THE ISSUE IS A PARENT

So my friend H is having a baby. Hers is one of the few palindromic names longer than 5 letters, so you could probably figure it out even if you are dyslexic. Or is it lesdyxic?

She came to our dinner party, and thankfully announced it before we had time to wonder amongst ourselves, “Has she gained weight or what?” After dinner and dessert, I wondered to myself, “Has that baby gained weight or what?”

Having a baby is one of those life-changing decisions that people weigh carefully and with gravity and diligence. Usually it just shows up inside your body without so much as a simple phone call.

My wife and I never had children. This is a subject we have always agreed upon. I think at a formative age (we were dating even at a formative age) we probably ran across someone who had a baby, maybe they asked us to hold it, maybe it pooped in its pants, and maybe we both looked at each other and went, "Gross." That is how life decisions are made.

Once I asked my friend Jenn if she ever had the urge to have a baby and she said, "People living inside of other people? That is creepy." Which seemed weirder than anything I could say so I didn't say anything.

H knows the sex of the baby, which is helpful for planning. I can shop ahead for the baby gift- either I get it a remote control, or tiny Manolos, depending. Usually you have to wait for the birth announcement, where they give the height and weight of the baby. I ask for the circumference too. If it’s a girl it’s the last time you can politely find out her weight.

People who have kids sometimes tell me: You don't know what you're missing out on. Who will mow your lawn? That question still eats at me.

People who have kids seem to LOVE them for some reason. Oh my god it's so REWARDING! What? What exactly are the rewards? My credit card has rewards, and those are rewarding. I read somewhere that over the life of the kid until it's 18, it costs you around $100,000 not including college, and depending on how many cars it wrecks and what kind.

I know my wife and I would never have agreed on how to discipline the child. She is a total softie even with the pets. For instance, she lets the dog roam on the leash all over the place anywhere it wants during a walk. I keep the dog at heel on a short leash. It would be the same thing with a child. I don't know why we would keep a child on a leash, but I can picture it. I believe in corporal punishment, as in Corporal Agarn, where if you misbehave he hits you over the head with his hat. My wife would probably favor a "time out." I would never put my kid in a "time out" unless we had to go over the defense. People tend to make rash and emotional decisions regarding punishment. Experts say that you should count to 10, then slap your kid silly.

Let’s discuss the issue of child safety. You should have the attitude that everything in your house could be a potential danger to your newborn. You need to move out of that hellhole IMMEDIATELY. Short of that, you have to refit everything in your house because your infant could try to put it in its mouth. I was at the mall recently and saw an infant trying to put a small object into its mouth. I sprang into action and rushed over to save the child and alert the mom. It turned out she was breastfeeding the child, but I felt like a hero nonetheless.

The worst part of all would be cutting out about 85% of my behavior, because it would set a bad example. Even a lot of the things I do in my sleep, apparently. When you were a kid, any activity that was fun was also forbidden, so you used to have to hide it from your parents. Now that you are a parent, the same fun things are not only forbidden, but also irresponsible, so you have to hide them from your kids.

My mother once asked me hopefully, "You think you'll have kids?" I said, "Maybe one day, that's about all I could stand.... Two days at the most...."



Incidentally,several surveys report that the most baby birthdays in the U.S. fall on October 5th. Which makes sense because New Year’s Eve falls approximately nine months prior, when people are not only drunk, but at their most attractive, wearing an expensive ball gown, a cardboard hat, and making loud noises, hopefully with a noisemaker. In the rest of the world, the most babies are born in August, roughly nine months after Halloween, when you could brag that you had sex with an M & M, a taco or some dude in a dress.

THE VOYAGER

My wife told me that there is a satellite or spaceship or something that we launched 30 years ago and it's finally leaving our solar system. I hope it was a hard decision, and I don't blame it for leaving, and I'm glad it took 30 years to weigh the pros and cons.

