Riders On The Storm

Looking back two Sunday mornings ago, I’m not sure I rode my bike the entire 26-plus mile length of the 2011 Pasadena Marathon Bike Tour. I seem to remember doing more swimming than riding.

When I registered to ride the annual event it was an unseasonably warm, early March day. When my wife and I went to the Pasadena Civic Center the Friday afternoon before the event to pick up our swag bags and numbered participant bibs – the sun was out and the temperatures were typically pre-Southern-California-summer-like. However, when my wife, youngest son and I loaded up our bikes and drove east on the 210 Freeway in the pre-dawn darkness May 15, it was not only cold, it was also wet. As in cloudy and drizzling. Sigh.

I should have known. Although this was my first time riding the Pasadena Marathon, a good friend and cycling mentor of mine has ridden it several times now. It has rained every time. Maybe it’s some sort of reverse karma for NOT raining on so many New Year’s Day Rose Parades.  

No matter. To my way of thinking – and to hijack a familiar cliché – even a bad day cycling is better than a good day at work. Or something like that. My wife and I had both had fallen in love with cycling sometime in 2005 and had made one of the best investments ever in our 25 years of marriage by purchasing serious, high-end road bikes (who knew a bicycle could cost more than my first car?!?) At one point, we’d ride well over a hundred miles in any given week and often entered cycling events of 50 miles or more. Over the years, however, having let other time commitments, weight gain (mine, not my wife’s!) and family commitments get in the way, we eventually let our three-to-four-per-week rides dwindle down to none at all.

Thankfully, we both had recommitted to healthier, lighter living at the beginning of this year. Along with that came concentrated efforts to exercise as many days out of the week as we could. We already had the bikes and the funny looking bike clothes and strange plastic shoes – all we needed was the motivation to get back on our saddles (or seats, in this case) and start putting in the miles to strengthen our cycling muscles and build our endurance back up. The Pasadena Marathon Bike Tour was just what we needed.

As we’ve trained the past few months, we’ve ridden hundreds of miles over the streets of Pasadena, including many of the very same roads covered by the 2011 Marathon route. But riding on a weekday afternoon and dodging rush hour traffic is a far cry from the experience of an unobstructed, pre-dawn ride down the middle of Colorado Boulevard past Pottery Barn and the Apple store, blowing through red lights without a care while Pasadena Police and CHP officers keep all motorized traffic out of your way. To say the least, it was a uniquely exciting ride. Helicopters hovering low overhead in the wet, gray skies only added to the strangeness of the experience. In my cold, sleep-deprived thoughts, I could almost imagine what Armstrong, LeMond or Merckx must have felt like riding the Tour. Almost.  

We missed the main 5:45 a.m. start of cyclists by almost 20 minutes, having had to make a frantic round trip dash back home to snag our son’s forgotten helmet (are you kidding me?!) and found ourselves riding the first several miles of wet streets almost entirely alone. Then we began to catch up with and pass the more “interesting” of riders that one always finds bringing up the rear at these types of events – the weekend warriors riding rusty bikes with equally rusty muscles and endurance levels, the riders in fleece animal costumes (don’t ask), those cyclists seemingly more interested in leisurely riding three or four abreast and chatting with each other than in actually completing the course in a respectable amount of time. We even passed several stragglers obliviously texting away while riding. Seriously?

Somewhere between the two and three mile markers, we blew past a rider we affectionately came to call “Butt-Crack Guy.” This rather rotund fellow was not so much riding his bicycle as he was torturing it. He was barely dressed in a way-too-tight tank top, a windbreaker flapping in the breeze and a pair of saggy, soggy gym shorts being dragged off the back of his tookus by the combined forces of rain and gravity. The poor bike squeaked and creaked with every pedal stroke as he strained up a slight incline past some beautifully restored Craftsman-era homes in South Pasadena. Try as I might, it was several more miles before I could get that image out of my mind.

Thankfully, I will never forget the wonderful experience of riding all those miles through a cold, wet Pasadena this month with my wife and son.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a slightly modified version of my column first published yesterday, 5.26.11 in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

if u r rdng ths & drvng pls stp

So where was I? Oh, right. In my column last week (posted yesterday) I opened up the whole driving-while-talking-on-a-handheld-wireless-phone can of worms (Stick This In Your Ear). Since then, it seems that things have gotten worse. Now, apparently, you don’t even need a car to be a dangerous cell phone user.

