Wednesday, May 29, 2013

I love a good book.  Stories that make you wish the book would never end create a hunger for more.  Books by the same author can quench the hunger with the hope that a familiar author will weave an enthralling tale.  Sometimes an even better choice is to read a series of novels by the same author.  I had never thought much about multi-part stories before a neighbor across the alley gave me a box of science fiction novels when I was 12 or 13.  Mervyn Peake had written the Ghormenghast trilogy and all three books were in the box.  I read the books which were a little too science-fictiony for me, but I loved the idea of the trilogy and have held on to those titles.  Lord of the Rings by Tolkein was a must-read, and while I got tired of the genealogies and the poetry, I enjoyed the books and they paved the way for my enjoyment of the movies, because they were pre-sold by the books.  The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever were really two trilogies about a modern-day leper who goes through long adventures in a Tolkein-inspired land with the protagonist filled with angst about his disease.  I enjoyed them, but by the time I had finished them, my taste for fantasy was more than satisfied.  I really enjoyed the Jack Ryan novels from Tom Clancy and would love to have read more, but I lost my devotion to Clancy when he invited other writers into his stable.  The endless series of Dirk Pitt novels by Clive Cussler has kept me interested for years, but the newer series he has done with other authors have been just as good.  W.E.B.B. Griffin has written several different series, most of which I have read and all of which are good, but he uses similar wording and descriptions and clever sayings which become all too familiar after the 8^th or 9^th book, so I have been less motivated to finish some of the more recent.  I did enjoy The Brotherhood of War and especially, The Corps.  One of the things that drives me a bit crazy when reading series is that I am reading them because I want to know what comes next.  When I get to the 4^th book in a 5 book series only to discover that the next book is a year away, the Harry Potter syndrome strikes me and I walk around frustrated.  That hook is what the author and the publisher want, of course, but unlike the Harry Potter fans that read the whole series again every time a new book came out, I feel like I am wasting my time re-reading because there are so many others that I want to read.  Recently, The Hunger Games and The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo were entertaining, and I have been trapped in detective mode for a while reading James Patterson’s Women’s Murder Club and the King and Maxwell books by David Baldacci as well as the Dismas Hardy series by John Lescroart.  Other thrillers that I have recently read and really enjoyed are the Pendergast novels by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child and the Odd Thomas series by Dean Koontz.  My recollections make me realize that I couldn’t name all that I have read,  but to sneak in a couple more recommendations, the Scarpetta Novels by Patricia Cornwell and the Paul Madriani series by Steve Martini have kept me reading.  OK, OK…I’ll stop….there’s too many.  The last series that I have read and very much enjoyed, not for it’s action but for it’s emotion is The Walk by Richard Paul Evans.  I read a book a day for 4 days and I couldn’t get enough.  And at the end of the 4^th book, I found the line, “The fifth book in The Walk series will be published In April, 2014.”  

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Walking down the horizontal limb of a big mulberry tree with my buddies, my feet slipped on the bark and I fell to the unforgiving ground below.  I didn’t bounce, and when I got up, my right arm had an extra elbow between my wrist and the natural one.  Running home with my arm hanging down at 90 degrees from its normal position, my folks rummaged around and found a two foot 2x6 and laid the arm out on it, and off we went to the hospital.  The doctor set the broken bones pulling on one end while Dad held the other.  I must have been well sedated because all I remember is wearing home a plaster-smelling cast.  My hygiene skills as a 10 or 11 year-old weren’t too good to begin with, but with the loss of my right arm, my ability to brush my teeth and eat and write and accomplish other dominant hand tasks was severely limited.  I must have  learned to eat as I didn’t starve to death and my standard haircut was a Butch which required little maintenance on my part.  My teacher must have been patient, and so must have been others around me because after a few weeks, the cast began to have a distinctive odor.  It would itch under the cast and I used a coat hanger wire to reach up and scratch in a totally unsatisfying manner, leaving the feeling of a parade of ants creeping around underneath.  My arm was cast with my elbow at a right angle and that plaster was so heavy you would have assumed that I would have had a pretty buff bicep when it came off.  Not so.  A cast saw has a blade that vibrates back and forth such that the stroke is so small that it doesn’t cut the skin underneath.  Before the cast was applied, a cloth wrap was put around the arm and the plaster material which contains gauze inside it is wrapped around the fabric and left to set.  The cloth wrap is what picks up the odor from the millions of dead skin cells and bacteria that slough off and have nowhere to go.  When the plaster was cut and pried off and the cloth cut and removed, I was left with an appendage that I didn’t even recognize.  It was shriveled and shrunken and hairy and, if Stephen Spielberg was looking for an idea of what ET would look like, he could have just extrapolated from my poor arm.  It was weak, as you might imagine, and tender and acted like it belonged to someone else.  It took a while to learn to use it normally again.  The fiberglass casts that kids get today are a whole different story.  They are light and come in so many pretty colors that kids are undoubtedly waiting in line just to break something so they can have such a cool cast.  I wish I could say the whole experience gave me a total aversion to such injuries, but alas, I cannot.  I guess you might say I’m just a good healer.

