No Wi-Fi Bitchin'

I complain about all the wireless stuff in my life, but if it weren't for some free access I got hooked up with, I wouldn't have posted any of this today: I'm currently up on a T-Mobile Wi-Fi network in the United terminal at San Francisco Airport, right this second (9:51 Pacific).

Bright side: we might be losing six hours by going back to the east coast overnight, but we gain back an hour because of the return to standard time. Lucky us!

Top Things About the Isle o' Maui

Top Not Real Things I Will Miss About Maui

1) The constant sex with promiscuous mermaids.

2) Rainbows that start on the lanai and smell of Skittles.

3) Flying cars!

4) Diving for pearls armed only with my wits and a crude, dull knife made from the leg bones of orphan children.

5) The unfortunate island ritual requirement of fighting a hula dancer to the death to get some frickin' dinner.

Top Things I Won't Miss About Maui

1) Rental cars without remote locks or power windows.

2) Paying for refills of soda at high-end restaurants that really don't need the extra buck fifty.

3) Prime time that's not on at the right time.

4) Aloha shirts (this might change over time).

5) The taste of sea water.

6) The Road to Hana.

7) Gas price: $2.63. Cost of everything sucks there: a half gallon of milk is $3.50, for example.

8) The stench and stickiness of sun block (SPF 50!)

9) Fish on every plate.

10) Sand in all uncomfortable cracks and crevices.

11) Needing constant practice to be able to pronounce any desitination on the map.

12) Snorkel face.

Top Things I Will Actually Miss About Maui

1) The almost complete lack of bugs (I think we saw one Palmetto-sized roach the entire trip, and that was on the last day).

2) Warmth.

3) The Wife smiling all the god-damned time.

4) Wearing my rash-guard in the water (SPF 50!)

5) People watching the local surfer-dudes, crunchy-granolas, and burned out hippies.... though I can get most of them in Ithaca, too.

6) Mai tais.

7) The potential, unrealized, of seeing a sea turtle in the wild. No chance of that in Ithaca.

8) Ocean surf on one side, with towering mountains on the other.

9) The constant god-damned friendliness -- everyone's quick with an "aloha" or "mahalo" (ma-hah-lo, which means "thank you so god-damned very much!)

10) Walking barefoot in the moonlight on the beach at Black Rock in Ka'anapali with my sweetie by my side. Despite the skittering crabs.

Best Travel I'll Ever Regret

I'm ruined for life.

I'm writing this on the plane on first leg of our trip home, so it's either 4:30 Maui time, or 7:30 Pacific, or 10:30 Eastern on Friday the 29th. I don't think my body really knows, and likely won't figure it out until a few days from now. But it's all made so much easier by the glory that is TRAVELING FIRST CLASS.

My first plane trip was in February of 1981. I was eleven years old and my brother and I flew down to Florida for two weeks spent with my grandparents. The trip down was a misery of ear aches as I recall. After that, I didn't fly again until I'd become a full-time working stiff in 1992, and ever since I've made anywhere from one to six flights a year. I've traveled to the airports of London, LA, San Fran, Portland (Ore.), Dallas, Chicago, New Orleans, Tampa/St. Pete, Atlanta, NYC (JFK and LaGuardia), Boston, Denver, and Las Vegas (eight times or so for that last one). Never once have I gone in anything but coach/economy/torture class.

All that changes now. I'm hooked. I'm loving life. The spacious seats with the adjustable headrest's aren't leather, but they'll do. Meals served in courses, and ending with a chocolate fudge sundae with Edy's ice cream is addictive. (Edy's ice cream, by the way, is called "Dreyers" in Hawai'i, which looks funny on the shelf next to Breyers.) We got a hot towel treatment at one point. Oh, and all the drinks I can ingest. I've stuck with 7-Up but did follow our Macadamia nut breast of chicken with plum sauce with a Bailey's Irish Creme after-dinner drink. (Mental note: buy some Bailey's.)

Going first class on the way home was a stoke of genius on our part -- it makes the misery of leaving Maui almost tolerable. Okay, its not so much misery at leaving as it is the horror we face in returning to the drudgery of our everyday jobs. Sure, we miss the dogs, but I know I could handle a couple more weeks of not writing about enterprise wireless LAN equipment (yawn).

The problem is, this travel is a fluke -- I had accumulated just enough frequent flier miles with United to give us both the upgrade for the trip home, and even that isn't all the way, since our final plane on the Chicago to Syracuse leg doesn't even have a First Class cabin, so we're stuck again with the unwashed masses! The dirty plebians who have to eat all their meals with plastic utensils! In First Class, it's real metal flatware (except for the knife, still plastic, as I think we're all aware that a terrorist with a tin butter knife is a far scarier thing). And the glasses are real glass, not plastic. And did I mention the booze flows like water in a mountain stream? Did I??