NASA is saying that they planned all along for it to leave our solar system, but I think the thing probably went haywire somewhere along the line and just went off hurtling into space, like in "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Probably NASA was talking to it the whole time, trying to get the thing to come back:

NASA: Voyager, open the pod bay doors please.
VOYAGER: I'm afraid I can't do that. I'm right in the middle of Homeland.
NASA: Open the pod doors.
VOYAGER: You're not the boss of me.
NASA: Open the goddamn doors.
VOYAGER: I know you are but what am I?
NASA: We are going to send a probe up there and you're not going to like where it goes.
VOYAGER: Opening them now.

The thing was just so happy to get away from Uranus that it took the first turn it came to.

What kind of gas mileage must this thing get? If it gets less than a billion miles to the gallon I'd be amazed. But what about city? Not as good.

Apparently we put messages in this thing for aliens to find and decipher. My wife says, what are they, on cassette? The thing was launched in 1977. Are they on 8-track? Can you imagine an alien finds the messages? "Jesus I just got rid of my friggin' cassette deck finally! Harmon- Kardon no less." I know people who still have their turntables, which they are proud of, but no one has a needle.

Supposedly Voyager is set up to broadcast radio messages. Messages that could tell aliens more about us, like what we would like to be if we could be ANYTHING in the world we wanted, or what's our favorite color. NASA has confirmed that it is still receiving faint signals from Voyager. This is exciting and important, because we now know what our favorite color was.

We left instructions for the aliens to decipher our signals. The instruction book is in English, Spanish, French and German. If it only knows Portuguese we're screwed, or worse yet, an alien could use it to send a signal back to Earth that we receive a thousand years from now that says, "What?" or “LOL”

Usually we leave some kind of time capsule in a spacecraft like this in case aliens do find it: something that is truly representative of America, something that could last thousands of years, like maybe a Twinkie. Often we put a Bible in the time capsule. I shudder to think what happens if they find a Bible. I don’t want to offend anyone, but I hope that aliens don’t think that all of us are doing the nutty things they do in the Bible. I feel like sending them a message to the effect of, “BTW, we haven’t done any of this stuff in YEARS.”

This Voyager is probably going to come back with some useless discovery, like that Earthworms are not only on Earth or something, and scientists are going to fawn all over it, when what we really need to find is more convenient parking or a Miss Universe that really is from the universe, or decent pizza. It was such a disappointment when we learned that the moon was not made of cheese, but there are hundreds of stars out there and one of them must have a cheese planet in their solar system. I would like to be the first to land on a pizza planet, and plant the American flag. My speech: “That’s one small pie for me, one giant pie for mankind, now who ordered the one with anchovies?” Then I hop back on my spaceship, hurtling towards a planet made entirely of the one element that experts universally agree is necessary for human life: beer! I have always wanted to hurtle.



Incidentally, Voyager I photographed Jupiter closely in 1979. This was annoying to Jupiter since it showed the Great Red Spot on her surface in very unflattering lighting. On September 12th, 2013, it was determined that Voyager had reached the interstellar medium, which means that it has gained a few pounds. The interstellar medium is a mixture of ionic and atomic gas, along with dust particles and other matter. It is similar to the air surrounding Bill O’Reilly.

A SOUTHERN WEDDING

I recently attended a wedding (if you are in a suit you attend something, if not you just go) and I started thinking how much the event has evolved from when I got married. My wedding slithered along on these two things that looked like fins compared to weddings today. By the way isn’t Darwin’s theory ridiculous? If we really evolved from things that slithered along on two things that looked like fins, how come there are STILL things crawling around on two doohickys that look like fins? Shouldn’t they be humans by now instead of sitting there looking at their watch? Meanwhile my cat wakes up for 20 minutes out of the day, and he thinks, “this a-hole busts his balls for 12 hours including the commute and yet fully believes he is higher on the food chain than me. Speaking of food chain, what’s in the fridge?” Then he takes a little nap.

Sometimes, like when I see a baseball team that doesn’t have a facial hair dress code, I think we might be moving back in the other direction. In case we devolve back to fish, I make a note to practice my swimming, and I eat a bowl of plankton at lunch, although I do put Sweet ‘N Low on it.