A few days ago I was heading down my long driveway (several homes share the same driveway) and stopped at the street to let a mom pushing a baby in a stroller pass by. Another young child toddled along beside the stroller. This kid heard my truck coming down the driveway and made eye contact with me. He instinctively hesitated before crossing my path, tugging at his mother’s sweat pants to alert her to my presence.

I stopped to let them pass, or course. But even with her son yanking on her pants to get her attention, she didn’t have a clue I was there. Of course not. Because while she pushed the stroller with one hand, she was otherwise 100% engaged in reading and sending text messages on her Blackberry, or iPhone or whatever beloved device was cradled oh-so-carefully in her other hand. She was so distracted that she didn’t look away from her precious wireless device until she was almost past the grill of my truck.

So apparently, now we can’t even “drive” a stroller without worshipping at the temple of multitasking technology. Scary stuff. Especially since recent studies show that there is 37% less activity in the area of the brain tasked with driving when someone is using a cell phone. The same studies liken using a phone while driving as being equivalent to driving while being two to three times over the legal limit for being drunk. That ain’t just distracted, friends. That’s idiotic. What semi-responsible person would consider knocking back four or five shots of booze, then grabbing his keys and hopping in the car for a drive? And yet, we do worse than that by using that wireless device while behind the wheel.

I’ve received more comments from readers since my first column appeared on this topic earlier this month, than from any of my nearly 150 other columns. I’m not surprised. People are frightened. They’re frustrated. And they’re angry at the reckless drivers who insist on texting or talking on the phone while they pilot thousands of pounds of death-on-wheels around the same streets our family members and friends use every day.

As long as I’m taking batting practice at hornet’s nests, I have to say that I’m not that impressed with all the drivers out there with those goofy Bluetooth thing-a-ma-bobs dangling off their ears so they can careen down the highway while endlessly talking “hands free.” It might make it legal, but it doesn’t make it smart. Also, just between you and me, it also doesn’t look cool or high tech. It looks dorky. And deadly.

I’m baffled as to why as a society we so readily accept this relatively new and ridiculously dangerous practice. We’ve even come up with a nice, safe, inoffensive term for the practice: “Driving While Distracted,” or DWD. Ah, isn’t that nice? Oops, did I just mow down that nice young couple in the crosswalk? So sorry, I was “distracted.” Not reckless. Not stupid or careless. Nope. That’s far too judgmental. Distracted has a much nicer, more innocent, ring to it. Unfortunately, people wind up just as dead.

But maybe things have reached a tipping point. I mean, if even Queen Oprah has become a champion of not using cell phones while driving, as evidenced by her splashy new “No Phone Zone” campaign – it surely won’t be long before Deepak Chopra, Marlo Thomas or Michael J. Fox – heck, maybe even that global guardian of all things wise and good, Al Gore himself, will take up the cause. Yeah, that would turn things around.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: A version of this post was originally published in the May 20, 2010 edition of the CV Weekly Newspaper (www.cvweekly.com).

This version © 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Put This In Your Ear

I know you’re out there. I’ve seen you on Foothill Blvd. And Honolulu Ave. And Verdugo, Ramsdell, La Crescenta, and Ocean View. I’ve seen you on just about every street in town, in fact. Who are you?

You’re the in-a-hurry, Abercrombie-attired guy who almost killed me – literally almost killed me – on Descanso Drive, thank you very much. I was riding my bike, obeying traffic laws, and you pulled out in front of me from a side street without blinking an eye. Oh, you saw me. We even made eye contact. But you were so deep in conversation on the cell phone in your hand, you pulled out anyway. Trust me, you would have noticed had I not grabbed two handfuls of brake lever and instead, smashed through your side window at 32 mph.

You’re the lady I watched laughing and throwing your head back as you held a phone to your ear and cut off a mom pushing her child in a stroller across Pennsylvania Avenue just the other day. Thankfully, the mom saw that you were completely, utterly, lethally unaware that she and her baby were in the crosswalk and yanked her stroller back as your 4,000 pound SUV passed a few inches away.

Not to belabor the point, but you’re the moms and uncles and siblings and students I see everyday picking up your kids from Crescenta Valley High or Clark or Rosemont or any other local school. A day doesn’t go by that you don’t come close to mowing down a sophomore here, a freshman there. Here a junior, there a junior, everywhere an almost fatal encounter with a distracted driver.

