LONGWALKABOUT

Spring is finally here and it is almost time to fulfill a promise that I made to my five year old last fall.  It’s time to take him backpacking.  My dad and I have taken his older brother twice now.  Each time my youngest has watched us leave with a disappointed look on his face.  It is now time to induct him into the family tradition.

I have been backpacking from time to time since I was a kid.  I’m not one of those super intense guys with pricy gear.  You may know the type.  The ones who say these type of things.  “Hey man, I found another way to lighten my pack.  I don’t carry deodorant any more, and,,,,,,, no toilet paper bro.  Oak leaves work just as well.”  Well, no, no they don’t.  I prefer to be clean and to smell reasonably good.  I’m just a guy who likes to get out in the woods once in a while.  There’s something about carrying everything you need for a couple of days on your back.  It’s fun to exercise a certain level of self reliance.

One of my bucket list items is to finish the Pennsylvania section of the Appalachian trail.  I’ve been doing it piece by piece for a while now.  Last November, my dad, my nine year old, and I decided to do a short five mile section.  Yes, November in PA can get a little chilly.  We got onto the trail late on Saturday afternoon.  The plan was to hike in a short distance and find a place to set up a camp for the night.  Instead of following the plan, we engaged in another family tradition,,, pushing things farther than we should.  We hiked, and we hiked, and we hiked.  We passed several campsites along the way, before the trail led us onto an exposed ridge line where the wind really picked up.  Darkness fell, and we spent an hour looking for someplace to set up out of the wind.  Eventually we set up our tent in a field.  Because of  the wind, we couldn’t build a fire.  We ate granola bars and apples for dinner, and hunkered down for the night while the thirty to forty mile an hour winds buffeted the tent.  I was hoping that the morning would bring calmer weather, but, no luck.  After a breakfast of more granola bars and apples, we packed up and set out to get off of the ridge as fast as possible.  Since I was not expecting the gale, I had only worn two layers for warmth.  I started out the morning with those two layers, and a trash bag over both of them so that the morning wind wouldn’t cut straight through me.  (At this point my wife would like me to tell everyone that she told me to bring another jacket.)  Two and half miles and one of the steepest descents that I’ve ever done on the trail later, my wife picked us up and we enjoyed the warm car and some Burger King.

The day after this trip, my son came to me and said, “Thanks for taking me out in the woods dad”.  I loved that.  He’s hooked now.  A new generation of the family that will carry on the tradition.  It’s good for kids to get out once in a while and play somewhere wild.  Somewhere the play surface isn’t lined with rubber to minimize the damage when they fall.

(Since my wife always likes to point out that she told me to take an extra jacket on that trip, I would just like to tell everyone that on her first backpacking trip, she brought hair conditioner.  Her father actually tried to get her to bring a baseball bat for self defense.  Rookie ; )

My wife loves me. This is something that I never need to wonder about, because I have evidence.

• A week after she got a cast off of her broken ankle, I took her to a concert where we stood for six hours.  She didn’t complain at all, but a drunk hippie guy in front of us kept bumping into her.  She ended up shoving him really hard.  It was pretty awesome.
• When my oldest was two, I dragged all of us out to Steelers training camp in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.  Training camp is in August and it was wicked hot.  While I stood up near the players trying to get autographs, she watched our son, who eventually got bored and took off.  The crowd that had gathered to watch practice, ended up watching my wife chase a two year old in a Polamalu jersey around the hillside.  Every time that he juked and got away from her, they cheered.  At the end of the day, instead of being frustrated with me for keeping us there for hours, she was happy for me as I stood there with a big goofy grin and showed her the Ben Roethlisberger autograph that my dad and I had gotten.
• Every time a big
  

  Big Ben and someones flip phone.

  sporting event comes around, and I say “Man, I’d love to go to that”, she tells me to go.  I would have missed out on some great sports memories if she hadn’t encouraged me to go.

• She dresses me.  I don’t mean in the morning, although I wouldn’t mind.  I mean, if she wasn’t around, I would be wearing threadbare shorts and t-shirts to nearly every occasion.  Weddings, graduations, funerals.  I would reserve my best shorts and t-shirts for those events.  Now, I have considered that maybe she just doesn’t want to be embarrassed when she goes out with me.  That is possible.
• We went on an island vacation together last year, and she spent every day in the water with me, even though the movie Jaws scarred her for life.  Only once did she swim back to the beach.  This might not sound like a big deal, but I’m pretty sure she checks the swimming pool for sharks before she gets in.
• Our first anniversary activities included going to a Pittsburgh Pirates game and sleeping in the back of the car at a state park.  To be fair to myself, we did also spend a night at a bed and breakfast,,,,,,  and tour a submarine.  I’m quite romantic.
• Like I said, I’m very romantic.  One year for Christmas, I gave her a Steelers jersey and a can of Jerome Bettis trading cards.   She graciously waited an entire year to point out how ridiculous the gift was.

