LONGWALKABOUT

Happy New Year.  All evidence points to 2016 being a year full of totally ridiculous events.  I have compiled a list of things to do, eat, listen to, or watch that will help you survive a year of presidential politics, 23 new Marvel movies, Ben Affleck as Batman, and an NFL in decline.  Sit back, enjoy, and then put reading this blog regularly on your list of resolutions.

1. It is the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service.  Get outside and enjoy one of the few things that the government does pretty well.
2. Save up some money because most of the founding members of Guns N Roses are getting back together for a tour.  They may not be the “most dangerous band in the world” anymore, but I’ve seen Axl lately and he can still sing.  Thanks to the Rolling Stones, they also are not “the band most in danger of breaking a hip” so instead of going to see two or three mediocre bands, just go see GNR.
3. The lines at Chipotle are short right now.  Have a burrito.  “But what about the E-Coli?”  Stop.  I guarantee you that the local Chipotle has never been cleaner than it is right now.  It’s like skydiving.  When’s the best time to go?  Right after they’ve had an accident.
4. Halestorm’s cover of Hunger Strike will make you smile.  Eddie Vedder and Bob Dylan have one thing in common.  All of their songs are better when they are performed by people who are not them.
5. Trader Joe’s Kona Coffee Truffles.
6. I recommend binge watching White Collar on Netflix.  It’s a heist show with style and super likable characters.
7. Take a surfing lesson.  Better yet.  Track down a copy of Endless Summer 2, watch it, and then take a surfing lesson.  Then you can wear out your friends by telling them over and over again about the first time you stood up on a wave.  Also, you can start calling your boss dude or brah, and tell him to stop harshing your mellow.
8. Find out which food truck near you has the best falafel wrap and then eat there at least twice a month.
9. Get a Groupon for a local paintball place.  If you are a parent, take your kids.  If you aren’t a parent, don’t worry, there will be a lot of other people’s kids there for you to shoot at.  It’s therapeutic.
10. Save 5 dollars a week.  Halfway through the year that should add up to 130 dollars.  Blow it.  Spend it on something completely frivolous.  Like, I don’t know.  Maybe go to a movie and get the LARGE popcorn.
11. Buy a brand new pillow.
12. It’s going to be an exhausting political year.  Whenever someone asks who you are voting for, answer them each time with the name of a different 70’s tv star.  When they tell you that they don’t know who that is, tell them that he or she is representing some obscure political party that has something to do with the show that they starred in.  Example:  “I’m voting for Lee Majors, he’s representing the Scientific Information Party.  He has a great personal story about overcoming injuries resulting from a spaceship crash.  I can’t understand why he isn’t doing better in the polls.”  Then walk away.  Just walk away.
13. Visit a botanical garden.
14. Watch Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  Then call out of work and go to a baseball game.  Extra points if you identify yourself to the usher as the “sausage king of Chicago.”
15. Find a deserving charity that you can donate time or money to.
16. Buy a pair of Reef flip flops and rock them everywhere.  If someone asks why you’re wearing them in a business meeting, just look them straight in the eye and say they were doctor prescribed.  It’s all about confidence.

Here’s to a great 2016.

LINKS

• Yet another reason to be grossed out by hotels.
• On to other gross things.  Here are the “germiest” travel destinations in the world.
• These twins born over New Years are gonna get really tired of explaining their birthdays to people.
• This pilot is a good dude.

Christmas has come and gone.  Gifts have been opened.  The children have all crashed down off of their sugar highs.  Christmas empanadas have been eaten.  And, we’ve made our pilgrimage to the local theater to see the new Star Wars, which, by the way, is really good.  All that is left is the alcoholic’s holiday (New Years Eve), which is no fun for me.  I’ll be asleep by ten.  Now it’s time to sit and reflect upon the week that was.

• I got the one thing that I wanted for Christmas.  And I am happy to report that the new Point Break tanked at the box office.
  

  Merry Christmas to me.