Monday, May 27, 2013

Yesterday I was inspired to invite a pair of great 10 year-olds, Keith and Jacob, to work and play with me today.  Incredibly, they both accepted so I agreed to pick them up at 7 AM.  They were both standing outside of their houses with no one else up, excited to get going.  The first thing I had planned for us was to fill a bunch of sand bags with the sand that had accumulated in my office parking lot over the winter.  It was finally dry and has had sun on it for 3, count them, 3 days.  I have collected 14 or 15 bags and with scoop shovels at the ready, we drove to the lot and began to fill them.  They weren’t too practiced at the art of using a flat-nose shovel, but after a few minutes they began to get the hang of it and soon were filling the sacks faster than I could tie them off.  8 of the sacks held about 100lbs,  5 about 60 lbs, and the rest about 40lbs.  I quickly became aware that I can no longer comfortably pick a 100lb. sack off of the ground and put it in the back of a pickup.  With their help, we did get the truck loaded with about 1200lbs of sand and while I had intended to go into town to buy some polyethylene hose and fittings, we  instead  went back home to unload the cargo.  We stacked it on a pallet and then took off for Home Depot.  The boys were keeping track of the time I guess, because by the time we had made the purchases, they informed me we had been there an hour which is really not that bad for Home Depot.  On the way home we had to make a detour to McDonalds to see if the chocolate shake I had the other day in Anchorage was an anomaly or if all the McDonalds shakes had suddenly become delicious.  It was an anomaly.  And I worried about the boys because they both ordered vanilla.  Back home again, we did the plumbing on the garden water system and they got to dig a trench across the road with a pick for the pipe, and finally we headed up Baldy.  The first 10 minutes is always the steepest and I am silently reminding myself that after the burn, it all gets much easier.  I didn’t count on the fact that, while I hike with 18 year olds whose muscle:mass ratio is way better than mine, these boys only weigh about 15 lbs. and they just levitate up the mountain.  My tried and true method for insuring that I  don’t run out of wind or strength is to count paces.  I usually climb steadily for 40 or 60 or 80 paces and then rest for 20 beats and then do it again.  You never need more than 20 beats of rest, but sometimes you need it more often.  Everytime I crested a rise, there they were sitting on the next one waiting for me.  We finally made the summit, took a picture, and then ran down.  Round trip time-53:05.  Not too bad figuring I was walking all the time and they were waiting about half the time.  Because they didn’t look too tired, I invited them to help spread a couple of inches of compost on 6 garden rows and because it involved the loader, they were eager to help.  We got the compost on and then Beverly fed us lunch.  We finished up burying soaker hoses in each row and giving each boy a loader-operator lesson, and then it was 4PM and time to go to Carolyn’s for a Memorial Day picnic and to celebrate Cayden’s birthday.  At the end of the day, I am left to examine reality:  1. I am not 10 any more.  2.  I hurt more than I used to when I overwork.  3.  Despite the fact that my weight is in control, I could be more comfortable being a bit lighter.  4. Working is more fun if you are giggling all day.

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Pandora was my idea.  Sort of .  When MP3 music first came out and the internet was burgeoning, I speculated out loud that before long, buying music would be a thing of the past.  My thought was that you would pay for a subscription to a music service that was completely customizable so that you could create a playlist that would be streamed to you over the internet.  Apparently I was not the only one thinking that this was on the horizon, as the folks at Pandora created the “Music Genome Project”.  They collected and cataloged a gigantic library of music, categorizing each song and artist that would allow them to be related to other songs and artists in a similar category.  By selecting a song or artist or a combination of the two, their computer could pick music or artists in a similar genre and combine them into a customized “station” that had music you very likely would approve of.  OK….This implementation was far and away more complex and slicker than my original concept, and it was FREE.  Or nearly so.  A few years ago they began to sneak some advertisements into the free version, but the paid version is ad-free which is how I really prefer my music.  I cannot tolerate radio because I cannot tolerate commercials any more.  There must be a cosmic maximum of commercials that one can be exposed to in a lifetime before their brain explodes, and I think that between all the television we watched as kids as well as the non-stop AM radio we listened to, I am very close to that maximum.  That is why Pandora was such a blessing in my life.  Before Pandora, to avoid commercials, I would play cd’s and cassette tapes in my office for background music, and to sing along with.  To do this, someone had to be the DJ which was usually me and was way too much trouble.  When the MP3 revolution occurred, I ripped all of my CDs into MP3s and burned them onto a CD to play in the office.  I could get about 12 hours of music on a CD which was much better, but even with many MP3 CDs, variety was still a problem, and so was normalization (hearing everything at the same volume rather than one song being loud and another soft).  And then came Pandora.  For $25 a year, I could set up multiple stations, pick the one we’d like to listen to, and then leave it to their computer to make all those hard music decisions for us.  My Pandora has about 40 stations now, and sometimes unsavory stations created by ghosts….or maybe zombies….show up, but for the most part I am able to sing along with whatever station we choose.  I don’t complain about variety now, and my staff doesn’t complain, they just celebrate the days that Robert works as he is much more open-minded about what he will listen to. 

Friday, May 24, 2013

Our first real garden was on the terrace above our house at Camp Zama, Japan.  We scratched a place to grow our vegetables and when they were replacing the windows in all the military housing, I co-opted some of the discards and built an 8x8x8 greenhouse.  The garden was largely unsuccessful because the soil just wasn’t great.  The jungle behind our house grew kudzoo into the treetops, but our soil was mostly what was left over after building the houses and the terrace walls, so peas and radishes and lettuce and not much more.  The town of Zama was largely agricultural and they grew huge daikon (a very large Japanese radish-like vegetable) just outside the base, but not so on our hill.  Doing the military move doesn’t lend itself to vegetable gardening because you are not on location long enough to develop the soil and build up a supply of compost, so the next time we grew a substantial garden was 8 or 9 years later in Ben Franklin Village outside of Mannheim, Germany.  We were fortunate to live in a duplex with a reasonable yard, and we set out early to put in a garden.  With shovel and rake and hoe and wheelbarrow, we removed the sod and turned the earth and found…..construction debris 50 years or so old.  It was impressive to dig up pieces of 2x4 that were still in reasonable shape after all that time.   To improve the soil, we decided we needed compost and I built a bin on the side of our gardening shed and put into it all of the leaves and grass clippings, watered liberally, and added fertilizer and soon we had a smoking-hot mix that degraded quickly into compost.  We added the compost to the soil which aerated it and nourished it and our garden took off.  We grew all of the standard vegetables, and I held a pumpkin-growing contest with each of the kids.  They all got to plant a pumpkin and baby it and on the pre-determined day, we picked the pumpkins and weighed them and ………somebody won.  I decided to hold another contest at the dental clinic.  The deal was that I would bring them a pumpkin and they would bring back pumpkin bread for taste-testing.  I supplied butter and milk and we ate a lot of delicious pumpkin bread.  And…..somebody won.  The only thing I remember is that the judges obviously didn’t have good taste, because MY bread was clearly the best, if not the winner.  We moved on from Germany in June of 2003 and left a garden at the brink of production.  We had to argue with the housing authorities that the garden was an asset and that the next tenants would surely appreciate it, and they finally gave up on their demands that we tear it out and resod the 15’x 30’ space.  Rebecca and Shawn, after they were married, traveled to Germany and stopped by to see our house.  The apple tree we planted was still there and producing apples, but the garden was gone.  When we built our new home here in Eagle River, AK, it took me a year or two to make a flat spot for a garden, but that finally happened.  The real problem was that our soil looks very much like rocks.  In fact, it is rocks.  Beverly ordered 6 dump truck loads of soil to hide the rocks with, but the soil still wanted nutrition.  We needed compost!  One day on the way home from work I noticed a lawn service truck parked on the street down the mountain a ways.  I stopped to talk to the boss about his grass clippings and he agreed to give my dump a try instead of paying for dumping at the landfill.  Jeff, the Lawn Lizard, began hauling his clippings and leaves up to my house and dumping them on the property.  I would push and pile and water the clippings and wait for them to compost, and eventually they did.  Jeff, who is a great guy, has continued to haul his yard waste to my pile and I continue to nurse it.  Today, I restacked the compost.  It is divided into 4 piles because it takes about 4 years for the lawn waste to become excellent compost.  Those many months of cold weather slow down the process considerably, but the wait is worth it.  Tomorrow I will compost the beds in the green house and the apple trees and the garden rows and then plant the seeds.  We have been waiting impatiently for weeks because the failure of global warming led to the most and latest snowfall here ever.  The starts we planted in the house in March are already producing cucumbers 6” long.  Last year the potatoes and carrots  and so on were great.  No pumpkins though.  The growing season is just too short.  Zucchini bread, anyone? 

