Big Bear Lake - Day 2!

All epic ordeals take time in the telling. There were, for example, many more folks destined to swim with the fishes when The Godfather I wrapped up. Harry Potter had years of magical mischief ahead of him when J. K. Rowling put the period on her first yarn. Where would Middle Earth be now if Frodo and Sam had called it quits at the Falls of Rauros? And so it is with our camping extravaganza. The thrills didn't end on Day 1, I assure you. Oh, no! The intensity builds and the tension mounts. Ever more expectantly, the anticipation waxes throughout Day 2 until it all comes to a stunning and hugely disappointing fizzle with an anticlimactic car ride home on Day 3.

Day 2 started the way all days should -- Daddy woke up a good two hours or so before anyone else. I managed to enjoy the cool peace of the wee morning hours until the two wee morning horrors emerged from the tent. Stacy, on the other hand, remained sacked out and I'm convinced wouldn't have risen had a grizzly bear started mauling the tent.

It was up to Daddy to make breakfast happen, and happen it did, with all the fanfare and celebration that bananas and instant oatmeal can provide.



Breakfast suitably behind us, the next step obviously was a pajama hike far away from the tent so that Mommy could continue on her own private journey through dreamland. We set out with no particular destination in mind and went where the trails led us. (Oh, the romanticism of it all!) There proved to be many adventures to be had. We had barely gone 5 minutes when we came to a Tunnel of a Thousand Terrors. Luckily L and N were exceedingly brave and kept Daddy's spirits up during the fearsome traversal. They did so by hooting like the owls and listening to the resounding echos off the corrugated steel walls. L was quite familiar with the owls as she said she had listened to them all night long. I hadn't noticed them, but I actually wouldn't have been surprised if she was dead on.

There were occasional stops for a rest.

Well, maybe not so occasion-al...

Actually, they were pretty common-place.

We were essentially invisible to all woodland creatures due to our absolute silence and natural camouflaging.

We did manage to see a couple of squirrels, lots of birds and a few really cool lizards.

While we hiked the morning haze slowly melted away and we ended up with a rather beautiful day.

Eventually we retraced our steps (braving once again the Tunnel of a Thousand Terrors) and found Mommy freshly emerged from her post-hibernation shower.

What happened next is not for the faint of heart. Only those of the strongest constitution should continue on, for next I have to tell the tale of...




Big Bear is a big ski resort in the winter - not as posh as Aspen or Tahoe or Mammoth, but a good local get-away for Angelenos who don't want to drive 6 hours to get somewhere else. During the summer they have a lot of their ski lifts active so you can ride to the top of the mountain and hike or picnic or what have you.

So it all started out innocent enough. Both Stacy and I thought it would be really cool to take a ride to the top, so we had planned on grabbing a sack of sandwiches and having lunch up at the summit. Stacy was a regular skier in her past life and had ridden the lifts a bazillion times before. I, however, do not consider gravity my friend and have avoided anything that resembles skiing with a passion. (I got roped into trying once in Switzerland. It was such a monumental disaster I'm surprised they didn't boot me from the country in the name of public safety when it was all said and done.)

So we paid our exorbitant sum and stood in the right spot for the chair to come around and whack us on the bum and off our feet. All this happened without incident, though it had secretly been my assumption that if something could have gone wrong it would have happened exactly at that moment. I could imagine the seat swooping down on us just as N decided to make a cutting bolt to the right and there we'd be, sailing over the verdure while N played alone happily among the cables and whirling gears. But as I said, this part went without incident.

We were satisfactorily scooped up and I obediently pulled down the arm bar and we were on our way. It didn't take long at all before I heard the sounds of hyperventilating to my right. I looked over and Stacy was deathly grey and clammy. Her fingers were bone white from gripping the handle bar. I had assumed control of L while she took care of N, and I could see that the poor boy was clutched to her side in a choke hold that would have made an Olympian proud. Aside from near asphyxiation, N was perky and alert and quite intrigued by the adventure. His mother obviously less so. I've never seen Stacy so terrified - and that includes horrifically turbulent plane rides that had me reduced to tears and wet underwear. L sat on my opposite side, a giggling, squirming ball of unfettered joy and excitement, swinging her legs and pointing giddily, something Stacy perceived as an immanent threat to the future of western civilization. She immediately ordered me to engage her in a similarly suitable full body press. It didn't go well when I pulled the camera out of my pocket to take pictures. A hand holding a camera was a hand not squeezing the life essence out of a child!

