit the main attractions in the area, and were looking for something to do. My wife saw a sign for a waterfall that had the same name as her dad. Okay. To get there, I drove our rental several miles down a dirt road and through a couple streams to a farmer’s house. The trail to the falls ran through the man’s property. To get access to the trail, you had to yell until you got his attention, and then pay him a few bucks each. We threw on our daypacks and headed out. Because I am a true gentleman, I walked through the tall grass in front of my pregnant wife. That way, if we ran into any one of Costa Rica’s 17 different variety of poisonous snakes, I would get bit, fall on the ground, and say something heroic like, “Save yourself, it’s too late for me, go, just go.” The trail eventually joined the river and crossed it a couple times on footbridges that were tied off to large trees so that when flash floods came, they wouldn’t get washed downstream. Then it rained torrentially. An hour later, we stood at the bottom of a waterfall that was nearly two hundred and fifty feet tall. Just the two of us, in the middle of the Costa Rican rain forest.

I’ll never forget that moment. My first son is going on ten years old now, and I no longer have long hair, and I’m a lot less chubby. It’s almost time to go back and have some new adventures.

 

 

Okay, so it’s no secret that our government at the state and federal level wastes more money than my wife could ever spend on shoes. And that’s a lot. Everyone talks about cutting spending but it never happens. We have to start somewhere, so I have a suggestion. In 2011 each toll collector cost the state of New Jersey 100,000 dollars. That number is a little smaller now due to concessions that their union had to make to save jobs. It’s still too much money to pay someone who can be replaced by a white plastic basket. I have no love for toll collectors. Any time I’ve had to interact with them, I have come away with the impression that they would love to throw my change at me, one quarter at a time. It all started when……. (harp music for flashback). I was headed into Philadelphia to meet my wife at work, and I had to cross the Walt Whitman Bridge. When you cross the Whitman and enter Pennsylvania you have to pay the toll on the downside of the bridge. Halfway across, I realized I had little cash. (no, I didn’t have an ez-pass) This had never happened to me before. I started to dig for change and swerve around on the bridge. The toll at this time was three dollars. I was able to dig up around 2.53. I pulled into the toll booth, smiled at the guy and showed him my change, “this is all I’ve got”. No smile, in fact, no human reaction at all. “Pull over to left and wait for the police sir. And STAY THERE.” Because that’s what I was going to do, make a run for it. I was not going to be able to leave New Jersey. They returned me to the Garden State with a police escort. This was pretty much my worst nightmare, being forced to stay in the state of New Jersey by armed officers of the law.

My suggestion, trained monkeys at the toll booths. You don’t have to pay them. Except maybe in bananas. Just pay several trainers. There are multiple benefits to this system. People would be afraid of the monkeys. This would result in more e-z passes sold, and therefore traffic would move better. You would never have to sit behind that person trying to ask the toll collector for directions. Of course, you may have the occasional incident where the monkeys try to tear someone’s arm or face off, but hey, we would post warning signs. So, the state saves money, traffic moves better, and everyone is happy. Because, oh, YOU’RE GONNA pay the monkey.

 LINKS

• Here is a video of a nutty guy riding his bike on a cliff side in Arizona.
• For all you arachnophobes out there.
• In New Mexico, today is Pluto Planet Day.  There is a whole website dedicated to Pluto’s planet worthiness.
• I love the movie Point Break.  The fact that they are doing a remake is offensive.  Here are ten reasons why the remake is a bad idea.  (This was written before Gerard Butler dropped out of the film, but most of it still applies)

Parking in the city is about as enjoyable as going to the dentist. I try to avoid both of those things. I probably do need to go to the dentist soon, or the hockey player/hillbilly look may be in my future. The fact that my last dentist was cross-eyed did not help. A cross-eyed person standing over you and wearing a mask is unnerving.

My wife attended school at a university in Philly. Parking around the school was scarce, so whenever I would drop her off and pick her up, I would use the fifteen minute parking zones in an alley near the back of her building. I would sit and wait in those spots for an hour or more sometimes. Months went by and I got really comfortable using those spots whenever I needed to. I never had a problem leaving the car there, even when I stretched the time limit. So one Sunday my wife needed to make a quick trip into her lab. We drove in and parked the car in the alley.   I got out of the car with my wife and she looked at me questioningly. “Don’t worry about the car”, I said. “It’s Sunday, and I never have any problems here.” We went into the building and came back out an hour later. And,,,,,,,,, the car was gone. That was not a fun feeling. Three things went through my mind quickly. (Hey, I thought I parked right there. Somebody stole my car. Oh, I guess they do tow cars from those spots.) I had to find the surly security guard who could tell me what magical place my car had disappeared to.