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Ice cream is a favorite.  Mine, of course, and of most everyone elses (except the lactose intolerant-Sorry Sarah).   I have mentioned my mother’s preference for imitation ice milk, and how we ate it as if we had good sense.  We had a friend who was a milk-man.  On his truck he carried a variety of real ice creams and one day he had several half-gallons that were melty and he couldn’t sell them, so he gave them to us.  I thought I was in heaven.  My underdeveloped palate didn’t know what it had been missing.  I would sometimes go to the ice cream counter in the Skaggs drug store where they served ice cream cones and buy a triple scoop (two side-by-side and one on top) of marble fudge or chocolate.  Occasionally in the summer, we would make home-made ice cream in the hand crank White-Mountain freezer.  The ice cream was good but wasn’t creamy, probably because Mom made it with milk and didn’t put much cream in it.  On my Costa Rica sojourn as an 18 year old, I found a little shop that had chocolate ice cream that made me weak in the knees, and that really became my standard.  If I couldn’t walk after eating, either I was sick or the ice cream was really good.  After Beverly and I married, we bought an electric 6-quart White Mountain ice cream freezer and we started experimenting to find the best concoctions we could put together.  We made Triple-Coronary-Bypass Chocolate that you literally could only eat a cup of because it was so rich and so chocolaty.  We made Custard Vanilla that was so golden-creamy that each spoonful had to dissolve on your tongue because it was too good to swallow.  We made a cherry that was a delight to eat because the little cherry bits were the perfect fruity sweet burst in every bite.   I started making a Honey Vanilla that probably became the most requested flavor because it was creamy and sweet, but the honey added another semi-spicy aromatic taste that was hard to say no to.  I have always enjoyed shakes at Dairy Queen, and my favorite became a Butterscotch Pecan with extra butterscotch, or even better,  a Snickers Blizzard with extra butterscotch syrup or, lacking that, caramel syrup.  In Fairbanks there was an ice cream shop called Hot Licks that made a variety of delicious home-made ice creams with their own home-made syrups.  It was located in an intimate storefront with comfortable chairs and tables in conversations pits, more like you might find in a living room than a restaurant.  They served their trademark ice creams (different every day) at a counter in the front along with hot chocolates and other ice cream compatible goodies.  I made it a point to visit on my every-3-week trips for a year or so.  And because it was so good, they closed the business and reopened in a different location with an outdoor order window you had to wait in line on the sidewalk for and eat at a plastic table cemented into the ground.  The ice cream was good, but the charm factor was nil, and I don’t think they survived.  Nowadays, Robert has become the ice cream adventurer, and Carolyn and Tyson make their contributions.  Beverly and I don’t make much unless there is a big family gathering because if I make ice cream, I gain 5 pounds.  We don’t even buy ice cream very often for the same reason.  On my way home tonight, however, I stopped at McDonalds and ordered a large chocolate shake, heavy on the chocolate.  Now maybe it is just that I am ice cream-deprived, but I thought that was the best chocolate shake I have ever had in my life.  I almost went back and got another one, but you know what they say about discretion and self-control.   

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

As odd as it may seem magnetism does not have to involve iron.  For example, I have personally witnessed the magnetic attraction of kids to water.  I have witnessed the attraction of a single puddle of water in my entire driveway for every child in the vicinity.  To the adult mind, footwear would be a definite issue, but the attraction is so powerful that it overcomes reason and logic.  The drive to stamp in the mud puddle is so strong, that footwear is not a consideration.   No matter if the child is wearing Sunday shoes and white socks or knee-high rubber boots, he or she will be just as likely to be ankle deep in  the water within seconds.  If there is more water than just a puddle, the attraction extends beyond the feet.  If a stream or the edge of a lake is the attractant, then one can measure it’s strength by the height of the waterline on the clothing.  Often, the child will be found completely soaked with no regard for the temperature or the cleanliness of the water.  This evening we attended the annual Cub Scout Regatta that we hold at Meadow Creek.  The scouts each make a floatable hunk of wood charitably thought of as a boat, and then release the boats together where the creek passes through a culvert.  All the children race to the other end of the culvert to see the boats pass through, and then follow them along the course of Meadow Creek for another 300 yards to where it empties into Eagle River.  Knowing that every child would be going home wet even though the day was cloudy and the temperature was in the 50’s, I tried to hold in check the my tendency to warn them away from the water.  I asked several if they were wet yet, but got few responses because even though they likely were wet, they were reluctant to admit it because they were afraid they would be told to go dry off and warm up.  Several of the boys actually wore rain boots and I applauded their foresight.  Sure enough, halfway down the course of the creek, one of the boys was wading in the creek with the water over the tops of the boots so that they were only providing cushioning from the rocks.  An adult cannot comprehend how one could tolerate the cold wet boots, but there are probably great insulating properties in a boot full of water, similar to a wetsuit.  Or not.  Anyway, by the time the boys had run the race 4 or 5 times with their siblings chasing along, nearly every shoe was leaving squishy tracks in its wake.  While to me, this would be the opposite of fun, I am clearly over the age limit required to appreciate it.  That is why, having learned from my own children the hopelessness of haranguing, I am pleased to leave it to their parents.   