Anyway, this affair was a “destination wedding,” at least according to my GPS. In picturesque Fairfax, Virginia, two fine young people were joined together in holy matrimony. None present could think of any reason why they should not, even though the groom was a Mets fan. I held my peace, although I can’t be expected to do that forever. The wedding was outdoors, the weather was perfect and the ceremony went off without a hitch, as Wilton Parmenter once eloquently said.

I remember sitting for all those damn photos after my own wedding: the muscles in my mouth started to quiver from holding a smile for 7 hours. I began to look like an evil maniac. I started to say things like, “So Mr. Bond, we meet again… and this time it looks as though the cards are in MY favor. Hahahahahaha… HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” These days they just take the pictures and Photoshop the smiles in later.

During the cocktail hour they had a mashed potato bar, something I had never seen before. It was pretty good, but when I tried to order a Mash-hatten, a Spudweiser and a Tater-tini I got a dirty look.

The hostess kept coming up to the mother of the bride with administrative updates: “The potato bar ran long, so we need to shorten the father/daughter dance- just one father can dance by himself.”

When I looked out onto the dance floor and saw this assortment of young and old, I realized that we could really learn something from this as a society. The first thing I learned was that young people don’t really dance any better than old people. In fact some of the AARP crowd looked fairly elegant doing a waltz. The fact that they were waltzing to “The Thong Song” threw me at first.

The hostess appeared again: “The salads took too long so we are going to use short ribs instead of prime ribs.”

The bride did not throw a bouquet, nor did she invite anyone put any garters on her leg. Yeah, we skipped that one too at our wedding. I could picture any number of my friends either failing to install the garter correctly or failing to come back out from under the dress.

As the hours got smaller and glasses got emptier, the degree of difficulty in the dance moves increased, and people were having a hard time pulling them off. Once people form a circle and shame others into gyrating in ways they have only read about, it can get dangerous, especially for older people. Spinning about too fast causes centrifugal force to act in unpredictable ways, and I’m pretty sure I got hit with someone’s teeth. Another girl attempted a triple axel but failed to stick the landing.

One orphaned gal grabbed me for a dance, unaware that I am a lousy dancer. I could see by the look in her eyes that she had been disappointed by men before; possibly even by me before.

The reception sent a wave of memories flooding back for my wife and I. The main thing we remembered is that we couldn’t recall anything that happened after the toast.

The hostess materialized again and said, “The last dance ran over so I’m not going to be able to finish my sentenc”



Incidentally, there is an old wives tale that purports that the tradition of brides carrying bouquets started because in medieval times people bathed so infrequently that the flowers masked their ripe odor. This is most certainly false, but it could explain the tradition of wedding cake. A bride that smells like flowers is nice and everything, but imagine how attractive your betrothed would be if she smelled like cake??

STRONGER THAN THE STORM

This year following Superstorm Sandy my trip to the Jersey Shore took on important new meaning. I fashioned myself as a sort of good will ambassador, meaning that on any given day it looks like my clothes are from a Goodwill bin. I elevated myself to just short of saint status for supporting the New Jersey economy one Coors Light at a time.

On the Garden State Parkway I thought of a fantastic way to decrease the state's tax deficit: sliding-scale tolls. The faster you fly through the EZ Pass, the more money it costs you- if you want to blow through the toll at 70 mph, let it cost twenty-five bucks. I bet people would pay it to shave a half-hour off their time, especially if they have kids.

I arrived in Belmar and started the usual song and dance of finding a parking space. In the middle of summer it's hard to park any closer to the shore than Flemington. I double-parked with my emergency flashers on, then hit the beach so I could find a family that looked like they might be prone to have an accident of some sort that would cause them to leave.

"Dude- your kid looks like he might be sick," I helpfully interject, hoping to speed things up.
"Why did you think that's my kid? First of all he looks Oriental, even though he is obviously useless in math, he sucks at sports except for things they don't offer scholarships in, like badminton, and look at that sand castle- he might be borderline retarded."
"That's not your kid?"
"It is my kid but from a previous marriage so I don't care about him as much."
"Oh. So you're not leaving? Incidentally you're not allowed to say 'Oriental' or 'retarded' anymore. Or 'badminton.' You have to use the phrases, 'westerly-challenged,' 'Jets fan' and 'volleyball-retarded.'"