Security- “Where did you park?”

Me- “The fifteen minute zone.”

Security- “How long were you there?”

Me- “An hour.”

Security- “Didn’t you see the signs?”

Me- “Yes,,,,, yes, I did.”

Now that I felt like a complete idiot, I gave the towing company a call and was informed that I had to pay for the tow and the “storage” of my car. My wife, who was nine months pregnant and not the least bit happy with me, called a cab so we could get to the yard where the car was. It was one of those days when things just weren’t going to go my way. Our taxi driver kept looking at me in the mirror.   Then this happened.

Driver- “You look like Corey Feldman.”

Me- (Not able to understand what he was saying) “What?”

Driver- You look like Corey Feldman.”

Me- “What?”

Driver- “You look like Corey Feldman.”

Me- “Oh…..”

Things really weren’t going my way.

 

I love time travel movies. They’re pretty much all good. Except for The Butterfly Effect. That’s a horrible film. From time to time I like to think about what I would do if I could travel back in time. Of course I would do the obvious things like invest in Apple, bet on sporting events, and attend Wrestlemania III to see Hulk Hogan take on Andre the Giant. Mostly, though, I think it would be fun to go back in time to mess with myself. Here are some times I would visit my past self.

• I would tell my college self to just pick a major.   I would also advise that self to avoid a class called Race and Gender in the Mass Media. Not only was it complete nonsense, I forgot to turn in a self evaluation, and got a bad grade.
• I would tell my high school self that his mullet is awesome, and that his future wife hates his British Knights.
• I would mess with my early twenties self for being cheap. I would tell him to break down and buy a new mattress. My wife claimed that the first mattress we owned after we were married, had actual hay in it. She said if you flipped it over, George Washington slept here was written on the tag.
• I would tell my eight year old self to not give up on the whole Navy fighter pilot thing. Yes, I loved Top Gun. I’d also tell him that climbing trees and riding bikes never really gets old.
• I would go back two weeks and tell myself that the biggest snowstorm of the season was still coming, and then watch how depressed my past self would get.
• I would travel back to when my past self was working in a crawlspace in Burlington, NJ, wait until that moment when he put his hand down on a dead squirrel and laugh at him.
• I would be tempted to visit the lumber mill where I worked alone at night, and then jump out from behind something to scare my past self, but it would be bad if my past self killed my future self.  So maybe not.
• I would be a guest at my own wedding, and congratulate myself, because I’m a really lucky guy.

  LINKS

• In case you missed it, here is a real photo of a baby weasel riding a woodpecker.
• Today is the anniversary of the fall of the Alamo where Davy Crockett, one of my childhood heroes, died.
• There is an animal in Australia called a quokka.  They are the happiest looking animals you will ever see, and lately people have been taking selfies with them.
• If you need any ideas for this years big adventure, look no further than Lonely Planet.

If you ever find yourself standing in front of a patch of poison ivy, wondering what it would feel like to get it all over your body,,,,,, STOP, don’t roll around in it. I’ve already had this life experience. I can tell you what it’s like.

I went to high school at a church boarding school. I know, you’re like, “boarding school, isn’t that for juvenile delinquents?” Well, yes, juvenile delinquents and church kids. We had both. The school sat on 342 acres in what I’m now told is referred to as the foothills of the Pocono Mountains. That seems rather grandiose. If you put the Poconos out near the Rockies, they would be considered the foothills of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. My dad worked for the church in New Jersey, and we lived on the campus of the school. I never had to board in the dorm, but I attended class with everyone else who did.