• There were a lot of previews before the new Star Wars movie.  I would just like to warn everyone that there will be a glut of overly dramatic superhero movies coming out in the near future.  I looks like the plot of most of them involves people with awesome powers feuding like high school girls.  Superheroes are huge whiners.  Except for Antman.  Me and Antman are tight.
• I have reached the age where I don’t really have a Christmas list.  I like to be surprised.  I do realize that this makes things hard for Santa, because he has to put thought into what he’s going to bring me, instead of me going to the mall, sitting on his lap, and telling him exactly what to get.  But look, last year when I showed up to give you my list, the elves treated me really rudely and tried to charge me thirty five dollars.  But,,,,  if Santa happens to be taking some time off, surfing the internet, and he runs across this blog.,,,..  ..  A set of counterfeit documents would be a really cool gift.  Or maybe an honorary doctorate.
• Since we were hosting Christmas for the family this year, we decided to get a real Christmas tree.  We trekked out to the tree farm with the boys and told them that it was their job to pick our tree.  My six year old chose to spend his time hiding from us in the rows of trees.  Meanwhile, my ten year old picked out the most Charlie Brown looking tree he could find.  We suggested others, but my sweet-hearted boy had made his decision.  He felt bad for that tree and was worried that no one else would take it home.  We brought it home.  And it was perfect.  He was so proud.
• The list of people you are supposed to tip at Christmas seems to have gotten longer.  Garbage man, mail man, bus driver.  I’m okay with those, but I will not be adding anyone else.  I had to put it out there because I feel like some people have been eyeing me up.  My favorite cashier at Target.  Our local librarian.  The guy on the Stairmaster at the gym who always winks at me.  That lady who held the door for me at Wawa the other day.  Nice try people, but I’m all tapped out.
• Oh, just in case you didn’t know.  Santa hates net lights.

LINKS

• Oscar time will be here before we know it.  While everyone else prepares to decide what the best movie of the year was, let’s take a look at the Rotten Tomatoes Summer Movie Scorecard.
• Sorry.  One more Point Break link.  Lori Petty, from the original film, has some fairly strong feelings about the remake.
• This Christmas light display is pretty great.
• A guy walked off of a cliff because he was looking at his cell phone.

You know how sometimes you hear a certain song and it takes you directly to a past place and time?  Like how every time you hear the Mexican Hat Dance, it takes you to that time you got food poisoning at Taco Bell.  Well, this is the second half of my top ten list of songs that take me to a specific moment.  Here we go.

5.  Youth Gone Wild by Skid Row-  Many years ago I went to see Sebastian Bach (former lead singer of Skid Row) at the Birch Hill Night Club in New Jersey.  During the show, a short older guy, who was very excited to be there, kept telling me and my friend that it was going to be out of control when Sebastian performed Youth Gone Wild.   “You just wait, it’s gonna be crazy in here.  Everybody’s gonna go nuts.  You wait and see.”  I waited.  I was disappointed.  I loved the show, but I’ve seen places get crazier when candy was handed out to kids.

4.  No Woman No Cry by Bob Marley-  When my first son was little, we took a lot of long car trips.  My wife would sit in the backseat with him, and if he got upset, we would sing that song to him inserting his name instead of ‘woman.’  For the longest time he thought that the song was actually written about him.

3.  Sirius (also known as the Chicago Bulls theme) by Alan Parson-  Our high school basketball coach was a huge Bulls fan during their championship runs in the Jordan era.  The one year that I was on the team, he would recreate the whole Bulls intro thing with the spotlight and the theme song before every game we played.  It was over the top and embarrassing.  Unless you were Michael Jordan.  Unfortunately none of us were.  I consider myself more of a Shawn Bradley, with less height, talent, and desire to play basketball.

2.  Dust In The Wind by Kansas-  We had karaoke at one of our high school banquets.  One of my friends and I decided that we should do a song.  We chose Dust In The Wind.  What followed crushed any dreams of being a rock star that I may have ever entertained.  It was an excruciating three minutes and twenty seconds.  I’m pretty sure the guy operating the karaoke machine considered turning it off and escorting us off of the stage.  He probably called all of his other karaoke machine operator friends and warned them about us.  Flyers with our faces have likely been circulated throughout the karaoke community.

1.  Take Me Home Country Roads by John Denver-  Whenever we cross the state line into West Virginia, we play this song and sing along.  So it literally takes me home.