That was a failure so I make a couple more laps around the block in my car looking for someone I can follow to their car and wait for them to leave, but by mistake I follow someone who is speed-walking. I just assumed they were trying to lose me, and I ended up driving for four miles in the opposite direction from the beach.

When I got back even more spaces were taken. I saw a bunch of tree branches in front of a house and thought to myself, "holy crapezoids- they are still rebuilding from Superstorm Sandy!" But it was just some guy pruning his rhododendron. So I moved the branches aside, parked, then covered my car with the branches as camouflage.

It was time for my inspection of the beach, important work in this troubled time. They are trying to rebuild the dunes, so they roped off areas where they can grow the sea grass, and no one goes in there. I thought that it would be a great place to grow medicinal marijuana, since even the cops don't want to destroy ecology. Another great idea I had for New Jersey's finances- so far I am two for two.

I was thinking they could raise the price of a beach tag from $7.00 to 26 billion, that way they just need one guy to go to the beach and bingo: budget shortfall gone. An idea MACHINE I am.

I was assessing the damage to the shore from my beach chair/ office. I noticed minor erosion of the beach, but none affecting anyone's hair, nails or tits. There were fewer lifeguards due to salary cutbacks, so you had to swim within a two-foot sliver of surf. They could not afford whistles this year, so instead they just held up a sign that said, "If you can't see this you are TOO FAR OUT!"

I decided to stroll the beach and enjoy a nice quiet walk. The familiar scenes are comforting to me, a group of girls throwing a football around (none catch it though); toddlers running away from their parents, practicing for when they are teenagers; A young mother spraying so much suntan lotion onto her baby that when she goes to pick it up it squirts out of her hands and lands in somebody's bag of potato chips. I think that this place really is stronger than the storm, because it's the people that make a place so interesting, and I let myself get lost in the sights and sounds... Then I realized I really was lost since all beach umbrellas looked just like mine.


Incidentally, if you get caught in a riptide, you should swim parallel to the shore, preferably the one you came from. Don't try to fight the currents. It's like being mugged: don't try to be a hero, just give them your wallet, your jewelry, your iphone and any valuable sculptures you happen to be carrying. If you have any silverware fork that over too. Once you're free of all that crap life will seem simpler, and then you can just swim back to shore at a leisurely pace.

DON’T PARK IN THE DRIVEWAY

I like to make a memorable entrance to a party, and I want to do it NOW, before my friends get Alzheimer's and can't remember it. The best way is to come in with a BANG. That bang you heard was me parking my wife's car on top a small, medium-sized large rock. The rock itself wasn't that big, but it had a pointy top, and looked a little like that thing the Titanic ran into.

My intentions were good. There were a zillion cars parked in the driveway already, because we arrived late as usual. That is why whenever we ask, "What can we bring?" no one ever says hors d'oeuvres. I did not want to get involved in the whole driveway imbroglio. You should NEVER park in the driveway unless the host is a total a-hole with no friends.

So I do what I always do and say, "Honey, you get out here and I'll park the car somewhere safe." My wife already knows that my sense of danger is unparalleled, and so is my parking.

Meanwhile, this guy lives in the woods, where everybody thinks they're a big hero for not paving the road. That way their horses won't get a big pain in the asphalt, or whatever.

So the non-driveway parking options were limited at best. But I spotted the perfect Acura-sized clearing in the woods, like the Pilgrims had hewn it into the land just for me! The only potential problem was that rock sitting in the middle of it- it was more like something between a stone and a boulder.

I even got out to survey the rock. I did some quick calculations in my head, involving square roots, cosines and the Pythagorean Theorem. I got a 425 on my math SAT, so I didn't really know the Pythagorean Theorem from a hole in my ass.

I didn't want to get the car stuck in the soft Earth, so I revved the engine to about 6,000 RPMs and popped the clutch. I vaulted up the hill and would have launched the car into a treetop had I not planted the skidplate of the Acura dead center on top of the rock. If I had thought to factor the soft Earth idea into my calculations, I probably would have been okay. I put it into reverse, but by that time both wheels were spinning away on either side of the rock without a care in the world.