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

My wife is working in the basement and has uncovered a treasure trove.  For years, my comic book collection has only been seen by ferreting grandchildren.  Occasionally I might find a cover here or a page there that I would gingerly pick up giving it the respect it is due and return it to the hidden box, but I haven’t read one of them in decades.  It wasn’t always like that.  Some might say that reading comic books is a waste of time, and I have certainly wasted plenty of time reading them, but it is reading and even if there are pictures, reading is a skill that is not developed in a shocking slice of our society.  I’m not sure where my first comics came from, but when I was 8 or 10, Doug and Steve Tallakson would let me read some of theirs occasionally.  They had the some of the stuffy Classics Illustrated volumes which I read when I couldn’t get something more exciting, but they also had Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories and my favorite, Uncle Scrooge, as well as a smattering of the DC titles like Superman, Superboy, Supergirl, Action Comics, The Flash, The Green Lantern, etc.  You could tell the oldest and most precious of their magazines because the price on the cover was 10 cents. Their Mom would make them clean out their closet every year or so and they would sell me their cast off titles at exorbitant prices.  I began to accumulate my own collection and by the time I was 12 or 13, I was taking my lawn mowing money to the Skaggs Drug Store and buying hot titles like Archie.  Comics were 12 cents by then and I would carefully calculate how many I could buy with the exact change I had, taking in to account the 4% sales tax Arizona had at the time.  I bought a subscription to Batman and Bob Hope and looked forward to their arrival every month, but I hit the real bonanza when I found a used book store that sold older comics with most of the covers gone making them useless to a collector for 5 or 10 cents a piece.  I wasn’t a collector.  I was a reader.  You might have even said I was a user.  As an adult, I would occasionally come across collection volumes in book stores and I bought huge treasuries of Uncle Scrooge, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Mickey Mouse, all of which are much the worse for wear having raised my 6 children and now working through the 20 grandchildren as they visit.  I acquired a few copies of Archie Comics Digest and my daughter Sarah loved them and began to spend her hard-earned cash on them.  Their price tag was in the multiple dollars like it is now, and I was Oh So tempted to keep her from buying them, but it was her cash.  Luckily, while we were stationed in  Germany, someone asked me if I wanted some comic books for my kids and, never one to turn down an offer like that, accepted gladly.  She brought a big box of the Digests and it took Sarah months to wade through them. Later, after Robert and Bethany married, Bethany contributed another box of Archies and Sarah was in heaven.  Archie has lost his charm for me now.  Even Uncle Scrooge and his money bin don’t lead me away like he used to.  Neither Superman or Batman or even, my action figure favorite, Spiderman thrill me like they once did.  I have gone through a Doonesbury phase and I really enjoyed Calvin and Hobbes and Bloom County and The Far Side and the Peanuts collections have been special, but  I find I have graduated finally to text.  I guess I just don’t need the pictures any more.

Monday, May 20, 2013

I remember meeting my uncle, Scoop Eshelman , for the first time when I was about 6 or 7.  I’m sure I had met him previously, but my family had moved from Iowa when I was 2, and I had so many uncles and aunts, (Dad had 10 siblings, Mom had 3, all of whom lived close to Iowa) it was hard to keep them all straight. He and my aunt, Barbara had come to Arizona from Omaha to visit during the winter.  As you might imagine, winter is a popular time to visit Arizona.  Scoop had forgotten his razor and had been to the drug store to buy a new one. The razor company had included with the purchase a promotional book about space, featuring Alan Shepherd, the first American to travel into space.  As a peace offering for giving up my bedroom, he gave me that book which I still have due to my nearly complete inability to get rid of a book.  During the same trip, the Great Squirt Gun war began.  For a reason I cannot begin to remember, each time Scoop and I saw each other over the next 10 or 15 years, and we only saw each other infrequently, one or the other or both of us would come to the meeting armed with a squirt gun.  The surprise of being blasted unexpectedly made family reunions and other visits an adventure I didn’t share with anyone else.  It wasn’t until years later when Barb and Scoop made their home in the Phoenix area that I really got to know my uncle.  He was one of the most gentle and polite and kind men I had ever come to know.  He was always genuinely concerned about each member of my family and never wanted to be a burden to anyone. He was a great example of what a gentleman should be.  Restoring player pianos became a hobby he enjoyed in his later years and I was fascinated by his persistence in acquiring parts and supplies and rebuilding beautiful pianos and collecting the paper rolls that made them play.  I am still jealous of the talent he had in crafting those vintage instruments.  Scoop became ill recently and at 85 years of age, passed away on May 15, 2013.  I will treasure the memories I have of him and will miss his always smiling face when I go home to visit.                                      

Friday, May 17, 2013

Have you ever considered just how amazing your brain really is?  This is a corollary question to the just as amazing query, ‘Have you ever considered just how amazing your body really is?’  The body is indeed amazing, but let’s consider just the brain.  Maybe 8 years ago, I realized that living on the side of a mountain had it’s disadvantages.  One major problem is that there isn’t much “flat” here.  I admire the Peruvian natives who have terraced the tops of their steep mountains for centuries to produce crops, but I don’t have the time or manpower to cut those terraces out by hand, so I bought a tracked loader.  If you aren’t familiar with loaders, ask your 3 year old.  He’ll help you out.  Anyway, I was able to move a lot of dirt and rock with that loader.  Loaders are better at moving dirt than digging dirt however, and it came to me that I would be far more efficient with an excavator.  My original thought was that a backhoe would be perfect (a cross between a farm tractor with a loader bucket on the front and a hoe on the back), but after renting one a couple of times, I understood the value of tracks when working on a slope as opposed to rubber tires.   The same guy who sold me the loader was happy to sell me an excavator, and I could dig.  You can see it coming already, I’m sure, but digging without a dump truck isn’t very efficient, so I got a dump truck and I was happy…..for a time.  I created a large flat terrace on both sides of the house where I could build a greenhouse and garden and compost and store all the heavy equipment and other essential building materials I collect.  Road work isn’t done very efficiently by either loaders or excavators.  Bulldozers are desirable.  Once again the equipment dealer had “such a deal” on a used bulldozer that I couldn’t say no, so my collection is now complete.  (I would really like to have a small grader, but I don’t think it’s cost-effective.)  Now, for the Brain.  I have spent hours in the seat of each of these pieces of equipment.  It takes a little while playing with the controls and experimentation with dirt to learn what the capabilities are, but in a short time moving and rotating and filling and dumping become second nature that doesn’t take a thought.  In fact, after your brain has put together the computer program to fire the right muscle at the right time to accomplish a certain action, the connection becomes one between the eyes and the hands more than conscious movement.  If conscious thought interferes with the movement, you are likely to do the wrong thing instead of the right one, i.e. instead of dumping, you may lower the bucket with disastrous consequences.  Everyone has experienced the same thing as they become comfortable driving a new car or operating a sewing machine or knowing which knob on the stove to  turn to light a particular burner.  The amazing part……there is really no limit to the number of different tasks your brain can learn without confusing them.  My excavator sat all winter long after last using it to lift the snow machines down from the top of the storage container on my “flat” space.  I store them up there to keep them out of the way, and after a grizzly bear chewed the seats off two machines, to keep them out of the bear’s way.  A week ago, Robert helped me hook up each machine to lift  them back to top of the container for the summer.  With 6 months away from the controls, my brain still knew which lever to pull and handle to twist without a lot of my input.  I can still get in my 1958 International Harvester pickup which I haven’t driven for a long time and feel perfectly comfortable at the controls.  Your brain relegates these endless tasks termed “muscle memory” to automatic execution to allow your brain to engage in reason and logic without getting bogged down in the minutiae of which muscles to use when you walk or throw or play an instrument or swallow.  Each of these requires a spectacularly complicated and orchestrated series of nerves and muscles firing in proper sequence with meticulous timing.  Like I said, the brain is amazing, and that is just a small part of all the things it does without even coming close to its limits.  My challenge every day is to stretch it.                                                                                