LINKS

• Today is the anniversary of the first time that the Flying Tigers saw combat action.
• CNN’s Year in photos from around the world.
• Can you eat expired food?  Find out here.
• Seven things you can do in order to have a better vacation.

My sister is now a Dr.  A Dr. of literature, so if you meet her, she will not be able to diagnose that weird rash that you can’t get rid of.  Not that this should stop you from asking her to take a look at it, just for my amusement.  Her graduation was this past Thursday.  My wife and I had decided that I should go out to celebrate with her.  Then we decided that it should be a surprise.  Here’s my 4,300 mile 41 hour adventure.  (All times are local.  I knew you’d want to know)

Thursday

5:50 AM-  Depart LaGuardia airport NYC.  I spend the half of the flight sleeping, and half of the flight wondering if I had awkwardly leaned on my seat mate while I was sleeping.

8:45 AM-  Arrive in Houston.  I wander the airport trying to look like I know where I’m going.  Eventually I find my gate.

9:20 AM-  Depart Houston.

10:40 AM-  Arrive in Albuquerque.

2:00 PM-  I had made prior arrangements with my brother-in-law for them to pick me up while I posed as a hitchhiker.  He pulls over and I hop in the passenger seat, completely surprising my unsuspecting sister, who was riding in the backseat with her two year old son.

2:15 PM-  We all enjoy Mexican food at Sadie’s.

5:15 PM-  We arrive at the PIT, where my sister will celebrate her awesome accomplishment.  For those of you who don’t know sports, the PIT is the basketball arena at the University of New Mexico.  In 2014, a travesty of corporate renaming dubbed the PIT, Wise Pies Arena, aka The Pit.  Thanks for ruining another stadium/arena name corporate America.

6:15 PM:  The esteemed faculty march in, wearing their robes and poofy hats.  It seems to me that they are all in a competition to see who can look the most like a medieval poet.  The head of the math department wins.

6:45 PM:  My sister receives her degree.  Yay.  I capture the momentous occasion in a series of fuzzy photographs.

7:00 PM:  I have the following conversation with my nephew.

“Tio,,,,,, Tio”

“Yes”

“Tio”

“Yes”

“Tio”

“What”

“Tio”

“Yes”

“Tio”

“Yes”

“,,,,,,,,,,UP”

7:30 PM-  The graduation ends and we take pictures.  My nephew continues to insist that he be allowed to ride the elevator when he gets back to the hotel.

8:15 PM-  They drop me off at my hotel.  We take some more pictures.  I assure my nephew that he will get to ride the elevator.

9:15 PM-  I’m out.

Friday.

6:00 AM-  I’m up because, hey, it’s 8:00 at home.

6:45 AM-  Free breakfast buffet.  The whole reason I chose this hotel.  Biscuits, waffles, hash browns, eggs, coffee, fruit, salsa.  Yes.  More please.  Those hash browns aren’t great, but they’re free.  I think I will have just one more helping.  Everyone in the place is polite and properly attired.  What do I mean by that?  Well, I was once at a hotel breakfast in Kentucky, where a family arrived in the breakfast room,,,,,,, none of them wearing shoes.

11:30 AM-  Depart Albuqerque airport.

2:38 PM-  Arrive in Houston.

3:00 PM to 4:00 PM-  Wander the airport trying to decide what to eat.

4:15 PM-  Decide to have pizza.

4:45 PM-  I am disappointed in my food choice.

5:45 PM-  Depart Houston.

10:17 PM-  Arrive at LaGuardia.

I would like to thank my wife for encouraging me to go on this trip.  Unless you are an insufferable overachiever, you only get one PhD graduation.  We are very proud of my sister and I’m very happy I was able to celebrate with her.

LINKS

• It’s the 35th anniversary of Magnum PI.
• It is also Ted Nugent’s birthday.  Here’s the Rolling Stone bio of the world’s only sober rock star.
• Really interesting story about a guy who jumped off of the Golden Gate bridge and lived to tell about it.
• Last but not least.  This little girl’s family was killed in a fire, and she was severely burned.  All she wants for Christmas is cards.  Make an extra trip to Hallmark.