Can I ask you something? What’s so flippin’ important about your conversation with your spouse, girlfriend, parent, kid, best friend or co-worker – that you would willingly, repeatedly put someone else’s spouse, girlfriend, parent, child, or best friend at risk through practicing your incredibly selfish and dangerous habit? And does it matter at all that there’s a law (granted, a laughably weak and fatally ineffective law) against driving while using a handheld cell phone? Apparently not. Twice already this year I thought I’d seen you break the law – once as a CHP officer, and once an L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy. I’ve since been informed that this particular law doesn’t apply to those professions. By the way both of you officers were driving, however, it absolutely should. Just because you wear a badge doesn’t mean you should be a cell-phone-wielding menace behind the wheel.

Now, I’m probably the last guy to support so-called “nanny state” laws and regulations that – while enacted with all good intentions – only serve to further restrict our freedoms. I think those hysterically health-conscious Santa Clara county officials that passed a law banning toys in McDonalds’ Happy Meals should be chased out of town by liberty loving citizens wielding flaming Big Macs and Filet o’ Fish sandwiches. Shame on them.

As one who loves motorcycles, I complained loudly and often when the California helmet law went into effect. I still ride without one when I’m in a state that allows it. But it’s my life, and doing so doesn’t endanger anyone else. In fact, by not wearing a helmet I can better hear other vehicles, pedestrians and other dangers that can be more easily avoided than if I had my ears covered. But that’s a topic for another time and a different blog.

There’s no denying that seatbelt laws have saved countless lives. I’m thankful my kids grew up having learned to automatically put on their seatbelt whenever they get into a car. When I was a child, seatbelts were a novelty, so I still have to remind myself to buckle up. But I have a few otherwise sensible adult friends who still rail against that law when driving alone, even though they’ve received enough tickets to make their behavior financially painful. And yet, by not wearing a seatbelt they’re not going to endanger other drivers, cyclists or pedestrians.

As often happens, I’ve run out of space before I’ve run out of thoughts on this subject. So let’s pick this back up where we left off in tomorrow’s post. In the meantime, the next time you’re behind the wheel, please – I beg of you – think about whether that call you want to make or text you need to send is more important than someone’s life.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: A version of this post was originally published in the May 6, 2010 edition of the CV Weekly Newspaper (www.cvweekly.com).

This version © 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

A Rat Tale – Part 2

Last week when we left our tale (tail?) of the uninvited Mother’s Day visitor (A Mother's Day Tail), my wife and I continued on with brunch preparations for our human guests – thinking that we had trapped the crafty critter (a big, hairy rat, in case you didn't read the story last week!) upstairs in our bedroom behind closed doors.

But no-o-o-o. As I would soon find out, the wily, long-tailed terrorist had sneaked out of our bedroom while I was tearing the room apart trying to find it. Somehow, unbeknownst to us, Osama bin Rat had already made it downstairs into our family room and was hiding behind some cabinets.

As our guests arrived and my wife and I prepared brunch in our kitchen, I was standing where I could see down into our split-level family room. Just as I happened to look in that direction, a dark, stealthy shape skittered across the floor from one side of the room to the other. It took every ounce of restraint not to fling the carving knife in my hand at the intruder. Well, that and the fact that my mother-in-law was sitting directly in between me and the rat. 

I don’t remember the exact words I blurted out upon seeing the beast, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t appropriate for either the mothers present or for a Sunday morning conversation. But holy cheese-eating, pellet-pooping intruder, ratman! – the dang thing had escaped our bedroom and was now even closer to our food and family.

However, not wanting to throw too much of a hissy fit in front of guests, and seeing as how brunch was moments from being served, I convinced myself that the rat would be too frightened of all the people to come up into the dining room/living room while we ate. Of course, I was wrong.

No sooner had the salad been tossed did the wretched rodent ran out from the family room, through our dining room, across the hearth in the living room and under the sofa.

And so, while my hot brunch slowly cooled on my plate, I proceeded to search under and behind the couch, the easy chair, the piano – you get the idea. Of course, no sign of the rat could be seen until I sat back down to eat my meal. Then it would come out and taunt me with its ratty ways. This would continue until the rat made the fatal mistake of climbing up my wife’s delicate, sheer curtain panels where I could see its shadowy progress even though it most likely thought it was hidden from view.

