Fine French Flying Machines

The night before I flew home I had a rather strange dream. I dreamed I was on the return flight and I dropped something on the floor near the plane wall. When I reached down to retrieve whatever it was I dropped, I noticed a panel in the lower part of the wall. It's faceplate had been knocked loose and it opened into a little compartment in the wall. The compartment was empty except for a rather large bolt that stuck out of the wall, secured by a cotter-pin. Curious, I extracted the cotter-pin. And of course the bolt retracted and the wings fell off.

I'm pretty sure I was flying an Airbus.

A Blue Light Special on Aisle 405

Got home late last night from another coveted business trip and was very quickly treated to a traditional L.A. welcome. We were driving home on the 405 from the Long Beach airport. I’d pulled an all-nighter and was a little punchy, so Stacy was at the wheel, hugging her traditional right lane and the kids were chatting it up in their car seats behind us, a little juiced at being able to stay up so late. Traffic was heavy for late on a Sunday night, but moving along. Suddenly as if from nowhere an LAPD cruiser, lights pounding, whipped across four lanes of traffic to be inches off our port bow, corrected, blew past the car one lane to the left, then executed a brilliant 4-lane slalom to put him back in the carpool lane. For another mile or so we were able to watch him thread traffic like he was bouncing off moguls. After that we continued our drive a little more serenely until we rounded a corner five minutes later and saw lots of red brake lights and, off on the shoulder, the familiar visual thump-thump-thump of blue cop lights - a veritable optical subwoofer. We approached the scene and traffic slowed to a crawl as we pulled along side our old cruiser friend, who seemed to have brought along some additional workmates. That's when we noticed these guys weren't on a routine your-tail-light-is-out sort of traffic stop. About six or seven cops were all out of their cars, kneeling behind open doors with weapons trained on a white SUV being spotlighted ahead. There were a bunch of arms sticking hands-up out of the windows of the SUV.  It was (in retrospect) amusing to note that as each of the parade of 405 drivers in the right lane got to the same relative spot, like carts in a Disneyland ride, each driver suddenly realized what was going on and their car would jiggle around a bit as they scrambled to figure out how the **** to get the **** out of there.

We discussed the matter the rest of the way home. L, who did not have anywhere near the visceral reaction her parents did and thought it all quite academic, was quite curious why the cops had guns. Not so much specifically in this case, but in the abstract, as if it were a surprise that they should possess them.

"They need them to fight the bad people," we explained. There really are bad people out there?, she wondered aloud, not particularly worried about it, but just taking a mental note to store away for future reference.

Then N made an insightful comment. "That's why we don't want any car bumps!"

Putting the "Why?" in XY

Stacy has made a disturbing discovery of late.  It seems, perhaps, one of her children might, just possibly, be male.  Over the last month or two her shining little cherub, her cuddle-muffin, her sweetie-pie, has slowly transformed like Lon Chaney's wolfman into something much more loud, aggressive and decidedly uncivilized.  What used to be spontaneous kisses are now body slams from across the room.  What were once hand-holdings and shoulder snuggles are now "pinchies" and "pokies."  The oft-whispered "I love you's" of a former mild-child have been replaced by a small cyclone who swirls into your immediate vicinity, screams into your ear, and then swirls off in some other direction to send papers and anything else unsecured whipping through the air.  Even the bathroom is beginning to take on a somewhat rest area-like ambiance, since in his bathroom "technique" in front of the toilet, he could almost be mistaken for the conductor of a marching band.

I think I may have contributed to it in an indirect sense - as sort of an enabler.  On a recent trip to Washington I brought back the kids two plastic swords and scabbards upon which they immediately pounced and set about  skewering the world.  They insisted on bringing them on a family walk a few evenings later.  On the walk I managed to observe N brandishing his sword and educating his sister on the best way to kill all the cats they would surely encounter.

Stacy is shocked and depressed and feels a little like she was sold a bill of goods with this kid.  L is growing steadily more perplexed as her former rag doll, milk-toast now occasionally hits back.  I'm somewhere between amused and relieved, thinking it's about time.  He was really getting too big for that Snow White dress.

The Need for Narnia

We finished Prince Caspian, the second book of the Chronicles of Narnia, this weekend.  I'm really happy that the kids have gotten into it as much as they have.  They normally like anything we read to them, but they were especially intrigued with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and as soon as we finished it several months ago they clamored for the next book.  I wanted to pace them out so we read a few other things in between, including Alice in Wonderland, which the kids found boring, and Stuart Little, which thoroughly irritated me, but all the while they were pleading for Narnia. 

Once they got to launch into it they were just as pleased with the second book as they were with the first, though N seemed pretty preoccupied the whole time with the potential return of the dreaded White Witch.  ("She's dead, N.  Don't worry about it."  "But, but, but, but maybe she's not all dead.")

They know there are more books awaiting them, but I want to keep stretching things out, so I'll be looking for something else to plug the holes.  Any recommendations?