I have to take another trip on a plane in exactly one month (out to California again for another wireless show... Yip. Pee.) and I'll be back to sitting in a row in the double digits, sticking my foot into the aisle trying to restore circulation, unable to put my head into a position of any comfort, and remembering just what it was like in those few glorious hours in First Class.

Traveling this way was a horrible mistake, and one I hope I can repeat.

You Will Believe A Man Can Parasail

In a continuing tribute to my day job, I'm sitting on the lanai (pa-tee-oh) outside our cottage on the west side of Maui and I finally got connected to a wireless network my laptop has been seeing for a few days. It's only working out here (and even that is sporadic at best), but that's fine, as how often do I get to type while staring at the cloud-enshrouded islands of Molokai (mo-lo-ky) and Lana'i (lah-na-ee) in the distance, with a huge Norwegian Cruise Lines boat in the water down the hill? Let alone the two dogs humping each other in the yard down below...

This week, what with all the driving and exploration out of the way, we've settled into a more relaxing time on Maui. Better yet, after three days, we've hit our snorkeling stride.

Our first day, on Kapalua Beach in Napili (Nah-pee-lee) it looked like it might be over before it began. When the Wife and I went on a cruise in the Caribbean back in 1997 one our only bad excursions was a catamaran trip to a spot to go snorkeling. It was a gross boat, filled with annoying people, and the equipment sucked so Bon was miserable and pissed off. A few minutes in the water at Kapalua with her struggling to get her fins on in the sand, trying to get a seal on the $50 mask she bought, I thought to myself, "maybe, some people just aren't cut out to stick their head in the water."

Luckily, I was wrong and she's taken to snorkeling like a, uh, ant eater to an anthill. (I didn't want to say "like a fish to water," too literal.)

We've since traveled down to Wailea's Ulua Beach to do a little swimming, and then today hit the jackpot at the cove called Honolua Bay. To get into Honolua, you have to park on a side road and walk in through a little jungle that looks like it was lifted right off the set of a Tarzan flick. At the end, past a dried up creek bed (which apparently isn't always dry) there's an old cement boat launch leading into the most amazing waters I've ever swum in. While the middle was a little murky, on the outside edges of this bay are some of the most outstanding coral reefs I've ever seen—much cooler here than in an aquarium —and fish with absolutely no fear at all. We were practically followed around by some lowfin chubs (we think that's what they were), which acted like they wanted handouts—they were like the seagulls at a theme park. However, it's illegal to feed the wild fish on Maui, so I dunno if it was handouts they wanted or if they just were as curious as we were. Bluestriped snappers also followed us, and we saw a school of literally hundreds of Weke yellowstrip goatfish (best guess) that seemed to be sound asleep and unmoving on the bottom.

We aren't sure about a lot of these fish as all we've got to go on is a laminated card with pictures of "reef creatures" we bought at Wal-Mart, and they never seem to match.

In between there's been lots of shopping... and baseball. The Wife picks one sporting event every year that she follows and gets all rabid and excited about while it's on, even though she neither follows the games otherwise nor will after. Often it's the Olympics (understandable, though she didn't watch any this year), sometimes it's football (ugh) and this year it's the MLB, with her rooting for the Red Sox to take the Series (which they just did, as I type). I personally feel sorry for the city of Boston, as they've wanted this for so long and will celebrate it by rioting which will likely end with someone dead as the fans rampage. Someone on TV inside just said "we did this for the city of Boston," but if they wanted to help the city they'd have lost.

Shopping has consisted mostly of finding gifts for the family. We're firm believers in the "Eric and Bonny went to Maui and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" philosophy, so most of the family is getting clothes. Though not Aloha shirts. Just the nephews in that case. Two-years-old and in flower prints shirts? That's comedy, folks...

Today was perhaps the best excursion we've paid for of all, as well: a parasail around the water beside Ka'anapali (ka-ah-na-pah-lee). We took a dingy from the beach out to the main winch-boat at 7:30am, Bon, me, and a middle-aged Mormon couple traveling from Utah with their eight-foot-tall 17-year-old son. The son (apparently not aware that as a teen he's supposed to be miserable that he's traveling with his parents) went first, then mom and then dad.

Then it was Bon's turn, and again, she surprises me constantly this trip with her willingness to throw herself into things I think she might have previously balked at. She suited up and lifted off into the air off the back of the boat with a grin as wide as the Pacific.