After I got whatever shots off that I thought I could ask forgiveness for later I put the camera away and sat back to enjoy the rest of the 15 minute ascent. But I'll tell you what: paranoia is catching! Before long I'm looking down - and it's a goodly drop! And I start to worry. But not the same kind of worry that is consuming Stacy, who is nearly in tears at this point. I've remembered that N hates to wear shoes and has a habit of kicking them off whenever he can that he might feel the wind whipping through his toes. So I started worrying that he would kick off his shoes while we were half way up the mountain and we'd never be able to recover them. I started to make a move to preemptively pull off N's shoes, thereby releasing my death-hold on L, which sent Stacy into a wail of agony, like Rachel weeping for her children because she knew that they were no more. It is a truly telling observation into the differences between Stacy and my personas. Here Stacy is, legitimately out-of-her mind with fear for the lives of her children, and I'm equally concerned about the loss of footwear. Go figure.

But all horrors, even eternal 15-minute ones, do come to an end eventually, and at the top of the mount the entire 4-man party was unceremoniously plopped down, fully intact. George W. Bush would approve: No child left behind!




We ate our lunch and admired the view and then faced the reality that the only feasible way down was the way we came up. Stacy's color had returned by now and she she no longer bore any resemblance to an enraged she-bear guarding her cubs. Psyched for what lay ahead by the fact that there was no serious bodily injury resulting from what lay behind us, Stacy, with an admirable strength and determination stepped in front of the swooping sky chair with the rest of her family and allowed predestination to bear her along. While she still clutched N in a vice grip, he was decidedly less purple throughout the descent. L, who had seen it all before was starting to get tired and bored and was more fidgety than before. Stacy managed to swallow her maternal instincts and not pitch me over the railing in order to better lock down her daughter. I've never been more proud of her.

The view down did afford a set of much better views of the lake and far mountain ranges. It was really a cool ride and would have been great if we hadn't had to worry so much about the kids plummeting to their demise.

That evening when we got back to the camp Stacy and N puttered around the campsite - Stacy organizing things and N tasting various types of dirt. He's developed one heck of a palate. L and I took a little walk through the camp ground. The sun had set but the sky was still bright and I noticed all these flittering birds swooping through the air. After a moment or two it dawned on me: they weren't birds, they were bats. I told L, and not knowing she was supposed to be terrified, asked all kinds of questions and we continued our walk unabated.

At one point when we were near a small meadow away from most other campers I told L, "Watch this!" I picked up a small handful of pebbles and tossed them as high as I could straight up in the air. Six to ten bats immediately swerved in their courses and plummeted down in pursuit of the falling pebbles. L was fascinated and we spent the next half hour as the light faded tossing pebbles up in the air and watching the bats swoop them. At one point L became concerned because she had thrown a pebble up and it had not come back down again. I assured her that we would come back in the morning and look for her hovering pebble. Satisfied, she went on with our game. It was all great fun until one of the bats, diving down for a particularly low pebble, brushed the rim of my ballcap and gave me a case of the heebie-jeebies that I couldn't shake the rest of the night. We went back to camp.

By that point N was asleep in the tent. I had gotten the fire started before we went on our walk and by now it was in that sweet spot where you have as many glowing embers as open flames. I took the opportunity to thread my wife a marshmallow and cuddle with her by the fire for a while to try to regain some of the brownie points I had lost on the cable car ride.

Somehow I suspect I'm going to be back in brownie-point deficit again once Stacy reads this blog entry...

Big Bear(ly) Camping

To me camping used to be taking your car only as far as the trail head and parking it, then - like a modern Atlas - taking the world upon your shoulders and hiking as many masochistic miles as you could into the pristine wilderness and setting up shop. You would live by your wits and what you dragged along with you. You would pump your own water, start your own fires, chase down and kill your own gazelles, buffalo, grizzly bears, etc., etc.

Things have changed. "Camping" is now an activity that takes place (and must take place) within 3.8 feet of the automobile you used to get there. "Roughing it" implies that you might have to pass three or four other campsites on your walk to the hot showers complete with private changing rooms. Your only options for food are whatever you can pack into three coolers and four grocery bags, or can bring back from the Vons two miles down the road. And whoa be it unto you if you have trouble lighting a fire, because then you are forced to hike another two or three campsites down the little asphalt road to the campground host to get pre-dried, pre-bundled, and all-but-pre-lit firewood (for a price that is indeed inflammatory).

While my pride bristles a little at this redefinition, my more logical side has less of a problem with it. As I get older I'm finding it harder to maintain the façade that I really love being eaten alive by mosquitoes, living for days on beef jerky and M&Ms, spending 45 minutes pumping 8 ounces of water, and smelling like if I'd bathed at all, it was likely at a waste treatment plant. I'm much more inclined these days to gripe and complain bitterly about my bondage to safety and security, my lost freedom and spontaneity, and my thwarted wanderlust and primordial longings. I may rant and rave in inner turmoil as the call of the wild ravages my soul, but I'm really only faking it and am actually happy for the excuse to not have to climb Kilimanjaro after not having gone to the gym in 3 months. Promise you won't tell anyone.