Much of the 342 acres that made up the property was forestland that rose up in the rolling hills behind the school. Logging roads ran everywhere through those hills. When I was a freshman or sophomore, my buddies and I decided that it would be a great place to go camping. One Saturday we packed up our backpacks and headed up into the woods with our pocket knives, bb guns, and sleeping bags. We left late in the day, so by the time we rolled out our bags and started looking for firewood, it was dark. This turned out to be of great importance. We started our fire, cooked up some food, and talked until we all got tired. The night was uneventful. The next morning we packed up our stuff and hiked back down to my house. I took a shower and settled in to spend a lazy Sunday in front of the TV. Then it started, an itch here, a scratch there. It got worse hour by hour. By the afternoon the rash started to show up. I had it everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Seems there was poison ivy where I was gathering my firewood. By evening it was driving me out of my mind. Instead of going to school on Monday morning, I went to the doctor’s office to get a shot. Then, on Tuesday, I spent a lot of time explaining why my face looked funny.

To sum it up.

PROS: I don’t know, maybe the morning off of school.

CONS: You itch like never before. You look funny for a week and a half. Nobody wants to spend that much time applying anti-itch cream.

Several days ago I walked out my front door and thought, hey it kind of smells like spring is on the way. Then I slipped on some ice and my son threw a snowball at me. I think that people who claim to enjoy winter are lying. There is nothing enjoy about not wanting to leave your house for three months straight. Even sledding gets old.

We really are getting close to warmer weather, believe it or not. To celebrate that fact, here is my list of the ten best things about Spring.

10.  Flowers. Spring brings all kinds of flowers, and you don’t even have to water them.

9.   The days get longer. Not only is winter cold, it  also insults you with prolonged darkness.

8.   When you visit the city in the spring, it still smells ok. Later in the summer you have to deal with the potpourri of trash, urine, and people.

7.   Baby animals.

6.   Baseball.

5.   That feeling when the sun warms up your car. The thermostat in my Jeep is busted, so all winter I drive around with virtually no heat.

4.   Backpacking. This spring my dad and I will be taking my five year old on his first backpacking trip. We’re going to do an eight mile overnight hike. I just hope I don’t end up carrying him for six miles.

3.   I can ditch my jacket. I hate feeling like I’m putting on a space suit just to leave my house. Oh yeah, and I also don’t like tying shoes, so out come the Reef sandals.  My wife says I’m the five year old in the house.

2.   The trees have leaves again.  That means no more free shows for the neighbors when I walk around in my underoos.

1.    Summer is next.

LINKS

• This video of a sinkhole swallowing two people on a sidewalk in Seoul is both hilarious and terrifying.
• Because Humphrey Bogart is awesome.
• We are approaching road trip season.  Here is a site with routes, so you can build your own adventure.
• Here are the winners of the 2014 National Geographic Travelers Photo Contest.

If you want to have an interesting conversation, or at least one that is difficult to follow, talk to a five year old,,,,,,,, or a homeless guy. My second son is now five, and he is similar in several ways to a homeless alcoholic. He very rarely washes his hands, unless you force him to. He will yell unintelligible things at you once in a while. He can fall anywhere. We went to New York before Thanksgiving this year. He fell into the middle isle of the train twice. Once on the way there, and once on the way back. The other day, I left him standing in the entryway to our house while I went to grab my shoes. I came back one minute later, and he was sprawled on the floor. He had fallen in the middle of a perfectly flat floor. I looked around for something that he could have tripped over. Nothing.

One of the colleges I went to was around Washington D.C. Like any city, D.C. has its share of people who end up living on the streets.  One time I was out with two of my friends.  We were standing in the parking lot of a restaurant, when a guy with bushy gray hair and a beard approached us. When I saw him coming, three things went through my mind in rapid succession.

1. He’s probably going to ask me for money.
2. I hope he doesn’t try to rob me.
3. Man will he be disappointed if he robs me. He’s probably got more money than I do.

But this guy just wanted to talk. We all stood there and talked for a while. There is a section of the conversation that still makes me laugh to this day.

Guy: (Staring at us intently) Have you ever heard of the NFL?

Me:   Sure.

Guy: Have you ever heard of the Washington Redskins?

Me:   Of course.

Guy: Have you ever heard of the mafia?

Me:   Sure. So you think the mob is fixing football games?

Guy: (With a look on his face that tells me he has no idea why I would say something like that) NO.

Like I said, I am now raising my second five year old. So, I get to have conversations like this every day now. I still remember that one, though, because of how happy go lucky the guy was. One of my friends ended up giving him the hat off of his head after the guy mentioned how much he liked it several times. I hope things worked out for him. And by the way, sometimes I do think the mob is fixing football games.