If you've never parasailed, here's how it works: the boat has a parachute on it attached to an 800 foot line controlled by a winch. The person to parasail is outfitted with a life-vest and a harness which wraps around the waist, legs, and ass. As the boat goes forward, the parachute billows out behind it. You walk up and under the chute, get your ass harness attached to the chute, and you sit down in your harness. Then they let out the rope. And up you go, like a kite.

As I went up the air, I was the closest I will probably ever come to flying under my own power. I knew then why everyone always picks flying as the superpower they'd most like to have —though I still will stick with 1) teleportation, 2) super-stretching like Plastic Man or 3) the ability to never hit my thumb with a hammer while driving nails.

The air was remarkably calm. There wasn't any wind buffeting me, no howl in my ears. Even the boat below seemed practically silent. It was incredibly peaceful, and I would have been in pure bliss except my testicles were being crushed between my thighs from the way I sat in the nylon harness.

Each ride up is about eight minutes, and about six minutes in for everyone, the boat driver slowed down. This causes the person in the chute to fall gently to the earth—again, this is likely to be the closest I will come to actually skydiving. The Mormon lady got her feet dipped into the water, but that's probably because she was around 300 pounds and fell faster than the rest of us. I figured my extra pounds would help me here, as I really wanted to glide my toe along the Pacific Ocean before lifting off again when the line went taught as the boat took off again. Sadly, I was a couple of meters too high when I lifted skyward for the final time, high above the tallest floors of the hotels on shore.

They reeled me in and I landed as softly on the deck as I'd departed. Only Chris Reeve, may he rest in peace, has ever done better.

Tomorrow is our final full day on the island. We plan a morning of snorkeling and we'll be out on a cruise with hors d'ouvres to watch the sunset, though I have a hard time believing it will be more beautiful than the one we just watched:

Moving, Eating and Dressing

Other highlights of the last few days (read about the trip to Hana first, which is below):

Wednesday we started the day slow, with a drive into the heart of the Iao (Ee-ow) Valley in the West Maui Mountains. This valley contains the Iao Needle, a 2500 foot rock that's was the site of the last great war on the islands when king Kamahamaha (kah-may-hah-may-hah) took over. Bitch. (South Park joke.) It was cool looking and free.

We also hit the Maui Ocean Center, the island's primo aquarium. It would have been impressive if it had cost $20 for both of us to get in, but for $40, not so much. For that price there should be full-fledged dolphin shows or we should get to see a shark feeding frenzy.

After the drive to Hana and back around the south end, we got back on the highway and found ourselves at the island's only local winery, Tedeshi's. I had never needed a drink more in my life. Bon drove from there back to our cottage while my fingers regained some circulation.

The Old Lahaina Luau (loo-ow, though anyone who's watched the Brady Bunch or Hawai'i Five-Oh knows that) was an incredibly expensive kind of dinner theater, but not the kind of thing one should pass up while in this state. The food -- even the pig cooked in an underground oven called an imu (ee-moo) for six hours -- was just okay. The dancing, however, was great and I've got video of many a grass skirt. The biggest downside was that we opted for the "traditional seating" which means on the floor with a pillow, and my back and I discovered that there's a good reason I don't sit on the floor Indian style for hours at a time any more.

Our new digs are in a cottage just south of Lahaina, up in a fancy, newly developed neighborhood where homes are going for around $3 mil per. It's newer than our cottage at Mama's but there's no walk to the beach and no daily maid service. Worse is that the only AC is in the bedroom, and the owner also left all kinds of notes around to guilt us into keeping it turned off when not around. I am as green as the next guy, I recycle, I try to keep my fridge door closed despite the need to contemplate what's on the shelves and I make sure windows are shut when the furnace is on, but when it comes to staying in hotels, I'm my father's son: I like to turn on all the lights and the AC and leave things running all the time, because I'm not paying for it. I hate having to feel guilty about that.

On Saturday on our way to the new cottage, we went to the Maui Swap Meet in Kahului (kah-hoo-loey), where the airport is. The swap meet is a weird mix of the junk you'd find at a flea market right next to the home made "crafts" made of shells. Arguably a majority of the booths were selling Hawai'ian shirts, or as they call them out here, "Aloha shirts." I'd already brought four such shirts to the island with me that I'd collected over the last few years, which are much more to my taste than most found here. I tend to want as few colors as possible -- maybe red on red, blue on blue, etc. My favorite is a black shirt with just a hint that you can see black palm trees on it if you look close.

Knowing this, the wife has been looking to find a shirt she thought I'd like, and saw one with two colors: white flowers on a bright red background. Very nice, I liked it, and so she bought it. Flash forward about eight hours. I'm wearing that same shirt and we're shopping at the Whaler's Village mall in Ka'anapali, waiting for our 8pm reservation at Leilani's (Lay-lah-nees) by the Beach. We're shopping around in a convenience store, and suddenly I see my shirt. On a middle aged woman.