 

Music is really subjective.  My top ten songs would probably be totally different from your top ten.  But this music list has nothing to do with how good the songs actually are.  This list is all about where the songs take me when I hear them.

Example:  Any time I hear a Coldplay song, it takes me back to a fantastic nap that I took in 2002.

Everyone has songs that for some reason or other are tied to specific moments in their life.  These are my top ten.  (part one)

10.  Paradise City by Guns N Roses-  In 2012 I went to see the reconstituted G N R at a club in New York.  They came on stage late, as usual, but they put on a fantastic show.  Axl at 50 can still belt it out.  They closed the almost three hour long set with Paradise City.  Confetti cannons went off and Axl threw the microphone into the crowd.  It flew directly over my head, just out of my reach.  I turned around to try to find it, only to see two or three guys rolling around on the wet club floor, apparently fighting over it.  I realized that my OCD would never permit me to get anywhere near whatever liquid was on that floor after a nearly four and a half hour show (including the opener).  In fact, I was a little upset that I was even standing in it.  This song takes me to that moment.

9.    Top Gun Anthem–  A month or two ago, my six year old was doing interpretive dance to this song in his tighty whities.  I will never again hear it without thinking of that.

8.    Riders On The Storm by The Doors-  A Burger King parking lot in western Maryland.  I sat there in my 1988 Honda Accord, which was filled with most of my earthly possessions, eating a BK veggie burger.  It was raining,,,  I think.  I was there to check out Frostburg State University.  I went on to spend one semester of my illustrious academic career at the home of the Bobcats.  I was on the dean’s list.  And I made absolutely no friends, because of my Stranger Danger List.

7.     Anything by Marc Anthony–  Okay, this should just be latin music in general, but I had to narrow it down.  This Thanksgiving eve, my wife and her best friend were listening to latin music, rather loudly, while preparing food for the next day.  In the next room, I was watching a hockey game.  I have now decided that hockey should always be watched this way.  Turn the commentary down, and put on some salsa music.  It takes your brain a whole period to get used to it, but when you watch a guy with a name like Sergei Plotnikov celebrate a goal to Vivir Mi Vida, you’ll see how awesome it is.

6.     Seein’ Red by Unwritten Law-  The Pizza Hut kitchen in Clementon, New Jersey was a rocking place.  If you’ve never delivered pizza, your life experience isn’t complete.

LINKS

• This lady is the bride of the year.  Perhaps the decade.
• A Spanish galleon containing an unreal amount of treasure has supposedly been found off the coast of Columbia.
• The new Point Break comes out in theaters on Christmas day.  Instead of going to see it.  Watch the old one.  I guarantee it’s better.  Here’s the original trailer.
• USA Today’s list of the the best German Christmas markets in the US.

 

 

• This weekend I was sitting at home and pondering Lord of the Rings.  This is something I do in quiet moments, when I’m not thinking about important things, like the ending of How I Met Your Mother, or wondering why it is so quiet and where my kids are.  I have come to the conclusion that Frodo was a huge whiner.  Sam might have been a great friend, but he was really an enabler.  I think that Frodo needed a tougher traveling companion.  Like maybe a plumber from New Jersey.  Every time Frodo got whiny, the plumber would have some choice words and a story for him.  “You think this is bad, little guy?  I was on a job one Christmas Eve.  The sewer line backed up into the basement, and we had to unclog it all while standing in eight inches of poop.  Mordor is a cakewalk compared to that.  Suck it up, buttercup.  There’s no way I’m carrying you up Mount Doom, I’ve got a bad back.”  Also.  He would never have been tempted to steal the ring because it wouldn’t have been gaudy enough for his wife.
• Ahhh, quiet moments.  It was really quiet for a while last night.  After I was done thinking about the end of How I Met Your Mother, I decided find out why it was so quiet.  I found my ten year old trying to hypnotize my six year old with a Steamtown National Historical Park pocket watch.  This was really amusing.  If he did end up hypnotizing the little guy, I was totally going to use it to my advantage.  I had a list of requests.  “Tell him that he needs to try some foods that aren’t chicken nuggets, pizza, or strawberries.”  “Tell him that he needs to clean his room once a week.”  “Tell him he needs to use his ‘indoor’ voice at all times.”
• My favorite football team took a tough loss this weekend.  When this happens I have to really fight to adjust my attitude.  It can take anywhere from one to two hours.  That’s not bad, considering that it used to take all the way to Wednesday when I was younger.  I’ve tried not caring as much, or watching the games with more of an analytical eye.  You know what happens?  I don’t get as upset about the losses, but I don’t enjoy the wins as much either.  I’ve decided that my relationship to my favorite teams is meant to be an emotional one.  The third and fourth quarters of games are meant to upset your stomach.  Last minute field goals for the win are meant to make you feel good until next Sunday.  In the end, when your team wins a championship, you are supposed to feel like a part of it.  That being said.  There are some franchises that have been emotionally abusing their fans for years.  In fact, I think that they should be required to provide complimentary therapy for anyone who buys season tickets.  (You hear me Philadelphia and Cleveland?)