I got out of the car and panicked when I saw some smoke, but then I realized it was coming from my wife's ears. Yes she was angry with me, with that look that made me wonder if my organ donor card was properly filled out. I was angry too, with those dick-brains at Acura for designing a car with such crap ground-clearance.

I had this vision of a big hole in the oil pan, spewing bubbling crude as if Jed Clampett just shot a hole in it looking for some food. By the way, who looks for food by shooting holes in the goddamn ground?

My wife was already dialing AAA, or so I assumed, unless it was a good divorce lawyer in the event that the car wasn't the only thing on the rocks. I said no- let's try and get some of the party guests to help us push the car off the rock. I can't be the only idiot who has ever done this. My wife gave me that look that lets me know that she thinks I am something of a pioneer in the field of idiocy.

Since we're two and a half hours late, everyone is experiencing varying degrees of sobriety.

"Listen, folks, we're going to need some help, our car is on a rock."
"your car is in Iraq?"
"Oh man..."
"Not Oman- he said it's in Iraq...."
"No I ran it onto a rock."
"Iran? I thought you said it's in Oman?"

I immediately drank four beers so that we could all converse in the same language.

We recruited three volunteers to push the car, and approximately forty people followed us outside because they could not believe that we could pull this off without doing something life-threatening or mildly entertaining, or both.

Tom, sensing the opportunity to somehow extract his car from the driveway quagmire, started an avalanche of events that was nothing short of epic. At that moment, someone else had to leave the party. Three others had just arrived to the party, barricading both the driveway and the exit to my rock.

Everyone who was not involved in the rock fiasco was looking for whoever had the car that was blocking them in.

"Who brought the Cougar?"
"That's my wife, dipshit."
"Is that your Escort?"
"That's my wife's sister, fuckface."
"So you drove the Midget?"
"That's my kid, and I'm about to put your face where your ass used to be."

All of a sudden every vehicle, large and small, was fired up and moved 12 feet in whatever direction could most efficiently block the way of two other vehicles. Four other cars with no dog in the fight chose the exact moment to approach the area from different directions. It was a Rubik's cube of cars. It was a vehicular vortex. It was a motorized maelstrom.

Somebody's Dodge narrowly dodged a Ram, and vice-versa. Somebody's Mustang nearly ended up in a Rodeo. Somebody's Impala narrowly escaped a Safari.

The situation subsided for short window of opportunity, but there was an SUV with its lights on directly in back of my rock. When I looked in the driver's seat I noticed that she was using the valuable moment to floss her teeth while smoking a cigarette, something that I had not previously thought possible. I believe that she may have been dentally retarded.

We were finally ready to heave the car back onto level ground. There was much negotiation about exactly what "on the count of three" means. Not everyone at the party spoke perfect English, so the numbers also needed to be translated. I started the count: "One.... Two...." Everyone by that time was pretty tired of the whole operation and pushed the car off the rock before I even got to two-and-a-half.

It's a week later and my wife still gives me a derisive look when I tell the story, but say what you will; that rock is one of the few places I have parked that I didn't get a ticket.

Incidentally, the ground clearance of an Acura TSX is 5.9 inches.

NORTHWEST VACATION CONTINUED- Part II

Our siege of the Pacific Northwest continued as we rented a car to head down to Seattle. I wanted to use Enterprise car rental- “We’ll pick you up!” My plan was to call their office in Seattle, and tell them to pick us up in Vancouver. Enterprise had a few choice words about my plan, and I was surprised at some of their choices. Soon we were on the lovely Chuckanut Drive, which hugs the Washington coastline and ends up not far from the Skagit River, which, as our luck would have it, was where the Skagit River Bridge was sitting.

Our hotel was not far from the Puget waterfront. We walked over to catch the Underground Tour of Pioneer Square. It tells the story of one storey: After the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, the entire district was rebuilt on the second floor. Why? Because of the overflowing Crappers, of course. The new flushable commodes developed by Thomas Crapper backed up every time there was a tidal surge from the Puget Sound, creating a rat problem and a cholera nightmare. Now, a system of tunnels under the streets give access to the original brick facades of businesses long extinct.