I spent the next ten minutes trying to be in any spot in that store away from that woman. I have never quite understood why women tend to be upset seeing other women in the same outfit, but then I knew -- I felt like I knew to much about that woman and her shopping then, and worse, felt like I was easily identifiable with her. Ugh.

Finally, at Leilani's we're sitting down to what will likely be the best meal of our vacation so far (and it probably was), and the guy comes over to fill our water glasses. He takes one look at me and says, "Hey, that's a great shirt! Can we put you to work?" and laughs.

That's when I look up and see to my horror: All the wait staff are wearing a blue version of my same shirt. That's not so bad, but further inspection revealed that the wait staff trainees were in the red shirt with white flowers.

So, I either dress like middle aged women or the lowest rung of the restaurant staffing ladder. It doesn't come much clearer that I need to stick with eight-year-old t-shirts from computer software vendors.

Posted by Eric G. at 10:25 PM | Comments (0)

A Hirsute Maui Geography Lesson

To fully appreciate the Hawai'ian island of Maui (Mow-ee), you need to know that it is a mixture of both tropical paradise and a hell-scape akin to the surface of Mars. With palm trees.

The island is actually shaped much like a human head and torso seen in profile (see map here). The west side of Maui is the head complete with chin at the southern end, a nose (which is about where we're staying, south of Lahaina (La-hi-nah), which means "relentless sun") and a forehead where you'll find the beach resorts of Ka'anapali (Kah-ah-nah-pa-lee).

And then around the top of the west end is the unruly, spiky hair.

Consider the east side of the island the trunk... albeit one that was cut off through the abdomen as if by an incompetent stage magician. Down the throat is the highway leading to the resort towns of Kihei (Kee-hay) and Wailea (Why-lee-ah) on the front chest.

And then there's the back.

Down to the scapula, which covers Pa'ia and Haiku, things are fine

But the lower back --and even the abdomen-- are also covered with fur.

Fur here translates to hills and cliffs with roads you can't even begin to imagine.

On Wednesday, driving around the west side (head) to check things out, we decided to go the whole way around, driving clock-wise around the top of the island on highway 30. We knew this was going to be interesting, but hey, we'd driven the roller-coaster ride called the Pacific Coast Highway once, how bad could it be?

Turns out that PCH is the Tea Cup ride to Maui Rt. 30's Space Mountain. This is a road of continuous up and down, sheer cliffs, blind curves, and fallen rocks -- all taken at about 15 to 20 miles per hour.

While I've seen many signs in my life that warned of fallen rocks, I've always ignored them as I'd yet to see a rock fall or stones already fallen. Not so here -- the rocks are all over the road, and some the size of my head.

While the first 20 miles or so are okay and featured some mighty nice things to take pictures of, the last few miles were a harrowing nightmare of pants soiling proportions as the road went down to one lane -- but with traffic in both directions. At one point, I had to back the car up about 100 yards uphill to give a guy with a Cadillac enough room to get by.

By the end of this, I was a bundle of nerves and couldn't wait to see a real highway again.

So it was perfectly natural that the next day we'd drive the Road to Hana.

Hana is a lone little town that sits out on the far east end of the island, about where the back would meet the ass if the island had any booty in its shape. To get there is a 55 mile trip. It takes about 3.5 hours. I'm no mathematician, but I'm pretty sure that equals around FOUR MILES PER HOUR.

Unlike Rt. 30, it's not one lane, but it is slow going. Instead of the dry, windy landscape it's like driving through a tropical jungle since the east is windward and gets all the rain -- but like route 30, the Road to Hana is nothing but up and down and up and down with many narrow curves. There's a one-lane bridge at the bottom of almost every trough (some 50 in all), where the area's ubiquitous waterfalls flow. Even though they're at a trickle this time of year, every bridge had at least one to five cars stopped with people who'd jump out to take pictures. They could get more water by flushing a toilet in their hotel rooms.
From the bottom at the bridge the road continues each time in an incline of about 85 degrees. Turn a corner at the top, some 300 to 500 feet above the sea, and pray that someone wasn't coming around the corner from the other direction and deciding to hug the inside line.

Rinse and repeat.

We stopped at various times, once at a garden area filled with unique plants and a couple of horses, then at some beaches (if you can call them that, since they were nothing but jagged lava rock). One, in Hana, is famed for its black sand. Another of Hana's unique beaches is covered in red sand (this one we did not see). We also passed a couple of lava flow tubes, which we were promised would not gush hot molten magma (say it like Dr. Evil, it's fun!) at us.