LINKS

• The best selfie ever.
• A ghost fleet of ships recently washed up on the shores of Japan.
•  On the last day of November.  November Rain from the 1992 VMA’s.
• Aerial views from a North Korean helicopter tour.  I found it kind of fascinating.

I’m finally done eating.  I was full a while ago, but that didn’t stop me.  Like Louis C.K. says, “I’m not done eating when I’m full.  I’m done eating when I hate myself.”  Now that I am thoroughly disgusted with my gluttony, it’s time to reflect on the top ten things that I am thankful for this year.  Here we go.

1. I am thankful that I got to spend the summer with my boys.  It was priceless.
2. I am thankful that George Lucas will have nothing to do with future Star Wars movies.  Not only did he ruin three already, he messed up an Indiana Jones movie too.  You’d think that would be impossible, but then they brought in Shia LaBeouf and had him swinging through the trees like Tarzan.  Movie ruined.
3. I am thankful that my wife’s best friend came to spend Thanksgiving with us.  They were up late cooking last night.  I was also working,,,,,,,,,, on a Jessica Jones binge watch.
4. I am thankful for Jimmy Fallon’s thank you notes.
5. I am thankful for the teachers at my kid’s school.  They’ve all been really great for them.
6. I am thankful for Chipotle.  I’ll risk a little E. Coli and salmonella for a good burrito.  I applaud them for trying to create a real, “I’m eating in Mexico”, experience.”
7. I’m thankful that family and friends visit during the holidays.  HOWEVER.  I am not thankful that everyone nixed my idea of a Mexican Thanksgiving.  I was left without recourse, so I did what the New York Times would have done, and just called them all xenophobes.
8. I am thankful for football.  It gives me something to do during those long winter months, which I affectionately refer to as the “devil’s season.”  I recently told my wife that the winter was my least favorite thing about the fall of man.  She replied by telling me that I was “ridiculous”,  or something like that.
9. I am thankful that God created avacados.  I feel like avocados are one of those things that were extra flourishes of creation.  Like platypuses, narwhals, starfruit, and lightning bugs.  God was like, “I don’t have to make these things, but life will be cooler with them around.”
10. I am thankful for anyone who takes the time to drop in and read this blog every once in a while.

Everyone have a great, great holiday season.

 

Now for the final chapter in the Stranger Danger For Adults series.  Just to refresh, this is a list of people that we as adults should avoid if we wish to have peaceful days with limited frustration.  We are always telling our kids who to avoid.  Guys in windowless vans.  People offering candy on days other than Halloween.  British TV hosts.  People who can’t find their dogs.  Subway spokespeople.  But no one has put out a list of people for adults to avoid.  UNTIL NOW.  You can search through my poorly organized blog history to find the previous three editions.  As a trilogy, they are better than the Star Wars prequels.  Here we go!