I don’t think I said anything as lame as “I’ve got you now!”, at least I hope I didn’t, but I quickly grabbed a metal-handled broom we had bought the day before, got a two-handed grip on the thing, cocked it back like Hank Aaron at home plate and swung for record books. Whack! The shape behind the curtain dropped to the ground. Unfortunately, it was only stunned, and briefly at that. To save our family (and my dignity), I went at the poor thing like that kid on the car commercial whacking away at the VW-shaped piñata. The more the doomed creature tried to escape, the faster I played the drum solo from In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida on it. It wasn’t a proud moment.

As I swung the broom again and again, the classic western scene played in my mind where a panicked gunslinger has already killed his adversary and emptied his revolver in the process, but can’t stop pulling the trigger. “Click! Click! Click!” I expected my wife to put her hand on my arm and say something comforting like, “It’s over honey, you can stop now. Please. Stop.”

When I called my son (the hunter/fisherman/University of Montana student) later to brag of my heroism, he was so proud of his old man that he suggested I etch a “sniper’s notch” in the broom handle to signify my kill. I’m leaning more towards painting a rat silhouette on it. My wife wants to burn it.

As I quickly dug a hole in our flower bed outside, fueled by my leftover adrenaline buzz. I tossed in the vanquished beast and covered it over with dirt and couldn’t help but pause a moment to think about what had just happened.

A life had been ended. By me. What if that stupid rat was a mother of little baby rats? Or the father of a litter of little rat children and all he had been trying to do in our house was to find food for his family. I try and do that on a daily basis. (And I have to say, in this economy I often feel like a big giant is after me and swinging a broom for all it’s worth!)

Maybe I’m just getting soft as I get older. But now you know why I’m not a hunter.

On the other hand, as bad as I feel about offing the terrified creature, I have to admit I also felt more than a bit of testosterone intoxication at being called upon to successfully protect my maiden and castle against the intrusion of such a nasty beast.

And in my defense (lest you think I’m a heartless, ruthless rat eradicator), my wife and I had opened various doors to the outside world in hopes that the rat would see an obvious escape route and take it – leaving our house relatively unscathed (except for the damage to its eardrums from my wife’s initial scream upon discovering its ratty presence). For whatever eason, it chose to ignore these obvious paths to freedom. But we certainly tried less lethal ways to resolve the situation. So, please – no PETA pickets outside my house, okay?

There’s a life lesson in here somewhere, I can feel it. What only minutes earlier was terrorizing a houseful of people would now be fertilizing a rose bush. The circle of life. Kumbaya. Hakuna matata. Whatever.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a longer version of my column first published yesterday (5.19.11) in the CV Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

An Elevated Sense of Menace

I read a piece in the Wall Street Journal this morning about new elevator technology that allows company management to “redirect” any employee they choose to a different floor than the one that employee thinks he/she will be going to.

In other words, if the boss wants to chew you out for whatever reason and you think you’re going to sneak into your cubicle in the morning before anyone sees you, he can program the elevator to take you directly to his floor without stopping at yours. It can even alert the executive suite that you have entered the elevator and are on the way.

How spooky is that?

This same technology (offered by two of the larger US-based elevator companies) groups employees onto different elevators in the morning (or afternoon) rush hour traffic in the service of efficiency in moving personnel to their respective floors more quickly.

Maybe it’s the dark side of my imagination that makes me wonder how long it will be until some nefarious CEO (of a BIG OIL or tobacco company, of course!) uses the new technology to make an adversary disappear down an open elevator shaft. Oops, I have no idea why he walked through those open doors! What a tragedy. Death by Otis.

All in all, it’s just one more reason to take the stairs. 

Pampering Diaper Divas

In yesterday’s post I wrote about being overwhelmed with too many choices while shopping for baby paraphernalia at a specialty store in Glendale. Who knew there had been so many leaps and bounds in toddler technology since my own kids were certified curtain climbers a couple of decades ago – give or take a gray hair or two?

For example, when our daughter (for who’s baby shower my wife and I were gift shopping when we were in the mega-baby-stuff store) was herself a mini-person way back in the early 80s, we were thrilled with the brand spanking new technology available in strollers – an ingenious design breakthrough popularly called the “umbrella stroller.” It was so-called because these instantly popular umbrellas with a curved handle could be folded up into a skinny bundle that easily fit into almost any car trunk. When collapsed for storage, they looked very much like an umbrella. Hence the name. Clever, right?