With that in mind, last week I took the week off of work and took the family on our first "camping" excursion since the kiddos came along. We went up to the San Bernadino Mountains to Big Bear Lake and stayed at the Serrano campground somewhat near the lakeshore. We had to hike that whole 3.8 feet from our car to get to our tent. (Truly exhausting, considering the 0.4 inch elevation gain.)



This was L and N's first real experience with a tent. To be fair, I did set it up in the backyard the day before we left to air it out because it smelled, well, ...rather like an old, well-used tent - woodsy - ruggedly outdoorsy. L preferred the term stinky. Mommy wisely had no comment at all.

Within an hour N had doused it thoroughly with the hose. ("Daddy clean!")


So on a camping trip, what's the first thing you do after setting up camp and putting all in order? You get back in the car and drive an additional 5 miles to the public beach, of course, where you can spend untold hours enjoying the pristine peace and quiet with 400 other Angelenos also up in the mountains enjoying the solitude of the wilderness.

OK, tell me it's not just me. Stacy looks very Capt. Von Trappish to me here.

After our alpine lake adventure, we returned to our campsite (#1 out of a couple hundred - we felt special). Stacy and the kids had to stay behind while I bid them a tearful farewell and made the arduous and risky walk to the campground coordinator's site. There I put all my wilderness skills and years of camping experience into play to purchase a small bundle of firewood, returning to the campsite via the same perilous path I just left. Needless to say, Stacy was a nervous wreck and was nearly consumed with worry for my safety the entire 4 minutes I was gone.

I was able to enlist far more help than I needed getting the bonfire ablaze. Soon it was an inferno and L was able to sit back and reminisce on LA smog. Dinner consisted of some hotdogs for the kids, grilled corn-on-the-cob, and a barbecued tri-tip that I hunted down and killed with my own hands at the Vons only hours earlier.

I seem to have mastered the ability to so place a hotdog on a campground fire grate as to always have it immediately roll off and fall into the cinders below. Not sometimes. Not often. Always. You'd think the laws of probability would fall in my favor occasionally. But no: Always.

With the day drawing to a close and Daddy having a well-defined sense of what must go into a campside evening, the extremely over-exhausted kids could not be allowed to go to bed before the ritual flaming of the marshmallow - also known as The Rite of Smore. L and N were both a little disgusted by my insistence that no marshmallow was worth eating that hadn't been engulfed in its own little flame for at least 10 seconds. (I firmly believe that if you can't do a decent Status of Liberty impersonation for 10 seconds with your flaming marshmallow, then it doesn't qualify to be put in your mouth.) Stacy kept muttering something about "carcinogens", but I never could catch just what.




After that it was beddy-bye. A two-man tent should be sufficient right? After all, Mommy and L are chicks! It was an interesting night. (Notice the amazing extremes I went to to avoid saying a "restful night".) L and N both displayed an uncanny ability to sleep crosswise. No matter how many times we turned them around to align them with the length of the tent (and more importantly, Mommy and Daddy), they still managed to rotate themselves around 90 degrees within 15 minutes or so. Most of the night we looked like a human tic-tac-toe game. Luckily the kids were so tired they didn't even hear the wild and terrifying wilderness sounds of KLOS 95.5FM coming from the darkness all around us!

Thus ends Day 1. I'm too tired to think about reliving Day 2 now. Tune in later!

Berry Messy

Trader Joe's had fresh blueberries on sale this week, and since I was taking a couple of days off, the kids got what N refers to as a "peshal treat" -- blueberry pancakes!

Far more interesting than the pancakes themselves (though I'm inclined to admit they were phenomenal) was watching the various pancake consumption techniques employed by the yung-uns. N attacked voraciously, usually with a fork, but he was certainly open to more manual techniques. No quantity of maple syrup would have been excessive.


L, however, had really filled up on the batter from the spatula and licking the bowl. By the time the pancakes arrived at the table she made a half-hearted attempt at one, then with her second, proceeded to carve out - with a skill to make a surgeon proud - each individual blueberry, leaving behind a precision pancake shell filled with holes, each with only a trace of purple edges to indicate what had previously inhabited them. Kind of an edible coral reef.



Meanwhile Mommy sat back and enjoyed her pancakes, but all the time wondering why it is that Daddy can never be content with foodstuffs that don't result in the defacto dye-ing of our children.

Bye, Claudius

About a year or so ago I wrapped up a book (don't remember which one now) and was stumped about what to read next. So I pulled together my list of 10 favorite books of all time, and sent out a mass email to friends and family giving them out as my recommendations to everyone else, and pleading for a return of the favor. I got lots of really good suggestions that I've been trying to incorporate into my reading plan. A particularly interesting set of suggestions came from Jay, a good friend of Stacy's Aunt Joyce. His were easily the most far-reaching in scope and topic. Some I probably would not pursue; others I probably wouldn't have pursued, but for the fact that now I'm intrigued just because they're on such a wild list. But most of them were immediately interesting.

