Surrounded by Turkeys

I am, literally, surrounded by turkeys. Not literally, literally. But literally in the sense that I sometimes see them at work. Which raises the question, why are they following me?

When I first moved to New Hampshire I expected to see deer, squirrels, rabbits, the usual. Maybe a moose and a beaver to round out a proper New England diorama, and that was it. Instead I found myself constantly slowing or stopping my car to avoid hitting turkeys. They were inexplicably everywhere and, judging by their fearlessness, were clearly the apex predators of whatever it is turkeys feed on. Regardless, when I left New Hampshire I assumed I'd be leaving the turkeys behind.

Instead there're here too. Every day at work I drive by them. Every day I get out of my car they're watching. Sometimes I swear I see them taking notes. I didn't know turkeys were normal fauna of northern California air force bases, but then again I never knew they just chilled wherever the hell they well please either. The only conclusion: al-Qaeda turkey sleeper cell. I am expecting one to greet me coming home from work some day. He will probably be armed.

Only Golden Eagles can save us! Or kill us all.

Cactus to Clouds (Almost)

A few weeks ago -- for no particularly good reason -- my nephew and I climbed a mountain. Not in the sense that we drove to a parking lot within a few thousand feet of a summit and then finished the business with a leisurely trot or even in the sense that we overcame a profound spiritual or psychosocial problem by digging deep down inside ourselves to find the strength our parents and elementary school teachers always knew we had, but in the "we started at the bottom of a mountain and hiked to friggin' top of it" sense. And it turns out that involves quite a bit of hiking. Truthfully we did not "hike" "all the way" to the "summit" -- my chicken legs wouldn't have it -- but we did make it a little over 4/5 the way and with a change in elevation of a little over 8000 feet I'm sticking by it. Regardless, I now have a feeling of accomplishment where the feeling in my feet used to be. Plus Beeders refused to drag my body up the rest of the way so in a way it's really his fault.

Speaking of Beeders, here is Patrick chronicling our journey through forced picture taking.

Time 05:30.

Cactus to Clouds begins, conveniently enough, in the cacti of Palm Desert which is itself situated in the largest retirement community of Hades. In order to avoid the heat we had to start painfully early in the morning. It took a while to find the trail head so we got started about 30 minutes later than we had planned to.

Time 06:30.

One hour down. Sun is up. Everybody's smiling. We're crisscrossing the mountain and desperately trying to follow the trail marked by white paint blotches which were thankfully fairly easy to see. There were, unfortunately, however, white pain blotches everywhere. I'd the say the three or so diversions we took were scenic, but it's the desert. They were just thorny wastes of time.

Time 07:30.

Second hour up and we're finally through all the switchbacks and over lapping trails. We have now entered the realm of the bees, however. Although you cannot see them they we there. It turns out the desert is full of bees actually. They were likely just doing regular bee things, but with that many in one place you gotta think they were up to no good. Terrorism probably. Thankfully we minded our business and they minded theirs.

Time 08:30.

Third hour up! Finally starting to get some elevation underneath us. Still have no idea how far we have to go and, therefore, still smiling.

Time 09:40.

Fourth hour up. Turns out the fourth hour is a lot like the third hour: lots of hiking through desert. By this time we were far enough to realize we had a long way to go, but not far enough to have any idea exactly how far. It was at this point I began considering selling Beeders to some coyotes in exchange for a taxi ride back into town.

Time 010:30.

Fifth hour. Will we ever get out of this infernal desert?

I must admit. I was getting a little tired now. Patrick nevertheless refused to carry me on his back.

Time 011:40.

Sixth hour! Ooh isn't that lovely?! Yeah. Great. I'm ready to lie down and die. Beeders is still smiling for whatever reason.

Time 12:40.

The seventh hour! The ecology is finally starting to change! No more dried plants, dirt, and lizards. Just pine trees, dirt, and lizards.

Time 13:45.

Hour eight! We're so close we can almost taste it. Patrick was so inspired he decided to jump for this photo. It may or may not have taken about six takes before we got it right. It was around this time that the bronzed wild mountain man passed us up with his hiking stick. I think he was on drugs.

Time 14:05.

The clouds! We made it to the top, sort of! In a sense! We made it to the tram station and level ground which, I decided, was an excellent place for a stop. And for a nap. And to maybe not hike any more ever again.

As noted before technically the top of the Cactus to Clouds trail is the summit of Mount San Jacinto which was about another 2,000 feet in elevation gain, but screw Mount San Jacinto. Some things mankind was never intended to do. I got to spend a great day outside in God's brown Earth with my nephew, and a beautiful tram ride slowly returned us back to the desert. It returned us to the desert in a different part of town thus requiring a 6 mile walk back, but it was a beautiful tram ride down nevertheless. And three days later? A California Angel's game. All in all all good times.

Risky Business

Last month I vacationed to California for family fun time or, as it is also known in my family, Joust. Although we do not actually dawn armor and brandish shields in attempts to impale each other with poles, there is a lot of yelling and noise and inevitably someone will get trampled by a horse. It is just a matter of time before we break out the pikes.

Aside from periodic outbreaks of third grade name calling, no visit home would be complete without... well sleeping on the ground? Mostly it's just periodic outbreaks of third grade name calling. Fruity Pebbles, there was lots of that too. And clothes disappearing into a still as of yet unlocalized black hole. And... Fox News?

Typical family vacations aside, the time was spent in a variety of activities, most important of which being collectively kicking Bowser's backside in Nintendo Wii. That and denying Lucca access to the game. Of course there was also:

• Time at the beach in the gravel and surf
• Three flies up (man Hawaiian girls got weak arms)
• Chocolate covered soggy bananas
• Fireworks
• HORSE (man Hawaiian girls got weak arms)
• Gabby teaching my friend Ro and I to surf
• Eighteen man Nertz
• In-N-Out just once (so sad)
• A never ending game of paddle ball against every last one of my nieces
• Time with Grandma Ruby and Grandma Ruby's nurse
• Time walking home from the park after getting our truck locked in the parking lot
• Time with Matthew and Michael and Michael's cougar
• A corrupted game of Risk complicated by Adam's treacherous general surrender of his empire to his enemy and coincidental wife Ashlee
• An Angels game
• And our surprisingly violent improvised obstacle course (Lily your catastrophic fall was still the greatest)

We even managed to have a beach fire and s'mores for once where Sarah patented the 4x4. At least I think it was Sarah and I think they called it the 4x4. Whatever it was, it was one gigantic wad of marshmallow and chocolate.

The highlight, though, for me at least, was Disneyland. Disneyland! I hadn't been there in like... a really really long time. And apparently they've shrunk the place. It was definitely about half the size I remembered it being. I don't know how they did it; that Disney guy is a genius. Star Tours and Matterhorn may were my favorite rides -- now that the People Mover has been removed -- but Jungle Tour and the Rockets were close seconds save Beeders crushing my hip with his gangly, non-rocket conforming body. There was a slight drizzle, but it made it refreshing, and there were surprisingly long lines at times, but these were vanquished by our Quick Pass running-man Adam. My only regret was that more people could not have been there to see Moriah and Maya run like the dickens away from the animatronic jaguar in the Jungle Book tree house. Seriously, the dickens people. The dickens.

All in all, mostly good times were had mostly. Which is a success in our family so three cheers for that. Next time perhaps we can all sing Christmas carols in matching wool sweaters. I'll bring the tranquilizers.

Photos of the trip (i.e. us standing in various Disney lines!)