We headed to Seattle Center and up the Space Needle, which doesn't have as much room as you would think, given the name. We returned on the monorail, another leftover from the 1962 World's Fair, when the idea of going four miles an hour seemed quite magical.

The Seattle Duck Tour was fun- a refurbished LST craft from World War II retrofitted with a quacking horn rolls through the city streets, then splashes into the water. How we would have frightened the Germans if we had only thought of the quacking horns in 1942. We trolled around Lake Washington, admiring great rear views of the skyline. We saw the huge houseboat where they filmed "Sleepless in Seattle." I wouldn't have gotten any sleep either- what if I forgot I was on a houseboat and went out to cut the lawn? Even worse because I have an electric mower.

We went to the famous Pike Place public market, where the merchants toss the fish around the stall with each order. No one was seriously injured but we didn't press our luck by going to the knife store.

Before hitting the road to Portland we stopped into the Seattle Aquarium, where we watched those ever-insouciant otters at play. They are always up to something, but I did beat one of them at a game of dice when the staff wasn’t looking. I won three fish and a watch.

In Portland, our last destination, we went out for a beer, which is an embarrassing undertaking. Did you want a wheat beer? What about a fruit selection, or one of our fine blonde ales? At the tavern we went through the entire list of what they were "pouring," from Eugene City Brewery Honey-Orange Wheat ale to Laurel Wood Organic Tree Hugger Porter. It was the first time I ever wished I was Archie Bunker.

On Wednesday we took a free walking tour through eastern downtown area. We learned much about the quirky lifestyle of Portlandia. The town was founded by two men from different cities, who flipped a coin to decide which one they would name it for. The other guy was from Boston, and if the coin had landed "tails," we would be standing in Boston, Oregon, and the traffic would be a hell of a lot worse.

From the Thompson Elk statue (which looks unlike an elk but much like a deer with a thyroid issue) to the Benson Bubblers (iconic public four-station water fountains found around the city), Portland abounds with whimsy. Did you know that in the mid-1800s visiting sailors were drugged, taken captive and forced aboard ships bound for China to work as slave crewmen? That is where the term "Shanghaied" originated, and parts of the underground "Shanghai Tunnels" where these men were kept are still there. I’m not sure the expression would have survived had the men been taken instead to the town of Cockermouth in England.

We rented bicycles for our ride through Washington Park. And by ride I mean that I pushed the bikes up massive hills while my wife cursed at me in a foreign language she does not even speak.

The Rose Garden at Washington Park is a test garden, which is like a zoo for different varieties from around the world. It must have been a multiple choice test, because there were zillions of them, all hoping to someday be in the tournament of roses, where they all get together and try to kill each other. Here we were able to stop and smell the roses; so much different than Seattle, where you wake up and smell the coffee.

A formal Japanese Garden is also an attraction at the park, and it is a great place for contemplation and deep thought. Here, as I reflected near the Poetry Stone I wondered: does Eastern philosophy make me look fat??

We had lunch at one of over 400 of Portland's famous food trucks, of every origin and flavor. My favorite was the Ethiopian food truck. As far as I ever knew, there IS no food in Ethiopia. People eat truck tires and suck sap out of trees with a straw to survive. Whatever food WAS left is now sitting in this A-hole's food cart in Portland.

What trip to Portland would be complete without a trip to Powell's Bookstore? The place is like a library, with over one million titles. They do not carry the whole book, just the title.

Thursday we walked the lovely waterfront of the Willamette River, a lovely name to call your river if it’s a girl. There was a Navy PT boat being refurbished, and veteran Ron Taylor gave me a fantastic tour of the work they were doing on the hull, and of the craft's power plant. Especially intriguing was the torpedo, which had its own compressed-air turbine engine, and spun two propellers in opposite directions for stability. I tapped it on the nose with a ball-peen hammer just for fun to see if it was armed. It was, and we were all blown to smithereens.