One of the books on there, and I can't remember if I'd heard about it before or not, was I, Claudius by Robert Graves. I borrowed it from the Los Angeles library (there's a branch only blocks from our house!) and started reading it back in June. I'm a horrifically slow reader, often taking two or three months to get through a modest-sized book, but I had lots of downtime last week on airplanes and in airports and I managed to plow through it. What a cool book! It is historical fiction, and I'm sure there's a lot of fiction in it, but from what I can gather (using that most trusted of resources, Wikipedia), most of the "soft stuff" portrayed in the novel at least has its origin in legend and rumors from the time period. If you like intrigue, lots of backstabbing and hubris out the wah-zoo, if you like characters dastardly wicked and thoroughly depraved, you should give old Claudius a try.

It is the "autobiographical" story of the youth and rise to power of Rome's unlikeliest emperor, Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, better known as Claudius. (See what I mean by my over-reliance on Wikipedia?) Though the reader immediately knows otherwise, he is widely accepted by his family and fellow Romans as a sickly, stammering, spastic idiot of little consequence - so insignificant that there's no pressing need to plot his assassination, which is certainly convenient, because everyone else in the novel drops like flies. The life story plays out over the backdrop of 1st century Rome with its ludicrously overindulgent first family, endless frontier battles and ever present in-town intrigues. It's a really wonderfully detailed view into the life in Rome in the imperial family and all their hangers-on, with all the behind-the-scenes deals and hidden agendas. I'm sure the parallels to our modern republic are not incidental. Lots of names, lots of relationships (everyone is incestuously married to everyone else at some point in the novel), it gets hard to keep them all straight. I wish I'd taken some notes when I started. But all in all, a really good read and I can see why Jay had it on his list.

Next on the agenda: The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. General relativity, quantum mechanics and string theory for dummies!

The World Turns Whether You're There for It or Not

You're gone a week and the world passes you by. I have learned that while I was in D.C.:

1) L revealed her propensity for a future career path in architecture. She very proudly unveiled her first creation - "Daddy's Work". I especially love the smiley face emblazoned on the side of the high rise tower because it so perfectly symbolizes my never-ending joy at going there.

2) Our three little tomato plants had some dormant gene kick in and swamp our backyard with red orbs. I've been back a day and already I'm getting hives from tomato overindulgence.

and

3) N has fully embraced the joys of the "potty". His most often overheard expression now is "N go potty!", an admission of love he makes quite frequently to anyone who will listen. Its especially fun to watch him very seriously inform little old ladies in Trader Joe's of his predilection.

Around the World in Nine Days

I had a 9-day business trip to the Washington D.C. area last week (which explains the lack of entries for a while). I really hate travelling without the family, but it just didn't make sense to bring everyone along on this trip, so I did it solo. Luck for me, however, I had excellent shuttle and escort service to and from the Long Beach airport.

Stacy and N came along to cheer me up, and L provided invaluable assistance in getting my bags to the terminal.

Everybody stood in line with me to get my baggage checked.

And then everyone waited with me outside the gate.

And waited.

And waited...

The flight departure was delayed by about two hours due to bad weather in the D.C. area.

Eventually my flight boarded and I got underway, though it proved to be quite an adventure. Just as we got in the D.C. area, they shut down Dulles due to the thunderstorms. Evidently most of the mid-east coast was shut down. We circled for another two hours and then due to fuel issues, diverted to Richmond, Virginia. We sat in Richmond another two hours (at least they let us off the plane!) before we finally got airborne again and into Dulles. By the time I arrived at my car rental place, they were all sold out except for 3 SUVs and a Prius. I went reluctantly green.

The week was a blur of seven 10- to 12-hour days, with some occasional breaks for kiddo-calls.


But eventually it wrapped up and I headed home yesterday. The return trip went much smoother. As my plane was touching down I spied my entourage from my plane window, standing on the airport roof viewing area waving frantically. When I emerged into the baggage claim area I was tackled by two tiny thunderstorms and a rather haggard wife.

Last night after everyone had rested and showered (especially Daddy), there were "special treats" doled out for everyone. Mommy got some special teas from a favorite tea shop in Alexandria. N got an airport play mat with roads and runways for his mini cars and planes. L got a gift that combined her two current passions: a book of dinosaur puzzles!

She was thrilled, but not half as excited as she was about the other "gift" she got, a miniature soap labeled "Town Suites".

(Yes, I shamelessly pillage the mini-soaps from any hotel that'll house me.)

It is wonderful to be home. I'm so glad to be away from the hustle and bustle and noise and overstimulation of the world of airports and travel, and to be home in my own nice, quiet, abode...

...sort of.