So, I look back on all of this and think, wow I would have complained about some of that stuff if I was her.  I think that maybe instead of complaining, she has just decided to get even, and never do laundry,,,,,ever.

LINKS

• Over Easter weekend there was a huge jewel heist.  I know it’s a crime and everything, but something about it is awesome.
• Somewhere out in Colorado, goldfish are taking over a lake, and they are using something called electrofishing to get rid of them.  Here is a video of electrofishing.  I find it funny for some reason.
• Happy National Sibling Day, from the people who bring you Failblog.
• So, this week Directv had to stop running all those Rob Lowe commercials because apparently Comcasts feelings were hurt.  Here is the USA Today story with links to the commercials.

I may have mentioned before that I was at one point an EMT.  Aside from doing emergency calls with the local rescue squad, I worked for an ambulance transport company.  This is really just as thrilling as it sounds.  Ten hour shifts of transporting people from the hospital back to nursing homes or rehab centers.

There were about 12 of us working out of the local office.  We would rotate partners throughout the week.  Some people were good to work with, some not so good.  One day I came into the office, called the dispatcher, and found out I was working with one of the girls.  That was ok with me.  She was perfectly nice, aside from being one of those people who thinks that other people are constantly looking at them.  I don’t know if she even knew that she suffered from this affliction.  It was always like, “Did you see the way that doctor was looking at me?” or “Those nurses were really staring today.”  It became kind of an inside joke.  Whenever she worked with another one of my buddies, I would call them on the radio and say stuff like, “Hey Joe, I’m having the weirdest day, everywhere I go it feels like people are watching me.”  All of this flew right over her head.

We worked our full ten hour shift and returned to the office.  She was driving when we pulled into the lot.  Now, to have this make sense, I’ll have to describe our parking lot.  It ran along on entire side of the the office building and continued past it into a wooded area to the rear.  The parking spaces faced each other across the middle lane that you would drive in and out of.  All of our employees parked on one side and the ambulances parked on the other.  My partner on this day was a pretty good driver, but when she pulled into the lot and tried to back into one of the ambulance spots, she wound up crooked as all get out.  I was reading a book, but I noticed and kind of laughed a little bit.  She put the truck back into drive to pull forward so we could straighten out.  Then we plowed right into the car in the parking spot in front of us.  It was kind of amazing.  My partner started freaking out, jumping up and down on the brake.  We weren’t moving very fast, but the little Ford or Mercury, or whatever it was in front of us looked like we hit it going 30 miles an hour.  We crunched the back of it and pushed it up and over a curb stop and into a tree that crunched the front end.  I guess that 10,000 pounds does a good amount of damage no matter how fast it’s moving.  Because I wasn’t the one driving, I found the whole experience really amusing.  The cops came, the company accident investigator came, and they all thought we were lying about how fast the truck was going.  It didn’t matter, they still had to fix the employees car.  You know why?  The brake line on their ambulance had broken.  These are the moments when you know God is watching.  We drove those ambulances fairly hard.  There were plenty of opportunities for the line to blow during that day.  It finally blew at a time when no one could get hurt.  These are also the days when I know that my guardian angels sense of humor is similar to mine.

I took my kids to a playground recently, so they could tire themselves out, and maybe go to bed on time. Any time you take kids to a public place, you have to always be aware of where they are and who is hanging around them. I think that most every kid has been beaten over the head with Stranger Danger. This is a great service we provide for our youngsters.

It occurred to me the other day that we may be ignoring another demographic where stranger danger is concerned. Adults. Much is made of teaching kids about potentially bad people, but we have neglected to educate our adult population about things they should be on the lookout for. As a public service, I am going to run a series of bulletins. These are people you should be avoiding.