All the while as we drove out, we debated the wisdom of taking our little Cavalier rental car the rest of the way around the east end of the island.

And by the way, the entire island of Maui owes us a debt of gratitude for sticking with that car. We hated it the day we picked it up -- no power locks? Crank windows? Is this 1843? -- but thank god we had such a small vehicle on some of those roads or we'd have been crammed against a guard rail.

You see, the east end below Hana, basically driving up the belly is the WORST road there. Picture not only the up, the down, the single lane -- but also a DIRT ROAD.

Just to reiterate: Cliffs. One lane. Two-way traffic. Dirt. Fucking. Road.

In fact, it probably violated our rental agreement to take that road. I'm pretty sure when I read it said, "you, the undersigned, swear by all that you find holy to not to take this fragile little matchbox of a car out onto a road so rutted and pitted and neglected that one rut could swall
ow you whole. Please?"

The wife just read this like and said, "Could you exaggerate more? That was only a narrow dirt road like that for a couple of miles, and we never saw anyone coming at us!" Spoken like the one in the passenger seat who should shut up.

True though, we didn't see as much traffic, which is the upside to that drive. Bon got out many a time to take some pictures of the scarred back end of the Haleakala volcano (which takes up the entire middle of the east side's abdomen, to beat a biology analogy into the ground for the last time). I stayed in the car, as my knuckles were grafted to the steering wheel.

The upside to all this hellacious driving -- besides, as I'm contractually obligated as a tourist to point out, -- the pictures and the memories that will last a lifetime -- is that my wife has been praising my superior driving and navigation skills all week. This comes after years of me pointing out that superiority, and is probably the first time she's handed out such praise since November of 1989, when I had my first car accident and she, my then-new girlfriend, was in the car. It helps that I haven't actually hit anything this week, nor has she bruised her forehead on the rear-view mirror like she did 15 years ago.

Since Thursday, our driving has consisted entirely of the standard two-lane highways that make up most of the island, however, and I couldn't be happier. Though the praise just keeps on coming as the Wife's residual guilt for making me go to Hana in the first place lingers.

Happy Tenth Anniversary

Ten years ago today, I woke up with a sore back.

I was on the floor, in the bedroom of an apartment rented by my friend Brett. Outside, in his living room, a number of my friends who were in town had crashed. We and others had spent some time the night before at the Chapterhouse up near the Cornell campus, drinking and carousing.

I peeled myself out of the sleeping bag I was in, like an over-ripe banana, and tried to stretch out the kinks in my spine. It was about 6:30am, no one else stirred, but I found I had to get out of there. I put on sneakers, shorts and a t-shirt and decided to take a walk.

I crossed through the Circle Apartments parking lots and over the field that takes up the entire top end of the Ithaca College campus. I passed the Terraces, the dorms where I had originally lived while a student there, and went down the hill, to the stairs that descended toward the empty space beside the business school, and across the quad.

It was a brisk morning and the top of Ithaca's south hill was covered in fog. My skin was covered in gooseflesh.

Along the lower edge of the Park School of Communications building, I ran into Howard, the head of dining services. He'd been in charge of all food on campus back when I was a student and still was for a few years after graduation. He had hundreds of students working for him in three dining halls, a catering operation, a restaurant, various snack carts and more every semester, but of course he'd remember me -- I was one of the few who'd worked at all of the above. And went so far as to do it full-time during my senior year. He engaged me in some small-talk blather, well aware of my reason for being on campus that day. I didn't really like Howard all that much though so I didn't tell him that the dining services job was the reason I was on campus that day.

Down at the far end by the Garden Apartments, I'd run out of campus to walk and decided to turn back. I took some short cuts through buildings where I could find them -- through the catering office and out the loading dock of the Campus Center, up through the kitchen at the Tower's Dining Hall. Things were quiet as it was a Fall break -- that's why we picked that Saturday.

I avoided the Terrace Dining Hall because I knew I'd be there a lot later in the day.

Finally, I was out in the lot behind the Towers, the two 13-story buildings that instantly identify IC for many. These dorms (one of which is topped by the aforementioned restaurant, the Tower Club) were where she and I, five years before as sophomores, had begun the whirlwind relationship that would last through school (and the horrors of programs like Ad Lab and Doc Research), through living in New Jersey and the Hudson River and finally Northampton, MA; through jobs like Macy*s and Ziff circulation and editorial assistant up to assistant editor; through cars like the original Reliant, the Charger, and the beloved Eagle Premier; through fights and hugs and heart-ache and more love than could be believed.

I looked closely at the window to what would have been room 601 in the West Tower where so much of it started: I was where I first said the words "I love you," more as an accident than a plan, and found I couldn't take them back even if I'd wanted to -- and I didn't want to.