• Guys who dress better than their wives.  Dude.  C’mon.  Part of your job as a husband is to not outshine your wife.  When you stand next to each other, people should say, “How did he get her to marry him?”  Any time I look well put together, it’s because my wife has dressed me.  Guys who are always pretty will–  A: Never help you move.  And.  B: Possibly try to pick up YOUR wife.
• People who insist on introducing you to obscure musical acts.  Example:  “Bro, I just heard this new band from Des Moines.  The Starchy Root Vegetables.   They are great.  Real musician’s musicians.  They are far superior to whatever you are listening to.”  Back off.  If they are any good, I’ll hear of them from someone other than you,,, like the radio.
• People who have never seen the original Point Break.   I have one thing on my Christmas list.  This shirt.  Don’t let me down people.
  

  Merry Christmas to me.

• People who don’t like roller coasters.  You get all psyched to go to the amusement park with your friends, and when you get there, that one person makes everyone else feel guilty by refusing to get in line for the roller coasters.  At that point, you either say, “Okay, lets all go ride the carousel.  That way we can keep the group together.”  OR.  You can be like Marc.  “What time should we meet you in the parking lot?”
• People who wait in line for days at the apple store to replace their fully-functional, 9-month old iPhone.  No one has been able to explain to me how getting a new phone two weeks before everyone else has made their lives super fantastic.  Unless people are using the line as a way to meet people.  If so, that might be kind of genius.  It’s not like the other person is going to get out of line.  They are obviously as much of a techie as you are.  You have like forty eight hours to convince them to go on a date with you.  Good luck finding your future spouse.
• People who cut the line at Chipotle.  This is a serious breach of etiquette.  I don’t think that people realize how dangerous getting between me and a burrito is.  I am willing to wait my turn in line, but if someone cuts in front of me, it may lead to odd newspaper headlines.  “Man Bitten in Bizarre Food Rage Incident.“
• People who pay with checks at the grocery store.  (Sorry mom and dad.)
• Clowns.  I can’t emphasize this enough.

LINKS

• The lady who was the face of the original Gerber baby just turned 89.
• Everyone worried about ISIS can rest easy.  The mafia has offered to help protect New York.
• I have a film recommendation.  Exit Though The Gift Shop.  For a movie about street art, it goes places you’d never expect.
• A firefighter in Mississippi received a face transplant.  It’s crazy.

Here are five things to think about this Thursday evening.  They are not listed in any order of importance, but if they were, numbers one and three would probably be in their correct places.  Number four would switch places with number two.  Number five isn’t really important at all, but it had to have a number assigned to it.  At any rate, pay no attention to the numbers.  Unless you have some kind of OCD.  Then, by all means, cut and paste the article into Word.  If you do that, you can rearrange everything to your liking.

1. Paris.  What can you say about something like that?  I’ve decided that I can’t really add anything new to the conversation except for my prayers.  I do love the city of Paris.  Six years ago I had the opportunity to visit.  I am not a city person.  I can stomach New York once or twice a year.  I live outside of Philadelphia, and I virtually never go there.  The place is full of Eagles fans.  😉  There truly is something about Paris, though.  It’s not called the City of Love for nothing.
2. My youngest son has decided that he simply must have a yo-yo.  This caught me off guard.  Next thing you know he’ll be asking for a hoop that he can push around the driveway with a stick.  Or maybe he’ll want an Atari.  He’s an old soul.
3. My dad and I took my two boys backpacking last weekend.  It was the first trip for my six year old, and the stretch of trail that we did was somewhere around eight and a half miles.  We hiked about six miles on the first day, set up a camp to spend the night, and walked the remaining two and a half miles the next morning.  That distance with a six year old was slightly ambitious.  I ended up carrying him on my shoulders for a total distance of around a mile.  If you’re keeping score.  That would be a pack that weighed forty five pounds and a six year old that weighed fifty.  A grand total of ninety five.  It’s as fun as it sounds.  I saw several guys who had already set up their camp late on the first day, and as I walked past carrying kid and all, I heard one of them say, “Oooohhhh!  God bless you man.”
4. I watched Jurassic World with the kids last week.  Aside from being thoroughly unimpressed, I had a few thoughts.  If dinosaurs were truly that dangerous, people would be extinct and they would still be here.  Because most of what we know about them is a guess, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that they were just brooding artist types.  They were quiet and kept to themselves, mumbling about being misunderstood, and making cave drawings.  Noah got tired of their moodiness and “forgot” to send out their Ark invite.
5. It has been twenty five years since Milli Vanilli were stripped of their Grammy award.  They were truly ahead of their time.  Half of the artists who perform live today aren’t actually singing.