Hunting Ursa Major at Big Bear

Camping is one of my old passions. One of those passions that has slowly atrophied away as the years of marriage and kids accumulate. Back in the recesses of my hopes and dreams are the lingering vestiges of family camping ambitions, but they've been little realized in recent years and show a growing patina of neglect. The kids were too young, Stacy too tired, work too busy. One real camping trip in 5 years is not much fuel to stoke the hope furnace, and with each pound gained and each joint joining the stiff-and-owwy club, I've been beginning to fear that my camping portfolio will soon consist merely of the memories of a younger man. But despite the neglect, there are yet still-warm embers buried under the accumulated ash of the burning off of the years. A new tent won at auction and a trial camping run in the backyard have syphoned in a little oxygen to set the coals aglowing. Maybe it isn't a done deal. Maybe a time will come again. Maybe we can yet shake off the dust of a sedentary world and exchange it for the dust of the trail. Maybe there's still hope.

Now faith may be the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen, but faith without works is dead. Faith was put to work two weeks ago.

Knowing that the rest of my summer and fall would not be pretty from a work point of view, I knew I had to strike while the iron (coals?) were hot. (Mixing metaphors is another one of my passions...) My boss most graciously agreed to cover for me and let me take Thursday and Friday off, so I jumped on line and booked the last spot available at Hanna Flats, a campground in the San Bernardino National Forest where Stacy and I had camped a year or two B.C. (before children). Wednesday night was spent throwing massive amounts of household goods into bags while the children climbed the walls and shrieked in excitement, mimicking of course, the wild animals they were sure to encounter on our trip. On the glorious Thursday we got up early and finished packing. I was somewhat disturbed to realized that pretty much the entire contents of our house could, if properly arranged, be stowed in the back of our minivan. Yes, we packed our pillows. (And with each one I threw in the car a little ember of camping coals in my heart went cold...) But you've got to start somewhere. The kids, excited being a most severe understatement, assumed their stations about two hours before our scheduled departure time.

Eventually we had the cargo hold full and we hit the road around 10:30. Hanna Flats is about two hours away, assuming light traffic. We burned an hour which got us as far as Asuza where we stopped to bid farewell to modern day conveniences at the Mecca of all things modernly convenient. From then on out it was full bore, head-down, petal-to-the-metal for the mountains. We could tell we were getting close when we started spotting strange new varieties of alpine flora.

Pinus Technologicus

After 45 minutes of those dizzying, windy mountain roads that Stacy loves so well we found our campground and our designated domicile. It was a fairly open spot with hills directly behind us and a number of trees along the road, but not much shade on the site in general. Hanna Flats had been closed for a year or two because a particularly bad wildfire had ripped through the area. The campground itself was spared, but the fire lapped up to the very edge - that edge being our site, which explained the lack of shade. Looking in one direction from our site you saw the campground with its dense trees; looking in the other you saw relatively open hills with lots of black charcoal sticks pointed skyward. Though some of the bigger pine trees had made it through the fire, there wasn't much in the way of brush or bushes; but grasses and tufts of ground cover were coming back and were actually quite vibrant and colorful, obviously enjoying the unexpected extra view of the sun. It was a strangely beautiful juxtaposition.

The kids weren't out of the car ten minutes before they had met and become bosom buddies with a 5-year-old girl, J, who was camping with her dad the next site over. L and N abandoned themselves to their socializing while Stacy helped me set up our monstrosity of a tent. In short order it was done and we were afforded some time to relax, meet J's dad, and take a short walk around the park before getting down to the business of cooking dinner on a campfire with the help of a teeny-tiny white gas backpacking stove - essentially a Bunsen burner with a bad attitude. Among the provisions that would have kept Ma and Pa Ingles well fed an entire Prairie winter, Stacy had packed some hotdogs, some kielbasa, a can of green beans and some instant potatoes. Even the most disgusting food tastes wonderful when you cook it while camping. I think dropping the kielbasa through firepit grates and into the dirt and charcoal ashes added that gritty something extra that pushed the meal into the realm of sublime.

Right next to our campsite was a rather large pile of boulders - a veritable climbing Taj Mahal for those under ten, and unfortunately, for those with rattles attached to their tails.  We did our best to clear the area, beating on the rocks with sticks and stomping around them.  Finding no stakes to prior reptilian claims, we turned the kids loose to assist nature in the historical process of grinding the boulders into a fine powder, but we did warn them that if at any point they found something that looked like one of Daddy's ash-covered kielbasa, they were to let us know immediately.

