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...