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Pomp and Circumstance is my favorite part of a graduation ceremony.  It seems to set the perfect tone for the radical departure from the status quo that graduation is.  I attended the graduation of Chugiak High School this evening, and the rest of the ceremony was much like most other graduations I have attended.  The speakers tried to make poignant comments about what has happened in their scholastic career and how that has prepared them to face the future.  These talks, as long as you don’t invite a politician to politicize the event, have run a very narrow track since graduations began.  Not that they aren’t accurate or that they aren’t warranted: Just that there really isn’t much new that they could say that hasn’t been said before.  Now I have had some experience with graduations.  I, myself, graduated from the 8^th. Grade, High School, Community College, University, Dental School, General Practice Residency, Master’s Program, and Orthodontic Residency.  Besides those ceremonies,  I have attended my 6 children’s graduations from High School, and 5 from college, not to mention  2 sons-in-law’s college graduations as well as assorted siblings, in-laws, nieces and nephews.  Tonight’s graduation was to congratulate the 7 youth from my ward who completed their High School careers.   For me, apart from enjoying Pomp and Circumstance again, the highlight was in the handshake and  the hug of someone who has completed one part of his or her life to embark on a completely new and unfamiliar tack.  It is tempting for them to think that the next part of their lives will be scary and that the best part of their lives has already been lived.  As someone who has been there, my observation is that the scariness lasts only until the 2^nd day of college or work or whatever’s next, and accommodation to the new circumstance becomes the new status quo.  And mostly, the best part is still ahead.  I pity those folks who so revel in their high school years that they believe that they have already lived their best moments.  One’s best moments are always in front of you, and always what you make of them.  Your memories of times past may be fond, but that doesn’t excuse the laziness of believing that you can’t see a better future ahead.  High School was all I knew at the time, but looking through the lens of my life since, I would never choose to go back and do it again.  Life has been so much better since that living it again with the knowledge what was to come would be living perdition.                                                                                               

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Shoes, in our society, are ubiquitous.  Not only do we have shoes; we have lots of shoes.  Between hand-me-downs and gifts and too-cute-not-to-buy, even babies have multiple pairs that they outgrow in a few months.  As a child, I had a series of high-top tennis shoes that I wore the tops out of and a pair of Sunday shoes that I outgrew.  I actually didn’t wear shoes during the warm months except to school, so it is a wonder that I would wear out my shoes before I outgrew them.  I probably had boots as a little kid, but my Dad bought me my first pair of real boots to go hunting with.  Tennis shoes just were not cactus resistant enough, so it was Yates Army Navy Store to the rescue.  Dad wore boots every day.  He was a welder and so his were steel-toed boots.  He cut flaps of leather to go over the laces so that sparks and slag wouldn’t burn through the tongue and the sock and the foot.  I have scars on my own feet from that very thing.  In high school with Viet Nam raging, I bought a pair of Army Jungle Boots and wore them a long time for hiking.  With almost no padding or support, it was only the resilience of youth that allowed me to wear them down the Grand Canyon more than once.  I also had a pair of black leather motorcycle boots that I wore riding my bike. In college I added to my collection of boots when I worked in an underground copper mine.  Steel-toed boots with metatarsal arch protection were required and I was grateful for them more than once.  In dental school, I bought a pair of alpine-style hiking boots with the bright red laces and wore them for years, but it wasn’t until I was in the Army that my boot collection began to proliferate.  Combat boots were required wear of course, and then while visiting Korea, I had a pair of Cowboy boots made.  They were and are still uncomfortable and I wonder how people wear Cowboy boots preferentially.  In Alaska, my unit decided we needed special cold-weather Combat boots, and so bought us low-end Danner boots with felt insoles.  They also gave us Bunny Boots for real cold-weather operations.  Sorrels were required for civilian cold weather wear and then several pairs of tennis-shoe hikers made their way through my collection.  In preparation for a long hike over the Chilkoot trail, I bought a pair of the most comfortable Danners I have ever seen.  They are waterproof, insulated and feel like putting your foot into a snug feather bed.  They are also a bit heavy, and when my wife saw a lighter pair at Costco, she couldn’t resist buying me a pair.   Meanwhile, winter hiking with crampons required a special boot which I acquired.  Now this is just my boot history.  We’ll leave the shoe history for another day, but the dirty secret is that adults’ feet don’t really grow much, so unless you wear a shoe out or throw it out, it just adds to the clutter in your closet.  I have worn some shoes out and thrown some out, but the quantity of boots, let alone shoes, is embarrassing.  I have traveled enough to have seen areas of the world where people have only one or two pairs of shoes, and yet for us they are as common as…well….shoes.                                                                                                                             