Once dinner was cleaned up, we were reminded by the children of past promises made in failed attempts to get them to eat kielbasa à la terre.  They wouldn't eat their formerly powdered potatoes or their carcinogenically-challenged hotdogs, but they sure were all up for consuming hoards of laboratory-developed, petrochemically-enhanced puffs of sucrose.  J's Dad, Brett, threw another log on the fire and the kids miraculously produced a set of bamboo spears perfectly suited for marshmallow roasting.  I complimented Stacy on packing the accouterments among her other massive collections, but she said she'd never seen them before.  I quizzed L and quickly came to find out that they had been extracted from a bunch of little pine trees that had been planted on the fire-ravaged hill behind us - they were holding the 6-inch saplings up.  (Lesson learned:  That which doesn't burn up in fire, will nevertheless suffer defeat at the hands of 6-year-olds.)

After marshmallows L pulled out some of her toys (she inherited the packing gene from her mother) and L and N and J played happily while Stacy and I enjoyed the encroaching evening.

I've always been a bit of an astronomy buff at heart.  Life in LA gives little indulgence, so one of my favorite camping activities is to just sit back with Stacy after it gets dark (and after the kids are in the tent) and watch the sky explode.  Stars and satellites and meteorites in plenitude!  Polaris was framed perfectly in a clearing of the trees and brilliant Ursa Major spent the evening hiking around it.  I brought along a tripod (OK, so maybe there's a bit of packaholic in all of us...) and set my camera up on time-lapse exposure while we kicked back and counted shooting stars.  I was rewarded handsomely.

The beasts of the field knew better than to come skulking around our neck of the woods, and consequently we got a reasonably decent night's sleep in our 1200 sq ft tent.

We slept without the rainfly on and the top of our tent is all a thin transparent mesh, which was both good for watching stars, but bad when the full moon took center stage.  Surprisingly, the bright sun of the early morning had no discernible effect on the majority of the residents.

Eventually the tent showed signs of life and the hibernators emerged to a fine breakfast all ready of pancakes à la carbon. (My backpacking stove has two settings - "burn" and "char."  Dressed and ready, the first chore of the day: a hike with Brett and J up the trailhead that started a few campsites down the road.

Bitterness attends the trail

The night must not have agreed with the kids because the seemed decidedly less than refreshed on hitting the trail.  L and N reached deep and found buried within a suitably sulky mood for the hike and proceeded to whine and complain their way through it.  Some co-workers had warned me a few days earlier of recent mountain lion attacks on small children in Hanna Flats.  (A small fact I somehow "neglected" to mention to Stacy.)  After a few minutes on the trail I was fighting off the urge to whisper, "Here kitty, kitty, kitty."  Moodiness is contagious among the 4-to-6 set and soon J had a little cartoon cloud over her head as well.  Thank goodness it was a pretty day and the hike wasn't too severe.  (I pretty much ended up with L or N on my shoulders the entire time.)

Cows in tree form.

Brett and J

Much to the bewailment of L, N and J, a period of forced separation was enacted for the afternoon. We loaded up the minivan and drove the dirt road down the hill to Fawnskin, then circled the perimeter of the lake to get to Big Bear Village. In L and N's eyes a pizza helped atone for the cindercake breakfast, and a couple of hours at the beach made up for most of the trip's remaining offenses.

L, playing a rousing game of  "Hit
Daddy's camera with the wet beanbag."

Attitudes were much improved.  Nobody complained at all when asked to hike to the ice cream shop.

Back at the ranch the kids had a joyful reunion with J and many more unexpected toys were extracted from amazingly well hidden crannies of the car and introduced to the dust and dirt and snake-filled rocks of Hanna Flats.  The campsite next door had a wonderful old oak with bizarre low-hanging branches that extended nearly horizontally for nine or ten feet - perfect for the more simian urges of the youngsters.  The drill was simple.  The kids would mount the branches near the tree trunk, then shimmy their way along the branch highway until they got to the end where whatever parent was available at the time was called into service to catch the dropping child so the process could be repeated.  This could have occupied them for hours...

Dinner this evening consisted of teriyaki shish-ka-bobs picked up in town and grilled over the campfire.  This time I managed to keep them from any suicidal tendencies.

Dinner was followed up, of course (as if we had a choice), with more marshmallows. The baby pine trees were deprived of their structural support once again while the children set about sugaring themselves up. (OK, the parents got a little sugared too...)

Soon enough darkness began to descend; the girls managed to find some glow sticks in and among J's piles of toys - packing inflation seemed to be a real issue at this camp - so they entertained themselves in the dark with their own mini laser show.  Soon it was time for the kids to have the dust beaten off them and pajamas applied to the less sticky parts; once in the tent we had a rousing hour of Prince Caspian by lantern light and then it was off to sleep.  Stacy and I reemerged from the tent to enjoy another peaceful evening of campfire guarding and star-studying.

The following morning we bid our fond farewells to J and her Dad.  It was a teary occasion for those under 30, with many plans hatched for birthday party visits and Sea World excursions.  Stinky and tire, the drive home was nevertheless beautiful, and made more palatable for L and N with the promise of a visit to Aunt Joyce and Mr. Jay's house and a swim in their pool.  I hope they had a lot of chlorine...

Raccoon face.