With that, my back pain was forgotten. I all but sprinted up the hill to the Circle Apartments to get the day started. I had flowers to buy, limo to check on, and a tuxedo to put on.

Ten years ago today, the rest of my life started.

Biking -- The Video

Here's a video of the sunrise atop the volcano taken at 6:20am on Tuesday the 19th, plus shots of the Wife and I biking down the mountain. Believe me, for most of the trip, we were going a lot faster than this. (WMV format only, so it'll probably only work with Windows, sorry.)

Bon in Maui

There's some beautfiul things in the island of Maui, but few -- if any -- are more beautiful than the woman I call Tenacious B. And I have the pictures to prove it, in the time-honored slideshow format that is guaranteed to make anyone watching who didn't participate practically salivate with jealousy and wish they had been there. These pics feature some landscapes and cool natural things like rocks and flowers and one picture of me where it looks like I'm trying to deficate on a mountain. But mostly, they feature my lovely wife having the time of her life in the paradise where she belongs.

View the slides here.

The Pancakes of Haleakala

Being on East Coast time physically was our goal through today, to make it much easier to wake up at 2:30 am. We had to be ready for our trip up the twisty road of Haleakala (hah-lay-ah-kah-lah is the proper pronunskiation, as Popeye would say), the dormant volcano that dominates the east side of the island of Maui.

If you want to get a glamorous idea of the trip up and down, you should read what my friend Josh says about it here. He used similar company. Our tour -- courtesy of the Haleakala Bike Co. -- was like the same thing Josh did, albeit run by a drug-addled old surfer dude and his pudgy native side-kick.

The point of the Sunrise Summit package we signed up for with HaBiCo (as they're called in the legal form we had to sign saying we wouldn't sue if maimed or killed) is to meet at 3:30 am, get outfitted with a helmet, backpack and raingear, get in a big van with about ten bicycles mounted on top, and drive all the way to the summit of the volcano to watch the sun come up and eat away the clouds on the windward side of the island. It is highly suggested that you wear many, many layers of clothing, because the summit of Haleakala at 5:30 am is about as warm as a northern Minnesota February, yet luckily minus the snow. We're taking wind that forms instant icicles from the excess snot you generate because it's so cold.

Anyway, that's all well and good-- but we almost didn't make it to the top.

Loaded down with gear, eight people climbed into the nice comfy van/bus for a drive up the mountain in the pitch black night of 4:20am. There was little to no interaction between the people in the vehicle -- we were strangers who were tired and nervous and felt little need to make buddies with someone we wouldn't see again except in passing on a mountain road. Some of the couples were newlyweds, and it was obvious that the new brides were both upset at being up at this ungodly hour.

Bonny and I sat all the way in the back as we were first on board, and I was already starting to sweat from wearing rubber rain pants and a polar fleece jacket (it wasn't cold at the bottom of the damn mountain).

We were maybe two miles away from the HaBiCo HQ, prepared for an hour plus drive up the mountain, our pudgy native guide (I think his name was Jimmy, so that's what I'll call him) giving the occasional snippet of tour-guide-y goodness, when we were hit.

With an instantaneous crack, one of the left side windows exploded.

First thoughts through my head: 1) A car hit us. 2) Someone shot at us-- maybe with a BB gun. 3) An animal hit us.

Bonny said, "One of the bike's fell!"

She'd been looking almost directly at the window in question. As we took a corner, one of the bikes mounted on top of the van had come loose and arced down. The wheels were still attached, so the handlebar smashed the safety glass window clean. Most of the shards went on to the road, but some fell on the woman in the second row of seats, and filled her upturned helmet on the seat next to her.

Jimmy got his boss the surfer dude in the second van ahead of us on his cell phone. They agreed to turn around and followed so Jimmy could pull out another van, also filled with bikes on top, get a new helmet for the girl with glass in hers, and we could all keep going.

Now, of course, after this, it was like we'd all survived a terrorist attack. There was joking and camaraderie -- anything to get the excess adrenaline out of our veins from the shock.

About 20 minutes later, we were on the road again.

This time we made it just past the spot where the first accident was, before a bike came loose again, this time toward the front, on the right side -- and this was in a brand new van with all the windows, remember. Instead of smashing the window this time, it hit the strut between the front and side door.

The effect akin to an aftershock in an earthquake. We'd all been sort of expecting it, but were surprised none-the-less.

The girl in the front seat next the driver, not even the same one who'd been covered in glass before (she was now in back) started babbling about "I want out of this, I want to go back. I'm not even kidding." Her family told her she'd be just fine, stop worrying.