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

As a little boy, one of the vivid memories I have is of eating tomatoes from my Grandma’s garden.  We sometimes traveled to Iowa to visit the family and most often stayed with my Mother’s parents on the farm outside of Griswold.  The farm was full of exciting mysteries for me; tractors and pigs and cows, the barn and hay barn, a pond for fishing and, of course, Grandma’s garden.  Grandma didn’t generally grow much corn, but always knew someone whose sweet corn was ready to harvest.  We would visit and pick and I would eat a dozen ears or so.  The tomatoes I remember because they were giant and tangy-sweet and so plentiful.  Compared to what we got from the grocery store in Phoenix, they were a different fruit. My in-laws have always gardened and their approach to tomatoes is to plant the tomatoes in the field and let them grow and then continuously harvest them until the summer heat kills them off.  They let the leaves overgrow to protect the tomatoes from the sun. Their tomatoes are also very tasty.  In the last 20 years or so, my Dad has returned to his roots.  He left Iowa when I was 2 wishing to never farm again, but he has turned a good portion of the back yard into a productive vegetable garden that he fusses with all year long with a plastic cover and companion plants to keep the pests away and timers for the water system and misters and a fan to keep it cool in the summer.  He is always very proud of his tomatoes and they are good.  We have tried to grow tomatoes since moving to Alaska, but have yet to be anything except disappointed.  We have started our own plants and bought seedlings and raised them to a respectable size, but have had very little ripe fruit by the end of the growing season.  I built a greenhouse years ago when we lived in Japan that was about 10 x 10 and 8 feet tall.  I had tomatoes growing all over it, but had almost no fruit.  Beverly, Jonathon and I toured the hydroponic garden at Epcot Center and I was fascinated with the many ways they had of supplying nutrients to their plants with roots that were submerged and roots that were stationary and sprayed at intervals and plants that moved past a sprayer that wetted the roots as they passed by.  Last year in our smaller greenhouse, we once again grew big plants with almost no fruit.  Part of the problem may be in the varieties of tomatoes we have grown.  It seems that most of the starts you buy at WalMart are of the determinate variety.  Determinates grow 3 or 4 feet tall, and bud and flower all at once, so the whole crop from one plant is harvested at the same time.  Indeterminate varieties bear for a whole season all along the plant.  Here, the short growing season and inadequate heat make for a bunch of baby green tomatoes from a determinate plant that never mature enough to eat.  We recently toured a greenhouse at BYU-Idaho that grew indeterminate tomatoes in a way I had never seen.  The plants were rooted in a plastic trench that had nutrients circulated through it.  The vines grew up and were suspended by strings and as a section matured and the tomatoes were harvested, the branches were plucked off and the stem was continuously wrapped around the whole 15 foot long section of plants at the base.  The active part of plant with flowers and fruit was always suspended along-side all of it’s neighbors and the whole assemblage grew slowly counter-clockwise.  The stems we saw were easily 20 or 25 feet long, and according to the gardeners, a year or so old.  We are about to give it a go again, but I think this year I will hedge my bet with a few shelves and a grow light in my boiler room.  That should keep it warm enough and by this time next year, it may look like Jack’s beanstalk decided to grow next to my water heater.

Monday, May 13, 2013

At a high school football game in my youth, I remember a football player being injured so severely that he was in a coma for some time.  I don’t recall whether he eventually recovered or not, but his injury made me aware, if only dormantly, that brains are delicate structures.  Traumatic brain injury almost seems to be epidemic, and despite the bicycle helmets we force our children to wear, we fail to protect them in the most one of the most obvious of ways: limiting their participation in sports where the incidence of brain injury is highest.  I understand that boys in particular love the macho feeling of hitting each other in football or hockey, but the price of a lifelong deficit from an injury in youth is almost not spoken of.  I had a young man in my office recently who has constant migraine headaches following Traumatic Brain Injury sustained in a hockey game 2 years ago.  I was told of a soccer player today that has been permanently removed from the game because of her recurrent brain injury.  In the past month in my circle of youthful friends, one was injured falling on the ice and another in a 4-wheeler accident.  I wonder if Muhammad Ali thought his Parkinson’s was worth it.  The brain-case is pretty tough, and while cracking the skull is possible and undoubtedly injurious to the brain,  the majority of concussions are from sudden deceleration.  The skull stops but the jello  inside keeps on going until it slams into the bony case.  A subdural hematoma, where blood from a torn vessel begins to compress the brain as it collects in the skull, is the life-threatening injury in the time soon after a trauma.  Subdural hematomas are relatively rare, but TBI  can have manifestations that occur later and can have life-long consequences.  Our returning soldiers have a high incidence of TBI from injuries sustained in explosions and spend months and years trying to overcome their injuries. These injuries can be cumulative and take a long time to heal.  We only get one brain and I figure I have been given more chances than I deserve healing mine.  I hope my grandkids can avoid the trauma in the first place.  

Sunday, May 12, 2013

I spent the day hearing how wonderful other people’s mothers are, and I’m sure they are.  It’s too bad they couldn’t have had my Mom so that they could have experienced what true excellence in motherhood is about.  My Mom was born on the farm in a small town in Iowa.  She was the youngest of 4, with 3 older brothers.  She attended school in a one-room schoolhouse as was common in rural Iowa at the time, and then attended high school at Griswold High.  Her mother was a true farm wife and mother.  She had a vegetable garden every year, canned and preserved her produce, cooked 3 meals a day for her family and whatever hired hands were there, raised chickens,  kept her house neat as a pin, was handy at keeping the house in repair and managing affairs on the farm while her husband was farming.  My Mom learned these skills and values well, and I remember her doing much of the same as I grew up.  She met my Dad and married him, and a two years and two babies later they packed up everything and moved to Phoenix, Arizona.  We lived in a humble unair-conditioned house for a few years and then in 1960, moved into a brand new home a few blocks away.  While I never understood that we were in a lower slice of the socioeconomic strata, she made our house a home.  She made curtains for all the windows, besides making most of the clothes for my 3 sisters and herself.  She cooked and cleaned and gardened and raised kids, and when the girls were all in school, started working in the cafeteria at a local elementary school.  Because of her superior example and the excellent education she provided for them, her children were all angels.  She moved from the cafeteria to the school office as an assistant secretary, and eventually became the school secretary when a new school was built where she worked until she retired.  She was active in the Methodist Church as we grew up and still is.  Her example helped all of us kids to develop a faith in God and Jesus Christ which we have each learned to express in different ways.  Now that her children are grown, each of us has profound love and respect for the unconditional love that she has shown us throughout our lives.  Preaching and scolding have their place, I suppose, but loving example has made her an iconic for each of us.  I can’t imagine that I could have been more fortunate.  Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.  I love you!