• Guys who wear scarves as fashion statements:  Seriously.  Have you ever seen an interview with Johnny Depp?  My wife convinced me to wear a scarf this winter.  It was freaking cold.  I put it on, and I have to say, it felt good.  So good, in fact, that I was in danger of falling asleep on my feet.  If it is 60 degrees out, though, and some dude with a scarf on comes walking toward you, it would be best to not make eye contact.
• People who wear their pajamas to the store:  Look, speaking for myself here, my wardrobe is already pretty relaxed.  I don’t need to be hanging out with people for whom that level of sloth is acceptable.  Those people are a bad influence.
• People who eat a lot but don’t gain weight:  Again, bad influence.  They may have been gifted with good genetics, or maybe they used some sort of black magic to get an unholy metabolism, but one thing is for sure, if you hang with them, you will get fat.
• People who don’t believe in vaccinating kids:  You don’t need this kind of irrational conspiracy nonsense in your life.  Ask them where their kids are.  They are either going to tell you that they don’t have any, or, that they are home recovering from a bout with polio.
• People with lots of bumper stickers on their car:  Okay, so they obviously care passionately about many things.  One of these things is not their car.  Do you really have time to hear about all of their causes?  Me neither.
• Guys who don’t watch sports:  Not trustworthy.
• Guys who care too much about sports:  This guy is using valuable brain space to store facts, like how many stolen bases Ricky Henderson had in 1982, instead of actually learning useful things.  By the way, it was 130.

This is just the first part of my, Adult Stranger Danger List, or as my wife calls it, the reason Marc has few friends list.  Granted, you may not be abducted by any of these people,,,,,, well, maybe by guys who don’t watch sports, those guys are seriously untrustworthy,,, but all of them can make your day unpleasant.

LINKS

• On this day in 1882, Jesse James was shot in the back by Robert Ford.  Or was he?
• Cool photos from some of the worlds most impressive abandoned hotels.
• Our boys have been devouring pineapples lately.  It gave me the idea that we should try to grow one.  We are going to try planting a pineapple top.
• The new James Bond movie trailer is out.  I’m stoked.

Shortly before my wife and I got married, I had the chance to check an item off of my bucket list. The one and only,,,, the man, the legend,,,,, Sebastian Bach was going to be playing a show in Jersey. Some of you may be saying, “wait, who?” Shame on you. Sebastian is probably one of the greatest vocalists in hard rock/metal history. He is the former front man of the late 80’s/early 90’s band Skid Row. You remember that era. Back when rock music knew how to have fun. Before every single song was self-loathing and super depressing.

This was my wife’s first live rock concert. As she puts it, she kind of jumped in the pool at the deep end. The show was at the Birch Hill Nite Club in Old Bridge, NJ. It was an old venue that had a long history of hosting rock acts that were on their way up or down the musical popularity ladder. A friend of mine, and his girlfriend met us there before the doors opened, and we all stood in the line. We had gotten there early so we could claim a good spot on the floor. This proved to be both a good and a bad move. It was good because we got a great spot. It was bad because there turned out to be three opening acts. Once in a while an opening act is decent, but that’s not usually the case. We went 0 for 3 on this particular night. Since the Birch Hill was a club, there was no seating. We stood for three straight hours of musical punishment. First, was an all girl band. (not around anymore) Then came a bad band from Philly named Generic Angel, or Embarrassed Angel, or maybe Pitchy Angel,,,,,something like that. (not around anymore)   At this point, early twenties Marc and his friend were getting restless. We started to voice our unhappiness. The last opener was a local band that had been around since the mid eighties. (again, not around anymore) This was the last straw. My friend had discovered that he had some pennies in his pocket, and of course he was doing the logical thing and throwing them toward the stage while yelling something that could be described as impolite. This had no effect on the overweight lead singer of the band, who was wearing orange spandex with a jack-o-lantern on the rear. My lasting image of this guy was him cracking open a beverage on stage, taking a huge sloppy swig, and then handing it to someone in the audience. The guy who was on the receiving end of this gift, stood there looking at it, and then slowly reached out and put it back on the stage. If only we could have given the music back.

It took three hours, but eventually Sebastian came out and put on a great show. We all had an awesome time. The thing that makes me laugh the most about that night is my wife’s description of it. When asked about it, she usually says something like, “Do you know who the biggest troublemakers at that show were? Not the biker guys, not the guy with a swastika tattoo on his neck, not the guys who got into a fight down by the stage, no,,,,, it was the guy in the Hawaiian shirt (me) and his friend.”

I’ve aged a little since then, and the Birch Hill has been torn down to make way for a retirement community. I still love the energy of live music though, even if it probably won’t be me and my buddy winging pennies at the stage anymore……. We’ve classed it up, we use quarters or half dollars now.

 

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)