These innovations in stroller technology held a squirming baby securely, were blessedly lightweight (compared to all the other Sherman tank-like strollers available at the time) and they featured something even macho dads loved – dual wheels on all four corners. Oh yeah, suddenly Dad could look semi-cool pushing a stroller.

And so it began. New parents or those shopping to buy baby stuff for new parents had a choice in strollers – traditional clunky kludge, or sleek and modern umbrella stroller. Flash forward to today and the choice in strollers can make anyone prone to indecision sit in a corner and blubber. Today’s strollers aren’t just strollers. No way, now they’re “systems” that can include (but are not limited to) features like removable seating pods that convert from stroller to car seat with the flip of just 97 levers and catches. When fully ensconced inside these wheeled wonders of engineering and ingenuity, a child can be protected from the elements from above, front, back and both sides. Standard features include cup holders – a fact that gets under my skin since most of the strollers I saw had more flippin’ cup holders than my car.  

Where was I? Oh, right. Features. The seating/pod/whatever can be turned to face either forward or backward, there are protective front bumpers available, as well as places for mommy to place her wireless phone and/or MP3 player. (Not that any self-respecting parent would ever do anything to distract him or herself from the responsibility of taking care of a young child. Never.) I saw strollers with all-wheel suspension and something called a “centralized brake cable” on the rear wheels. There were even units with (I’m not kidding) integrated side impact protection. Again, not that I’m envious or anything, but none of my own cars have that integrated side impact protection, for crying out loud! I wonder how long until voice-activated GPS systems are included in the contraptions?

Of course, I’ve only begun to describe the basic strollers available today. Once you determine the “need” for a specialized jogging or all-terrain stroller, you’ve opened up a whole new world of specifications and features. And cost.

Get the idea? Now apply this same depth and breadth of available models and features to other categories like diaper bags (dad-specific, haute-couture, multi-function, camouflage, skull & crossbones, pro sports or college team-themed, backpack style vs. over-the-shoulder, etc.), baby room furniture, bathing accessories, child proofing/safety items, cleaning products, baby monitors, potty training, crib toys, bouncers, rattles and teethers, bedding, and on and on and on.

How crazy has it gotten? I’ll sum up by simply telling you that it’s possible today to buy designer-made holsters for pacifiers. And leashes for pacifiers. And pacifiers with nipples sized by the silly millimeter to more closely match mommy’s own. Seriously. Even practical products like baby wipes have not escaped the marketing magic of today’s multi-billion dollar baby industry. While shopping, I saw an entire shelf dedicated to – hold on to your debit cards – baby wipe warming units. I wanted to cry – like a (you guessed it) baby.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is an updated version of a column first published in the CV Weekly newspaper (www.cvweekly.com) on June 10, 2010.

This version: © 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Oh Baby, How Things Have Changed

Our daughter and son-in-law had their first baby, a beautiful girl, a little less than a year ago. Although she was my wife’s and my fourth grandchild, she is the first to live within an easy drive from us. Our other three grand-munchkins live heart-wrenchingly far away in Hawaii. My dear wife and I are not extreme swimmers, we don’t own a boat or have stock in an airline, so that means we get to visit the grandkids in Hawaii far less often than we would like – an understatement if ever there was one.

Suffice it to say that our newest grandchild has so far had no shortage of time or attention lavished upon her cuddly little self. In fact, the fun had already begun with the pre-birth celebration of a baby shower that was thrown last year for our daughter and her soon-to-arrive child.

Now, I was told that it’s bad form to show up for a baby shower without a large gift in hand (apparently providing chicken salad, croissant sandwiches, a big honkin’ fresh fruit platter and homemade gourmet cupcakes wasn’t enough!) So that’s how my dear wife and I found ourselves a few days before the shower wandering the aisles of a super-baby-warehouse store in the Los Feliz area of Glendale, California.

I have to tell you, the visit to the store was an eye opener. Granted, it’s been quite a while since my kids were babies (there’s a joke here, but my kids swear they read this column at least occasionally so I’ll refrain), but I simply wasn’t prepared for what I saw wandering the aisles of this store. I mean, I remember that when there were only a few basics one had to have as a new parent. You needed a crib, possibly a bassinette to have near your own bed when you first brought the baby home, a relative gave you a hand-me-down dresser for the baby’s clothes, and you got a big spongy pad thing that you put in the kitchen sink and laid the baby on to bath it. If you really wanted to equip a baby’s room, you got one of those rickety changing tables with the cheapo foam pad on top and a shelf for thousands of diapers underneath.