Saturday, May 11, 2013

My wife never says, “I told you so.”  She could, but because she is full of grace and sweetness, she doesn’t.  In March, I was eager to start the vegetables and she told me that it was too early.  I maintained that with the greenhouse, we could put the plants in the ground earlier than we had before and I watered the compressed plant starter pads so they would hydrate and once they swelled up, I put a single seed on dozens of them.  I planted cabbage and cauliflower and broccoli and cucumbers and zucchini and green peppers.  Everything but the peppers sprouted immediately, and after a few weeks, we transplanted them into paper cups of potting soil.  We watered and fertilized and they grew.  And grew.  Yesterday, with snow still partially covering the rows in the garden and the nighttime temperature still falling to freezing,  I came to the realization that I will not be able to transplant outside for a few more weeks.  Meanwhile, growing out of paper cups, the cucumbers are fruiting, the zucchini are flowering, the bok choi is big enough to eat, and I am admitting that my wife was right.  As ususal.  A month ago she ordered seeds from a catalog and she planted about 3 weeks ago.  They are growing in their paper cups and will be right on schedule to transplant in late May or early June.  Meanwhile, yesterday, I shoveled melting compost into a plastic bag and lugged it to the house where I repotted my most exuberant growers into big pots.  Today, they look happier with pretty yellow flowers raising their faces to the sunshine in the atrium.  I think we will be harvesting cucumbers before we replant in the greenhouse.  Today it is 75 degrees in the unheated greenhouse, but that 33 degrees at night is still a bit shocking for my spoiled plants.  I have begun to rethink a mobile bed for the atrium that would allow us to grow some vegetables year round.  Short winter days and the Christmas tree that lives there in the December are definite limitations, but I needed another project, so who knows?

Thursday, May 09, 2013

I’ve written before about hiking with 18 year olds.  It is a privilege.  It is also not necessarily the smartest thing I do.  The main advantage is that they are much more likely to have to carry me down the mountain after my heart attack than I am to have to carry them.  The big disadvantage is that they are 18.  Last night, we had planned to hike our normal route up Baldy and then on to Blacktail, which is a rocky peak about 2 miles from the top of Baldy.  We knew it would be take some extra time, so we agreed to meet at 6 PM rather than 7, because if I don’t have them on their way home by 9 on a school night, either I will be in trouble with their parents or they may turn into pumpkins…..or is that midnight?  Anyway, trying to make up for lost time (and maybe show off a bit), I led the trek up the trail from our house.  This is the steepest part of the trail-nice because you are fresh, but dangerous because the temptation to burn out early is very real.  Now when we are only going to the top of Baldy, I can afford to squander my motive force early, but climbing another 2 miles to the base of Blacktail, I should tuck my pride away and just take it easy for the long haul.  Naturally, I did not do that and by the time we got to the top of Baldy, my legs were already feeling like rubber.  We did make it in good time, though.  Then, off to Blacktail.  Baldy  had little snow on the west face we climbed, The trail to Blacktail was all snow.  Generally, by May 1, the snow is in definite regression, but this has been an odd May and the last 4 inches were only laid down a few days ago.  Post-holing and high stepping for 2 miles did finally get us to the base of the mountain.  Somehow, they arrived several minutes before I did.  I looked at my watch which said 8:15 and I said, “Another 40 minutes to the top of Blacktail.”  My thighs were feeling like they belonged to Gumby and one of the young men says, “Well, I don’t think we have time.  We had better go back.”  He was really just looking at how pitiful I was and maybe actually afraid he might have to carry me down.  Anyway, we turned around and 2 short miles later, were once again at Baldy summit.  A highlight: two snow-white Ptarmigan sitting on the exposed rocks pretending they were invisible by the side of the trail. We did get to slide down the snowy face, and it was a grand slide.  The snow was the texture of a loose snow cone, without the flavoring.  Tromping down the steepest part of the trail was really a mud slide clear down to the house, but we got there at 9:10, and they hadn’t even started to turn a little bit orange.

Wednesday, May 08, 2013

There has been some discussion about it, but I am finally convinced that we moved into our home in June, 2004.  Especially convincing was the loan paperwork and the title to the property.  I had been sure that it was 2005, but as I have aged, relative time means less and my children who better relate events in their lives to dates made me begin to doubt my surety.  We moved in almost a year to the day after the official start of construction, which must have been June 1, 2003.  High level mathematics leaves me assured that our move in was 9 years ago on June 1, 2013.  Tempus Fugit.  These thoughts come to me as I see the new wear off.  The carpet is 9 years old.  The paint is 9 years old.  The unfinished basement has had some improvements, but it is still unfinished after 9 years.   As I evaluate how the construction has held up to wear, I am more or less satisfied.  We have had some challenges.  Early this winter, a column of windows in our front window wall threatened to blow away in a storm, but thanks to expeditious application of duct tape, the windows were stabilized until the installers could come and reinstall them.  In some places where the drywall wasn’t sufficiently pulled tight to the studs underneath, screws have popped through the surface when someone has pushed on the wall.  Insulation in the attic has blown around during wind storms, baring some spots and a persistent ice dam forms on the back of the house each winter.   In Japan and Israel and Egypt where we saw structures millennia old, they would pooh-pooh the permanence of the best of our construction efforts.  Our home is sound, but I can’t imagine it in, say, 200 years…or 500 years…..or 1000.  Vapor barriers and R-40 insulation and Lifetime guaranteed shingles seem important while we are residents and certainly help us conserve energy and defer the destructive effects of water and mold and weather, but in the long scope of the ages, I wonder if they will matter.  Adding years to the life of a building with responsible construction techniques may be significant in our lifetimes, but they are still not pyramids.  They are, however, way more comfortable than pyramids.  