Coming Sunday:  Stranger Danger For Adults part 4.

Coming Thanksgiving:  The Top Ten Things I Am Thankful For 2015.

 

Yosemite.  Pronounced, yoh-sem-i-tee.  Or as a person I once met pronounced it.  yoh-se-might.  However you choose to pronounce it, nothing can change the fact that it is one of the most beautiful places in a country that has no shortage of beautiful places.  The scale of the valley on first encounter is breathtaking.

Shortly after my wife and I got married, she was invited to attend a conference in San Francisco.  I, of course said, “When do WE leave?”  So, WE started to make OUR travel arrangements.  It turned out that we would be traveling with another couple.  They suggested that it might be a good idea to add some days on to the end of the trip so we could all go check out Yosemite.  My wallet started to protest, saying something about not having enough money, but I told him to shut up or I was going to trade him in for a nice aligator skin model that I saw at Marshalls.  That settled it.  Adventure here we come.

The conference went well.  At least I’m assuming it did.  While my wife and her colleague spent their days there, I roamed the city with the the colleague’s husband.  Time flew, and before we knew it, we were picking up our rental car to head out to the Sierra Nevadas.

We had two days to spend in the park.  That’s really not enough time to do it justice.  You could spend a whole season there.  As it happened, we were in town during the winter season.  There was three feet of snow on the ground in Badger Pass, and the floor of the valley itself also had snow cover.  This limited our activities somewhat, but it also kept the crowds away.  We tried cross-country skiing, took a guided photography hike, and went snowshoeing with a ranger at Badger Pass.  We also decided to check out the historic Ahwahnee lodge.  On the way there a couple of coyotes crossed the road in front of us.  Apparently coyotes are as common in Yosemite as squirrels are in Pennsylvania. But we weren’t from the area.  My wife and I are east coasters.  The couple we were traveling with were from England and France respectively, so this was super exciting for us.  We stopped our car so we could get a picture.  This angered the person in the car following us.  They honked and swerved around us, yelling something mocking like, “OOOOOhhh, looooook, a coyote.  Get out of the road!”  That upset our English friend.  He decided that this offense must be dealt with.  We followed this other person all the way to the hotel parking lot where he got out of the car and gave the other driver a proper English dressing down.  I’ve lived in New Jersey for around half of my life, so I am familiar with road rage and yelling at other drivers.  In all my years, I have never seen a more polite road rage incident.  Seriously.  Not one four letter word was used.  In New Jersey, a road rage incident without four letter words would just be called silence with a bunch of dirty looks.

Our last day in the park, we decided to go check out the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias.  The park office informed us that the road to the grove was closed due to snow, but we could all rent snowshoes and walk the two miles to see the trees.  We could knock that out in an afternoon.  Then they told us that if we didn’t have the snowshoes back by the time the rental shop closed, we’d have to pay for another day’s rental.  At this point, my wallet dared to speak up again.  “Hey Marc, I know you like that aligator skin wallet, and I’m not gonna lie, that really hurts my feelings, but we can’t afford to waste money on renting snowshoes for an extra day if we aren’t getting to use them.”  I knew he was right.  I made up my mind that this was going to be the fastest four mile snowshoe that Yosemite had ever seen.  Halfway through, I realized that the words fast and snowshoe had probably never been used together before.  My English friend, trying to be helpful, pointed out that normal human walking speed was three miles an hour.  This was completely useless information.  It’s like saying, “Hey I know you’re on a moped going 30 mph, but if you were riding a Harley you could be going 80 mph.”  Nevertheless, I walked as fast as I could in snowshoes and two feet of snow.  Long story short.  The trees are magnificent.  And,,,,,,,, my wallet and I were both happy at the end of the day.

I now have two kids who are mostly unimpressed with wherever I take them for vacation.  I think that it may be time for another visit to the Yo-Se-Might valley.  If that doesn’t impress them, I’m never taking them on vacation with me again.  I know my wallet will be happy about that.