New parents also needed half a dozen or so baby bottles, a couple of pacifiers, a stroller and a car seat. That’s pretty much it, unless you truly wanted to spoil a kid with one of those swings guaranteed to put even the most colicky kid to sleep in minutes. (But seriously, weren’t those blessed wind-up-baby-sitters invented for parents more than babies?) Oh, and you absolutely, positively needed a diaper pail of some kind. A big, easy-to-empty diaper pail to contain all the little neutron stink bomb bundles of joy, each with the power to instantly bring a fully grown, testosterone-soaked man to his knees begging for mercy and fresh air.

By the time our fourth child was born, the list of have-to-haves had grown to include a portable play pen (you know, the kind that never, ever fold back up as neatly and compactly as when you first take it out of the box). You also needed some sort of electronic baby monitor to eavesdrop on your spouse as they wrongfully whined to the baby about what a slacker you were for not getting up at 3 a.m. to check on him/her even though you did it already at 1:30 and your wife slept soundly through the entire incident and you didn’t get any “what-a-good-dad” credit like you deserved. Not that this happened to me. Much.

Anyway, that’s the sort of equipment we needed twenty or so years ago in order to bring up baby. Apparently, today’s babies need a whole lot more stuff. So much more, in fact, that I’ll need another post to discuss the catalog of goodies it apparently takes to be a parent in 2010. Hang on to your wallet, and check tomorrow’s My Thoughts Exactly post. I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is an updated version of a column first published in the CV Weekly newspaper (www.cvweekly.com) on June 3, 2010.

This version: © 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Hooked On Annual Event

On the Friday before the last Saturday of any given April, the northbound freeways out of southern California are choked with SUVs and pickup trucks towing boat trailers and loaded to the gills with work-weary fishermen headed for the same general destination – the streams, reservoirs and lakes of California’s Eastern Sierra mountains.

If you aren’t an avid angler or married to one, you may not know that the last Saturday of every April is the annual Opening Day of the Eastern Sierra Trout Season – often shortened to just “the Opener” – as in, “Are you doing the Opener this year, or waiting for warmer weather?” Also affectionately known to participants and those they leave behind as “Fishmas,” the annual Opener sends Southern California anglers by the tens of thousands up Highway 395 and into Inyo and Mono Counties to try their lucky lures against the wild and planted fish stock that have had the long, bitter winter to grow bigger and hungrier.

On Opener weekend, fishermen head out by the carload, bleary eyed and caffeine-fueled, visions of rainbow trout dancing in their heads. This legion of lake loiterers becomes progressively more alert as they drive through the Owens Valley towns of Lone Pine, Independence, Big Pine and Bishop. Signs and banners in shop windows and hung across the highway greet the wader-wearing warriors as they pass with graphic shouts of “Merry Fishmas!,” “Welcome, Fishermen!” or “Land a lunker!”

As part of the Opener ritual, most if not all of this convoy of casting characters will make a stop at one or more of the many bait and tackle shops along the way – many of which stay open all night on “Fishmas Eve” (and yes, they really call it Fishmas Eve). After all, it doesn’t matter how much fishing equipment you’ve brought, there’s always a new flavor of bait or type of hook that simply must be purchased in order to ensure a successful weekend.

The high school kids in Independence (a tiny, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town along the way to hallowed fishing grounds) sell Styrofoam containers of night crawler worms on Opener weekend to raise funds for various school activities. I’ll bet the clean up.

Having a son who’s been a certifiable fishing addict since the age of five, I know of no other hobby – some would say affliction – that requires the near constant addition of new gear and accessories. (Although, golf may come close.) To be a true fisherman, one needs to invest a sum worthy of Goldman-Sachs bailout on new and improved ways to catch fish.

I’m not saying that fishermen are gullible (“gill”able?), but I would bet that you could take a simple size 12 single salmon egg hook, repackage the exact same hooks with a new label marketing them as revolutionary left-handed technology designed exclusively for use in water flowing right-to-left instead of left-to-right – and a million fishermen would spend perfectly good cash to add these special “new” hooks to the arsenal in their tackle boxes. You never know when you’ll run into reverse flowing water, after all. Or ambidextrous trout.  

