Regular Life

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on. – Robert Frost

Browsing Posts published in July, 2007


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Note: This is the ongoing saga of our trip to Red River, New Mexico in early July. We’re almost finished now.

Since he had slept through several of our activities and was left out of our hike earlier in the week, we decided it was time to focus on Ben.

Each time we drove by Mike’s Fun Place during our time in Red River, Ben’s head turned to keep his eyes on all the action. When we walked by, he got a good look at the rock climbing wall, the jumping machine, and the mechanical bull. He mentioned the jumping more than once, and my dad got a twinkle in his eye when the manager said little kids could ride the bull.

All that set the stage for our final morning in Red River.

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Cabresto Lake, above Red River, New Mexico
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On Friday (the 13th) we finally rented a Jeep, and Dad humbly displayed his offroading skills. We had the Jeep for four hours, which should have been plenty of time for us to make it to Greenie Peak, reportedly New Mexico’s highest point one can reach by driving or riding a vehicle.

Should have.

As a child, I spent many hours riding double-barreled shotgun in my Dad’s International Scout (that’s when there’s a bench seat, allowing more than one person to accompany the driver in the front, and I think I just made up that term). Later in life, I went offroading once in Missouri’s Mark Twain National forest. Whereas my rides with Dad were mostly on flat, muddy delta forest roads, the latter was on roads that featured rocks requiring what they called “crawling” the Jeep.

Our ride in New Mexico was more like the “crawling,” except my neck didn’t ache for several days afterward.

Shannon, Benjamin, and I stuffed ourselves into the back seat of the Jeep. The main catch here was that Ben was in his big, fancy kids’ car seat with armrests and full padding. You get the idea. He ended up taking up more room than either of us.

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More trip coming, but in the meantime, a few things:

  • Worked last day of job Friday, after a little more than two years at it.
  • New job starts when I fly out Sunday afternoon — same company.
  • Going to see the Oakland A’s play Monday night at their home stadium (second Major League Baseball game attended in my life)
  • Lip trembling, my son just now said, “I want to go get Lexie out of Doggie Heaven.”
  • We’re going to see Ratatouille today.


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“We’ll do whatever you want to do,” Dad said to Shannon and me.

It was Thursday, and we were to leave Saturday morning. There were a few things we still wanted to do on our trip, but we hadn’t assigned any times or days. All week Dad had been trying to drop in on a Jeep rental place called “Fast Eddie’s,” but they were so busy guiding ATV and Jeep tours that they rarely were at the office. He had left a few messages, but nothing came of it.

So, that morning, we decided to go to Great Sand Dunes National Park. It was about a two-hour drive from Red River, in southern Colorado. I had been there as a kid in summer of 1978, when Mom and Dad took my brother and me. If I’m off on that, it’s only by a year either way. Dad drove this time, too, because he knew the road and could make quicker work of it.

The route took us through a valley of scrub brush flanked on either side by Rocky Mountain peaks. Just shy of the New Mexico-Colorado state line, a highway worker stopped us.

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Whereas Tuesday featured the longest, most grueling walk of the trip, the latter part of Wednesday brought the shortest and most harrowing. (I like posting trip journals after the fact instead of real-time because it allows opening sentences like that.) We also went to the place Julia Roberts hangs out when not shooting a movie.

With two of the week’s three most thrilling rides (ski lift, go-karts) out of the way that morning, we decided Wednesday had more in store for us. Ben’s pink scalp wouldn’t take much more without protection, so after the Go-Karts we found a cap he liked and that doubled as a souvenir. Maximum style, maximum SPF.

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You ever face your fears head-on because people are relying on you? You ever do this while on vacation?

Wednesday, Shannon gets up with Ben to let me sleep that extra hour between 6:30 and 7:30. She goes back to bed while he and I scarf down our respective bowls of Cinnamon Shredded Wheat and then drive to T-Buck’s The Hole Thing.

I discover that even here no donut shop features a white creme filled. Hundreds of miles from home, I’m foiled again. Curses! I order for everybody, including Mom and Dad, and hand the lady my debit card.