Monday, May 06, 2013

Horizontal surfaces, it is said, have an innate tendency to fill to their capacity with stuff.  Sometimes the stuff is necessary or important stuff, and sometimes it is disposable clutter.  Over time and without nearly constant attention, the disposable clutter will fill up all available space and important things will be displaced.  Not to mention that the clean horizontal will have ceased to exist except as a potential.  We have, at times, tried to design the elements of a room to minimize horizontal surfaces and attempt to eliminate the metastasizing clutter monster that grows larger and more dominant when horizontal surfaces are present.  That has been relatively successful, understanding of course that the floor is a horizontal surface it is difficult to do without.  It seems that the rapidity with which a surface can be overcome is amazing.  Our kitchen has a central island with counters surrounding.  The high surrounding counter can be cleaned in the morning and be seriously cluttering by evening.  The surfaces that are on display do at least get more closely monitored than those hidden in a closet or a bedroom.  My closet has a shelf that I have dedicated to the temporary  holding of the contents of my pockets as they are emptied at the end of a wear cycle.  Pocket change used to be a serious contaminant, but I have reduced it’s presence dramatically by stationing a wooden box with a lid on the shelf.  Now I put the change into the box which subdivides the clutter nicely, but is clutter itself.  Because the shelf is hidden from the general view, I have found little impetus to clean it, but occasionally the clutter begins to fall off the edge and I am driven to clear it off.  My favorite method for accomplishing this is to slip the edge of a box under the shelf front and slide everything from the shelf into the box.  Then, the hard part is……find the permanent home for everything in the box instead of allowing the box to reside somewhere else.  I find this isn’t necessary more than annually, and this morning it was time.  I found…pencils, pens, thumb tacks, change, paper clips, Sharpie markers, bells, receipts, notes with phone numbers, usb cables, an arab headdress, screws, nails, a wire cutter, batteries, buttons, shoe strings, reading glasses, glasses parts, soapstone, fingernail clippers, chapstick, pocket knives,razor blades, leathermen, phone cases, straight pins, clothing tags, marbles, yo-yos, rubber bands, an instructional CD, keys, wallet, and probably a few more things.  Most of the things did find a permanent home.  For some, the trash can was the final resting place.  Having once again set my shelf to rights, I too feel clean.  It is cathartic.  It is also emblematic of the inner clutter we accumulate that we too seldom take the time to identify and remove.  That cathartic feeling can bring a peace we all seek, whether we know it or not, and comes through the repentance process, forgiving others and by being forgiven as we admit our faults to ourselves and our Creator.    

Thursday, May 02, 2013

Since our family vacation to Costa Rica had gone so well, Beverly and I decided to return to Playa Esterillos for a less family trip in the early years of the century.  We flew into San Jose again and drove in the dark to the Pacific coast.  The lodgings at Le Auberge Pelican were under new management and we had hoped they would have upgraded the rooms a bit, but they were pretty basic.  It was definitely not Beverly’s first choice, but after you land and inertia takes over, it is difficult to get moving again.  We spent a week there but would have been happier in another location.  

It has now been a decade since we have traveled to Costa Rica.  In our absence, the highways have improved, the people are still friendly, and the weather is still beautiful.  Align Technology, the Invisalign company, began making their product in Pakistan, but when the World Trade Center was attacked in 2001, the fear of instability in the region made them look for another location.  A world-wide search landed them in San Jose, Costa Rica.  The workflow actually goes from an Orthodontist who makes impressions for the patients via UPS to El Paso, Texas and across the border to Juarez, Mexico where the impressions are digitally scanned and the 3D image is sent to Costa Rica.  There, the technicians, working with the doctor, move the teeth to the desired position at which point the work product is sent back to Juarez where the aligners are produced and shipped out again UPS from El Paso to wherever the Orthodontist happens to be.  Several years ago, Align began a continuing education course in San Jose which features a morning spent with a technician that becomes permanently assigned to the Orthodontist.  Having an assigned technician who understands what the Orthodontist wants greatly facilitates the process.

Robert and I decided that we very much needed to go to the course in San Jose to become educated, and while we were here, we might as well vacation too.  Beverly and I arrived on Thursday night and the course was Friday and Saturday.  Beverly had researched all possible places to stay in depth, as she always does, and decided that a rental house on Playa Junquillal would be perfect.  A few days ago, I wrote about our first experience together in Costa Rica, staying for several days at Antumalal.  It turns out that it closed and was abandoned about 15 years ago,  but the rental house is several spaces down the beach from there.  The house has been pretty close to perfect.  The house and grounds are extremely well looked after with a pool in the back yard and a side gate directly onto the beach.  The pool is like warm bathwater and the ocean is only a few degrees cooler with a steady supply of waves for boogy boarding.  Air Conditioned, with a full kitchen, washer, dryer, ice maker, televisions, internet…..I am not getting a commission for their rental business, but this is the nicest private location we’ve stayed at.  Message me if you want details. 

The end of a vacation always comes too fast and tomorrow we drive back to San Jose to begin the flight home to Eagle River.  It was snowing when we left a week ago and has been raining and snowing on and off since.  I can hardly wait to get there.

Wednesday, May 01, 2013

For our second Costa Rican adventure, we decided to bring along the children who were available.  Robert was on his mission, Jennifer and Rebecca were in college, and that left Carolyn, Sarah and Jonathon.  We flew in to San Jose and rented a 4WD SUV which was big enough to hold people and luggage and drove off.  Our destination was Playa Estarillos  about 10 miles south of Jaco on the Pacific coast.   At 6 PM near the equator, it is dark and at 6:30 it is pitch black.  We arrived sometime after 6:30 and while our map said there was a hotel, we could barely make out the sides of the road.  I inquired of some locals and they gave me rough idea of where to go, and by dumb luck we stumbled in to Le Auberge Pelican.  Many of the hotels are run by expatriots from various countries, and the owners here were French Canadian.  There was room in the inn, and we checked in and went to bed.  The next day, the kids hit the beach.  The beach was actually great for kids because it was a long, slow descent to the water, so they had a hard time drowning.  Carolyn and Sarah could not be persuaded that tropical sun burns white flesh quickly, and learned the hard way.  We went horseback riding in the mountains a few miles away from the hotel, and went mountain climbing with the SUV on steep roads up into the jungle.  We also spent a day at Manuel Antonio National Park which is a must-see.  In 1974 I visited the beach there before it was parkified.  It was a 6 hour bus ride on a bumpy gravel road from San Jose,  and we camped on the beach.  The body-surfing was phenomenal and we were alone there.  Now, the beach is wall-to-wall people and not nearly so much fun.  So much for building an asphalt road to an out-of-the-way place.  By the end of our trip, the girls were feeling better about their sunburns and we drove back to San Jose for the excursion home.  We still haven’t heard the end of what unfeeling parents we are to not have taken the older kids along too.