As we have for many years, my above-mentioned son and I often take part in any given year’s Trout Opener weekend – getting up before dawn on the Saturday morning in question to put our small aluminum boat into the frigid waters and await the first rays of sunlight, and with it, the official start of the Spring/Summer fishing season.

How do we usually do? Well, if you measure the “success” of a fishing trip by the number of rainbows brought home in the cooler, we typically fail spectacularly. Depending on the year, either most of the lakes are still covered by ice and the water just too cold for the fish to bite – or the wind is blowing at gale force – or there are enough boats crowding the prime lake locations that you can’t cast your line without hooking another angler, or … you get the idea.

But as far as I’m concerned, the chance to sit in a boat with my college-age son (and sometimes my father-in-law) for most of the day, in the high altitude splendor of the snow-covered Sierras, sharing a cheese and cracker lunch with a side of priceless conversation – well, it’s pretty hard to classify a trip like that as anything but successful.

Besides, I hear there’s a brand new sun-dried Tuscan garlic flavor of bait that I’m going to pick up before our next fishing trip. Yeah, that should have ‘em absolutely jumping into our boat.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: A version of this post was originally published in the April 29, 2010 edition of the CV Weekly Newspaper (www.cvweekly.com).

A Mother’s Day Tail

So moms, how was your Mother’s Day? Whether you spent it being pampered by loved ones, or pampering those you love, or a combination of both – I truly hope your day was less exciting and memorable than it was for my dear wife and for both of our mothers who celebrated the big day at our house.

Why? Because we had a rat for Mother’s Day.

I should explain. The rat in question wasn’t one of the above-mentioned relatives, and it most definitely was not on the menu for our Mother’s Day brunch. Nope. The rat was a rat. As in, of the rodent variety – big, furry, long-tailed and very fast. 

Now, before you think I live in squalor-like conditions inspired by Slumdog Millionaire, let me assure you that my wife is known for being a fastidious housekeeper. Crumbs barely hit the floor before she sweeps them up. We burn out vacuum cleaners on a ridiculously regular basis. We don’t leave food out. We don’t leave children with messy faces out. We even have a cranky cat (yes, I realize that’s redundant) that lives in the house 24/7, for all the good she was this past Sunday.  

Our fun and games with the renegade rodent began Sunday morning while I was downstairs in our kitchen, dutifully preparing one of the dishes for our upcoming brunch. I had the TV on, the dishwasher was humming away and my wife was upstairs in our bedroom drying her hair. As I was cracking eggs into a bowl, a scream the pitch and volume of which I have never heard (and hope to never hear again) came from upstairs. Ear-piercing waves of sound were still ricocheting off the walls, rattling picture frames and vibrating windows downstairs when they were followed closely by my wife – a look of utter panic on her ashen face.

Long story short, she had been just a few feet away from a large (and likely ravenous) rat as it scurried across the carpet in our master bedroom. The poor thing surely had its eardrums imploded by her scream. Between gulps of air, my wife was barely able to articulate enough details for me to get it through my big, fat man-head that our home, our sanctuary, the pristine, nearly sterile environment where our four precious children had been nurtured from infancy – had been violated for all time by a foul and loathsome monster that had crawled up from darkest depths of every woman’s nightmare. In other words, we had a rat.

Without the slightest regard for my own safety, I armed myself with the most lethal weapons within reach – a brand new kitchen broom and a tiny LED flashlight – and leapt upstairs to do battle with the ferocious intruder. (You’re buying this, right?) Over the course of the next 45 minutes or so, I boldly searched under our bed, behind furniture, in closets, behind curtains, in cupboards and virtually everywhere and anywhere I could think of that a rat could be hiding. I was beginning to think the only place left to search was my wife’s imagination. Having recently celebrated 25 years of marriage, however, I knew better than to even suggest that possibility.

Now almost an hour behind schedule, and with Mother’s Day VIPs soon to arrive – we closed the door to our bedroom, leaving the sliding glass door to our balcony open so that the by-now-hearing-impaired rat could – hopefully – please dear God let it be so – make his own escape.

Company was coming. Food still needed to be prepared and table settings had to be placed. Reluctantly, my wife and I went back downstairs to finish our preparations. The rat would have to wait or get out of Dodge of his own volition while he could. Little did either of us know that – earlier, while my wife had been breathlessly telling me about her horrifying near-rat experience – the rascally uninvited vermin had already skittered downstairs and was hiding out, plotting his next ratty move.