“We can take that if you run it through like an ATM card,” she says. She points to a card reader with buttons labeled in $20 increments. (this is just surcharges waiting to happen)

“I don’t have this card pinned for ATM use yet. So, I can only pay with cash?”

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The city didn’t come out to our remote locale to retrieve our refuse, and Mom and Dad never signed us up with that lady and her husband (or son?) who collected rural trash in that rickety old pickup with plywood sides and then hauled it off to the dump. (Whew! Faulkner would be proud of that sentence.)

Dad owned and managed his own business (with Mom’s invaluable help for about the first 15 years or so). He was in the habit of taking our home trash down to his office, about six or eight miles away (don’t worry, Dad, if this was somehow a shady practice, I’m sure the statute of limitations has run out by now). Whether it was the city or a private company picking it up is beyond me. One thing I know for sure from my upbringing is that, “it didn’t just get up and walk away.”

Sometimes, when we needed the trash taken from the house on a weekend, the duty would fall to Charles and me. It was about a 30-minute job to haul it down to Dad’s office and come back. I don’t want to cast blame in one direction, because I had lazy teenager syndrome just as bad as the next guy. But, Charles was the one who could drive, and once he said, “Okay, let’s go do this,” I was committed to whatever course he took.

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(more vacation posts later, when I have time to prepare the pics)

This is a true story of laziness, karma, and just basic detective work, told in two parts. Similar in ways to Arlo Guthrie’s presumably fictional song, “Alice’s Restaurant,” (but not until the second part), this one’s all true. Even the part where people are lying.

My brother Charles and I never really knew just how pissed Dad was. For all we knew, maybe he laughed about it where we couldn’t see him.

Despite the many pleasures of growing up in the country — fresh air, room to roam, eye-popping night skies — a few things about living way out could be considered drawbacks. I couldn’t just run next door, or even down the street, to rustle up a few kids for general good times. The streets on either side of ours were a couple miles across hilly fields, or a few miles through dense woods, respectively, and some featured vicious dogs and barbed-wire fences. They were just as likely as our street to feature children my age, but the Great Wall of China might as well have stood between us.

For that reason, Charles and I spent a lot more time together than other siblings I knew. A mere two years my senior, he no doubt sometimes felt like ditching the little kid for something more exciting. And, more times than he might know, I didn’t care to do what he was doing, but went along for the ride. In fact, my brother might be solely responsible for what physical coordination I have.

Then again, he may have distracted me just enough to keep me from becoming the slightly younger, more handsome Bill Gates. Or the slightly younger, geekier Steve Jobs. We’ll never know.

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Weekend break from vacation journaling. I don’t usually post someone else’s work, but I had to share this just for fun. In these three clips are “Peter and the Wolf,” “Inspector Gadget,” “Axel F,” Star Wars Imperial March, and the Muppets theme. Something for pretty much everyone.

This time, instead of Tim Barsky, it’s Greg Pattillo.

You’ve never heard “Peter and the Wolf” quite like this. He starts out playing it straight, and then puts his own personal touch on it.

Give this next one until the clock shows about 2:56 remaining before you give up on it. He goes into another instantly recognizable song before it’s all over, then brings it back to the first tune.

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The difference between pea-size and dime-size shouldn’t be discounted.

To start our Tuesday, Dad drives us on a truck-only road to one open only for hikers and horsemen. I mean horsepeople. No, that makes this sound like Chronicles of Narnia. Horse riders?

Although Mom enjoys a good walk and natural scenery, rigorous hiking isn’t her bag. She and Ben stay behind at the cabin.

Shannon and I sit in the back while one of Mom and Dad’s friends, Belle A, sits up front. Belle A is an avid hiker, here in Red River for a couple weeks with her husband, who is not.

A man standing beside the road holds a shotgun over his shoulder and seems to be searching the woods. “Maybe there’s a rabid bear out there,” Belle A guesses.

The trailhead — elevation 9550 feet — starts us out on a closed road that even when open is intended only for 4×4’s with short wheelbase and high clearance. A mountain stream alongside us babbles “good morning” and its clear water reveals its bed of smooth rocks. Leaves of aspen trees at forest’s edge dance in the breeze and shimmer in the sunlight.

Blue is the only color in the sky.

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