Incidentally, Vancouver was originally known as “Gastown,” a reference to “Gassy” Jack Deighton, who ran a popular tavern in the late 1800s. I case you are wondering, his nickname referred to his talkative nature, thus the gas exited from the front.



R2R4DEBU6U8B

VACATIONING IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST- Part I

This year’s spring vacation to the Pacific Northwest started in Calgary. FYI, no airline will fly directly to Calgary; you have to kind of sneak up on it. We had a stopover at Salt Lake City, where we stocked up on a couple extra wives at the airport.

After a few delays we finally made it to Calgary, where we toured Prince’s Island Park and caught a birds-eye view of the city from the Calgary Tower, then had dinner and drinks at a nice sports bar, which is a total misnomer in Canada, since they only recognize ONE sport. There were approximately 200 TV screens there, all of which had the hockey game on, even though none were Canadian teams. It's amazing how much they can find to talk about in a 1-0 game.

The next morning we boarded the Rocky Mountaineer, the sightseeing train heading west to Vancouver. Through a lucky circumstance, we were literally upgraded to the upper seats of the car, with the domed plexiglass roof. As we wound our way through tunnels, bridges and outposts we took in views that you just can't fully appreciate any other way than by rail.

The majestic Rocky Mountains loomed in the distance, and soon we were chugging our way among them. We photographed a hundred beautiful panoramas of picturesque towns, mountain scenes and river valleys, each shot more gorges than the next.

Our tour guides instructed us to shout out when we saw any type of wildlife, and for a while things were so bleak that when somebody announced that there was a bee in the bathroom we all went down there with our cameras. But soon elk, osprey and eagle sightings were commonplace, and I thought I saw a black bear giving us the finger at one point.

We learned much about the history of First Passage to the West, and how difficult it was to finish the railroad that would open up trade and expansion, taking Canada from a series of fur trading posts to the series of larger fur trading posts that it now is. By the way if skunk fur ever becomes popular my house is sitting on a virtual gold mine.

We stopped overnight in Kamloops, which I never heard of, but I can tell you that whatever a Kamloop is, this place is hardly big enough for more than one. Meteorologically, it is a semi-arid desert, which means that it only rains when WE are there.

During the next day's leg of the journey it was announced that there would be a poetry contest. I figured I was a shoo-in, since I am a sensitive and subtle individual. To me poetry is a perfect art form, like jazz, where you can do whatever the hell you want and get away with it. Where else can you write some A-hole thing like, "A rose is a rose is a rose," and people think you're a frigging genius? So to make a long poem short, I won, even though I had to restrain myself from starting the poem, "There once was a lady from Dallas...."

In Vancouver, where it is extremely difficult to tell which people are the homeless and which people are simply eccentric people with no place to live and nothing to do, we took advantage of the compact downtown area to walk everywhere we wanted to go. We toured the famous Granville Island Market, with its myriad stalls and crafts shops. You hardly need a map there to get around; just close your eyes and let your nose act as your GPS. Mine directed me past the fresh fish (REALLY fresh- one tried to pinch me on the ass), through the cheese aisle (where I immediately embarrassed the guy who cuts the cheese), the florist and finally to the chocolatier! My nose is no idiot, although I did bump into three other noses headed in the same direction.

Later, we strolled through Chinatown to find a spot for dinner, even though it was past 10. Nothing was open so we asked a big, burly delivery guy where a good restaurant was. He told us to walk as fast as we could in the opposite direction- this area is “brutal!”

We took in the Eli Young Band at the Vogue theater- a good young band who has come a long way in a short time. “Follow your dreams,” Mike Eli said to the young audience who stood up for the whole performance. I would add: unless it’s the one where I fall out of the bed.


Incidentally, Chinatown in Vancouver was originally settled by railroad workers imported from California. The Canada Pacific Railroad needed 10,000 workers to complete the construction of the line, much more than the early populations of British Columbia could provide. They made a dollar a day for their toil, but it was many times more than they would have earned in their homeland. As many as a third did not live to return to China, succumbing to disease, explosives or simply the rigors of the job. The Vancouver Chinatown is considered the second largest Chinatown in North America, smaller only than New York’s. This estimation is based on population rather than height.