What happened then? I’ll tell you the outcome right here – next week. In the meantime, I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a version of my column first published yesterday (5.12.11) in the CV Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

What a week. I’m sure more than a few regular readers will think this week’s post will be about the royal pain in the … er, I mean …the royal wedding of last Friday. With the deconstruction of societal norms in full swing, I admit it was wonderful seeing such an unabashed celebration of traditional marriage, in the mother of all churches no less, between one man and one woman (how quaint!). Having said that, the fawning and slobbering mass of press corps camped out in London for days on end was nothing short of pathetic. It’s difficult to think of these folks as serious journalists when their “reporting” was more in keeping with People magazine or Entertainment Tonight. And to think that the major networks have closed a majority of their foreign bureaus in cost-saving measures. Yet, they certainly had the money to send Katie and Barbara and Matt and Al and Meredith and a first-class jumbo jet full of pampered news readers to London for a week or more of inane blather on everything from hats and dresses to exposes on the gardening shed where Kate Middleton’s mum began her online party favor business. Blimey. 

And for all of that energy and expense invested in the wedding of the decade (or at least since Lady Diana married Prince Charles in the farce of the century), the story was all but abandoned within two days as news from Pakistan commanded everyone’s focus. Breaking news was that Osama bin Laden – a truly evil man who had successfully hidden from the Western world for almost a decade, had not only been located, but had died from the sudden onset of lead poisoning courtesy of the US Navy SEALS Team Six.

I’ll only say that I’m torn between immense pride in our military’s special forces (who serve with the same unrivaled levels of excellence and sacrifice no matter who their Commander In Chief might be), and my gut reaction to the cringe-worthy, mob-like public displays of euphoria at the killing of another human – no matter how deserving of death that person may have been. As much as I love seeing crowds chanting “U! S! A!”, there’s something sobering and unsettling in many of those eyes. Patriotism is one thing. A lot of this celebration seems more like blood lust. I could be wrong, and hopefully I am.

Also, some of the loudest celebrants have been people I’ve seen adamantly opposing the death penalty for other, less-notorious crimes. What gives?   

The surprisingly powerful and sustained winds that blew through my community of La Crescenta this past weekend made me consider discussing the recent devastation and loss of life throughout Alabama. After all, with a tornado season that has already exacted a historic toll on thousands of our fellow Americans, I can certainly tolerate my trash cans being blown around the yard by Santa Anas.

 

Each of the subjects above has been covered ad nauseam, however. Besides which, I’ve already tested the limits of your tolerance for troubling topics with my column of last week. And by the way, I can’t thank you enough for your many heartfelt emails of condolence at the passing of my dog, Sierra. We have some wonderfully compassionate people living in these foothills.

In spite of all the major news stories of late, the events most on my mind right now are much closer to home. For example, next week my wife and I will drive down to Point Loma to help pack up our youngest son’s dorm and bring him back home after his freshman year away at college. When we dropped him off last August, this date seemed impossibly far away. Now it’s just around the corner and I like that. A lot. Unfortunately, his homecoming will be short lived. He’ll be leaving again the second week of June for a summer-long job at Hume Lake Christian Camp.

The same weekend we’re in San Diego, another son will be loading his pickup to begin the 1,200 mile drive home from Missoula where he’s been studying wildlife biology this school year. With our blessing, he recently decided to apply for official Montana state residency next year, so this will be his last summer home between semesters. Let the record show that we fully intend to enjoy every moment he’s home. He’s been in Montana since last August, so for the first time in years he and I didn’t attend the annual opening of fishing season (a belated Merry “Fishmas” everyone!) in the Sierras this past Saturday. We have a lot of catching (up) to do.

Just this week my wife and I also received our official wilderness permit that allows us to attempt the hike to the summit of 14,505 foot Mt. Whitney at the end of summer. The keyword here is “attempt.” Let the training hikes begin!

So, let the Royals celebrate, the U.S. military congratulate, and the people of Alabama commiserate. I’ve got my mind on our kids coming home, on a summer that’s almost here and a calendar full of challenge and adventure. Bring it! And if we’re not too busy, hopefully, I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a longer, edited version of my column first published yesterday (5.5.11) in the CV Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.