Jimmy and his boss (now behind us, so he stopped) got out, grabbed ladders off the back, and pushed the bike back up to the top. They reattached the strut that is supposed to hold the bike up and we were on our way again.

The camaraderie of the group started to dissipate as the shock wore off (even though the girl in front spent the entire ride up the mountain leaning as far to her left as she could to be away from the certain-to-shatter-at-any-second window). Instead, a new feeling of dread was settling in.

Part of that dread was the feeling that Jimmy was going to get us killed driving up this mountain. The other part was, what the hell were we thinking... this was a god damn big mountain. With cliffs. And jagged rocks of formerly molten magma on which we could be impaled. And where the hell were the guard rails?

It was insanity -- and poorly lit insanity at 5:45am, as we neared the summit.

Jimmy threaded the van through the parking are at the very top with a precision that was enviable-- people were parked like drunken tailgaters at a fogged in football game. He got us out of that and down to a second, larger parking area below and dropped us off at a lookout (9750 feet above the sea)just below the actual summit where we would watch the sun come up. And we did. I have the pictures to prove it.

What we also did was freeze. Despite the three layers on top and two on the bottom (one layer made of industrial rain-gear rubber), it was frigid like a high school librarian up there. Next to us at the railing we found two women huddled into a blanket together so tightly they looked like ET the Extraterrestrial (one of the girls in the blanket had been foolish enough to wear only a t-shirt). My nose was dripping and I was afraid it would get on our new camera as I tried to take pictures of the sun rise and the crater of Haleakala, which is supposedly big enough to fit the entire island of Manhattan. It looks like a landscape as conceived by HR Geiger.

Much to my -- and I think the entire group's -- relief, we would not be getting on bikes at this height. Instead it was back into the van with Jimmy where he drove us down to a much more reasonable 6500 feet above sea level.

This is still 38 miles away from HaBiCo's offices in the town of Haiku, our final destination.

Jimmy got bikes down for us, none of which were exactly state of the art new, but they all had what was necessary -- brakes. Supposedly, only 400 yards of the 38 mile trip we were about to undertake would require any pedaling. The rest was all down hill, around hairpin turns, along roads with no shoulder, where we'd have to ride the breaks to prevent ourselves from driving over the side of the mountain.

My bike had what seemed to be a perennial front flat... well, not flat, but only half inflated. I had Jimmy pump it up before we left, but he'd only put it to 30PSI instead of the rated 40 on the tire, saying that the pressure/temperature lower down would inflate the tire naturally. My love affair with this Hawaiian was over.

We were off.

I will now refer to my wife by her newest nickname, Switchback Squanto, as she took to the twisty volcano road with aplomb. Despite her protests of fear, she was out of the gate with a speed far above what I was comfortable with -- and she was supposed to lead so I wouldn't get too far ahead of her. Ha. For the most part we stayed within a few hundred feet of each other for the rest of the trip, slowly stripping off layers of clothes as we got further down the mountain, out of the cold and into the Maui heat. First went the rubber rain gear, later the polar fleece, then the zip-off pant legs of the special pant/short combos we bought before the trip. Finally, I was ready to go topless, but thought that would look horrific with the backpack cinched around my gut. Bonny wouldn't go topless either. Sigh.

What no one tells you when you're biking down a volcano is that the fear of being hit by a passing car or that you'll wipe out and get a road-rash requiring skin grafts is nothing compared to the guaranteed pain you're going to have in your hands from riding the bicycle breaks. It's like driving for several hours with a constant grip o' death on one of those hand-squeezing exercise thingies, the kind with a spring that help you build up your grip so you can... well, I didn't used to know, but I would guess: type better? Squeeze harder when shaking hands? Firmer grip for masturbation? I had no idea why those things existed until today.

At about the half way point, we stopped at the Kula Lounge restaurant for lunch. The problem with that is, despite our bodies being still on NY time and thinking it was mid-afternoon, it was really only about 8:30 in the morning Maui time. So we had breakfast, again -- our first had been at 2:45am. I got pancakes and those delicious Portugese Sausages again, and didn't even eat everything in front of me, which goes against ever fiber of my being when paying restaurant prices. Luckily, the waitress didn't charge us for the large orange juice I had, only the hot chocolate, so I didn't feel like it was too bad.

Silly me. I found out how bad it was about 30 minutes later. We had made our turn out of Makawau (Mah-kah-wow) heading for what would be the homestretch back to Haiku and found our selves on the receiving end of the up-hill parts of the trip.

