Take The Damned Target Off My Back!

While driving home in the "midnight hour" the other night, happily cruising along at 65mph in the middle lane, I noticed a vehicle coming up behind me at about 90 in the left lane.

It's a pickup truck, and it veers right at the last moment and the (moronic) oversized tire of the truck hits the back of my car and sends me across the road into the right lane. I regained control of the car and saw that the truck hadn't even slowed down - in fact, it was now going FASTER. I am not a racecar driver, nor do I drive some overpowered sports car, so although I attempted to keep an eye on where the truck went, he was soon too far gone for me to ever catch up. Damage to my car seems to be mostly cosmetic, but still probably $500-700 worth. In other words, right around my deductible, so I'm just screwed. I hope whoever it was ended up wrapped around a tree later. But I'm not bitter . . . heh . . .

Then the NEXT day, on my way to the body shop to get the bad news, I was driving behind one of those recycling trucks on the highway. All of a sudden, plastic bottles started flying out of the top of the thing. One hit squarely on my windshield but fortunately didn't break or crack it. I got into a different lane but kept an eye on the truck - it continued to eject plastic bottles for a couple of miles.

Who the hell put a target on me??? And can they PLEASE remove it now?

Thanks.

Leftover Pics

Cleaning out the vacation photos. Here are some that didn't
"make the cut" in earlier posts (the judge is a corrupt bastard!).

Boat ride to Friday Harbor:

Mt. St. Helens chipmunk:

Um. . . a fake dinosaur causes Master L to do his impersonation of "The Scream":

Old lava flow path, several miles out from St. Helens:

North Head lighthouse. Don't ask me what town it's in!:

View from inside the lighthouse:

"We'd heard it existed, but . . I don't know". Master L smiles while tending chickens. He REALLY liked taking care of the chickens.

"The Space Needle points to the sky - and the Space Needle's such a nice guy." This is just to prove we were in Seattle . .

Here's the family, somewhere, museum probably. We aren't THAT pink, really!:

Here's the whole damned crew, including our hosts, at Friday Harbor:

Must have been an OK trip. . . Master L expressed an interest in moving to the area. Of course, he didn't have to go to school while we were there. That probably helped.

Summer Recap - Mt. St. Helens

On the way to Mt. St. Helens, we saw this sign . . .



. . . "EXTREME DANGER". Something to do with the drop-off behind the sign, I guess. Not easily daunted, Mrs. L took this shot of the flowers growing on the side of the cliff. This is the woman who claims to be afraid of heights . . .

The grey you see at the bottom (that looks like a dried-up river bed) is actually the ash and pumice flow from the eruption, albeit almost thirty years later.

I did notice that the sky is too close to the ground in this area. See?

On to the actual volcano . . . two shots, the first in 'unpopular, film' mode and the second in 'popular, digital' mode:


Seems to me that the digital photos are always darker but slightly more sharp (if you're lucky). However, I don't know what settings Mrs. L was using on the K-1000, so . . . talk amongst yourselves.

Those last two photos were taken from the area where that guy Johnston made the famous radio call, "Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!" - only to be killed by flying rock a few moments later. FIVE MILES from the mountain. Yikes.

But, hey, they named the ridge after him. Never mind that the Native Americans probably already had a name for it - that's not how we roll here in the US!

Summer Recap - The Pacific, First Look

I figured it was our parental duty to show Master L the Pacific Ocean. At this point, he seemed to be channeling my mother . . . "Looks like water to me, Dad". . .


. . . and the coastline:

. . .well, it looks like . . .
. . . "rocks"! But check out those windswept trees. Wait - are they windswept, or are they simply cowering back due to the possibility of falling off the cliff??

This next picture was taken, not with the digital camera, but the old Pentax K-1000 MANUAL camera with some stuff called FILM. Perhaps you've heard of it? Do you see any differences? Well . . . do ya, punk?

Master L, officially conquering the Pacific once and for all:

Of course, going to the Pacific meant . . . hours in the car!!! We were actually closer to the ocean than to a major city but apparently east-west travel in Washington is more difficult than north-south travel. We have that same problem home in New Hampshire. I guess fewer roads were built going west because . . I don't know, the workers had to look into the sun, so they either worked LESS or went BLIND?

Anyway, we grabbed something to eat before the long ride back to the lair and, of course, checking on the chicken egg supply. Master L really enjoyed the chicken routine. Maybe it was because the rooster started screeching anytime we got close to his "harem" and wouldn't stop until we were halfway out of the yard. Then again, we WERE taking the eggs. But I refuse to feel guilty - as I said, they were delicious. And yet again, maybe that was not so much the eggs but the skill of our host who prepared them. He works at a fancy-schmancy hotel and one of his duties is the breakfast buffet eggs. The guy can cook a perfect omelette in no time at all, complete with "TV chef pan flip" technique . . .

Summer Recap - Washington, Lair

To finish off summer vacation - or rather, extend it, because school actually started the week of this trip [Master L was very 'distraught', I'll tell you!] - we went west, to visit some old friends.

On the plane, Mrs. L 'discovered' Biscoff cookies. Her eyes lit up. She asked me to see if the flight attendant could give us any more. Little did I know HOW serious she was. She made sure to save the web site address for later ordering [turns out they sell them at a store near our house, though . . so that saves about a million dollars in shipping fees!]. OK, the damned cookies ARE good, I admit it!

Here's the obligatory shot of Mt. Rainier that everyone takes from the plane on the way into Sea-Tac: As my mother once famously declared - after a trip to the Grand Canyon: "I wouldn't give ya nothin' for the West. It's just a bunch of rocks."

On the way out of Seattle (I have no idea where this is now) we stopped at "The Glass Museum".
All of these displays were outdoors:

Our destination was this house, that our friends have been building with their very own hands for several years now. Neither of them had done anything like this before, and I have to say it looks really nice.

Trouble is (at least from a visitor's standpoint), it's located at least an hour from ANYTHING and TWO hours if you want to go to a big city. Great for living, less so for a tourist! Every morning and late at night there were deer in the yard. There were also LOTS of (non-venomous) snakes. It was funny - Master L had never encountered a snake in the wild, and he jumped about two feet in the air when he saw the first one near his feet. "DAD!!! THERE ARE SNAKES!". . . after I told him that they aren't the kind that would bite, it only took about an hour before he was chasing them to pick them up. They would open their mouths to threaten but never actually bite. He had conquered the snakes.

The people who live across the road (but not close by, by our standards) came over to say they were going away for the week . . . and asked our friends to feed their chickens and take the eggs from coop. So now we had a daily project: before breakfast and at dinner time we'd trek up the hill and across the road. Mmmm. . . eggs still warm from the hens. . .

Soon we would discover the 'joy' of getting anywhere in the west. Comfortable car seats are a must. And it became stunningly obvious why there were little roadside espresso trailers dotting the countryside. The REAL reason Seattle is known for coffee is, if you aren't wired up you could never drive to where you need to go. My theory, anyway.

We settled in for a bit before venturing out into this brave, new world.

Summer Recap - Vermont

Vermont - I had a couple of gigs there over the summer, for one of which I took the whole family for the weekend (posted earlier) and the other was kind of hit-and-run.

But I'm just 'getting too old' (ahem) to drive for hours,
play for hours, and drive for hours again to go home
in the middle of the night. So I crashed at the drummer's
house and the band went bass fishing on the Connecticut
River in the morning.

This was their cat, Bandit, at 5 in the morning:

So - we're happily casting our lines, when the drummer decides
it's getting hot. Time to remove his sweatshirt . . . up over
the head, flip, oops, were those the KEYS to the truck
that just fell out of the pocket, bounced once on the deck
and fell into the river?!!? Why . . yes, that was them.

Were the keys on a float keychain? Nah. Too sensible.
We're only boating, after all.


Fortunately, the guitar player had left the keys to HIS
truck back at the house, so a call was placed to the
drummer's girlfriend who then came and rescued us.
We were able to get the boat back to the house,
leaving the drummer's truck by the river for a
locksmith to deal with on Monday.


Here's his explanation for dropping his keys in
the river:




Well, his girlfriend DID give me some zucchini from their garden,
so I suppose it all comes out even in the end. (I'm not even sure
what that means).


Anyway, lots of GREEN on the drive home. . .

Right after I took this picture, the guitar player (who was driving ahead of me) called my cell. "Should you really be taking pictures while you're driving? REALLY?"

I said, "You're right. It's as bad as those people who are always making cell calls while driving!" He hung up, for some reason.

Oh . . right. The zucchini. How could I forget? I guess because they were so tiny:

Summer Recap - Maine

Going through the massive stores of picture files from
the summer . . . this is, as all who have gone will know,
the gateway to Maine:


Master L frolics in the lake water:

. . . then tries his hand at being a surly fisherman:

Apparently it's less 'surly-inducing' when a friend is along:

HEY, who told you to take off the life jacket??

"Art" shot of the rowboat:

Master L with his first small-mouth bass:

Our friend Sue setting it free:

And another friend of Master L's . . .

. . .summing up what it's like to have to tolerate parents on vacation!