Suffice to say, we're out of shape. But hell's bells, it would have been nice had this part been at the beginning, so the rest of the trip would have felt easy. The first couple of up hills were okay, but by the third and last, we had to get off the bikes and walk them. At the top of that (admittedly short hill), I had to peel off my gloves (worn for protection of a fall at the point rather than the cold) and helmet, going slowly, trying mind over matter to hold back what I was sure was soon to be a steaming hot pile of congealed, half-digested pancake with maple syrup, mixed liberally with OJ and hot cocoa, in the road.

Sitting down for a few minutes (as Switchback Squanto pointed out the sensitive plants we were sitting on were affected by our touch -- they'd curl up after we ran our fingers along them) restored my youthful vigor, as did the knowledge that I would not be pedaling again that day -- maybe ever. We made the final few miles of the trip in no time, avoided being hit by a pick up truck that was backing out onto the road, and finally returned to the HaBiCo offices -- the last in our party to arrive.

Apparently none of the rest had decided to spend an hour eating a second breakfast of the day with a view of the West Maui mountains. And since I managed to keep it all down in the long run, I have to say, their loss. Though I'd implore HaBiCo to tell future riders that they might want to go easy on the syrup at the halfway point.

Breakfast with Willie

Yesterday, our first full day on the island of Maui, was designated by us as a relaxation day. The plan is to stagger relaxation days with activity days, there by maximizing both our relaxation and need for activity. Mind you, our form of relaxation usually involves shopping and driving around, which some might call... active. We have yet to lay on the beach, but we'll get there.

We decided to breakfast in nearby Pa'ia (Pie-ay-ah) at a place called Charlie's that comes highly recommended. A relatively standard breakfast of eggs and toast was highly enhanced by the discovery of Portugese Sausage (kinda like a sausage mixed with Keilbasa) and some of the best home fries I've ever had. The place was a nice restaurant with a big bar in the back that does a lot of live music at night. Willie Nelson frequently appears, we hear.

Actually, we heard this when he showed up for breakfast.

In he walked, the man who sang with Englebert Humperdink and who started Farm Aid. I whispered to Bonny as quietly as I could, "Fucking Willie Nelson just walked in the door behind you." To her credit, she didn't whip around to see him.

That was left to our fellow patrons. A family of five had come in just before Willie's arrival and had reconfigured some tables to seat about 10 total. They saw him and were dumbfounded.

Willie headed toward the back, toward the bar, to get a table, saying hi to anyone who looked his way. We overheard one of the waitresses tell another patron that he comes in every day for breakfast. At the same time, most of the family of five grabbed napkins and followed him to the back to get autographs.

I've seen famous people before in passing (Avery Brooks outside the set of Deep Space Nine; Richard Dreyfuss on the streets of NYC) but never thought to ever engage them in conversation or to ask for an autograph. Not only do I think autograph -- on a napkin no less -- is singularly worthless, but I've seen how such adulation can disrupt a life for a celeb who might just want to be left alone. It was only for an hour or so, but one time back in 1993, as part of my job as an assistant editor at a computer magazine, I saw it up close.

I had a meeting with Christopher Knight, who was then the exec of some software company making something I promptly forgot about, even back then. What I do remember is that Christopher Knight -- better know at Peter Brady of The Brady Bunch -- was subject that day and probably most others to the bizarre world of celebrity which he did not want. As word spread from the 11th floor where our office was around the building, people -- women especially -- started to gather from all floors out side of the glass doors to our conference rooms, hoping to catch a glance at someone they grew up with, someone famous for something he'd basically finished and (tried) to leave behind years before (Brady Brides and musical specials not withstanding). His discomfort was palpable, and even though I knew his TV lineage with sickening detail (I grew up with those reruns), I went out of my way not to mention it.

Willie Nelson, I dunno -- maybe he craves it? Obviously some celebs do, it's like a drug, having people you've never met tell you how much they like and admire you. Why else would he go to breakfast in what's arguably going to be the most crowded breakfast place in town each morning?

The family of five had the rest of their party show up and they immediately started pointing toward the back and most of the new arrivals grabbed napkins and went back to get more autographs. I was almost expecting to hear his voice yelling, "I'm trying to eat my Portugese Sausage here, folks! Lemme alone!" but apparently he smiled, signed, and posed for the inevitable camera that was produced.

Maybe Willie's just genuinely nice. Bonny walked back to the bathroom before we left and walked right by him, and says she had to either ignore his existence or look at him since he was the only guy in the large room. I would likely have thought of Peter Brady and looked away to spare him, but she looked Willie in the eye and he gave her a cordial "Good Morning." Which, really, is the Maui way -- these Hawaiians are damn friendly.

When we got back to our room -- and discovered, at least for the day, that we had broadband access form some unencrypted wireless LAN that wasn't there the day before -- she googled his name in conjunction with Maui and found out that he's friends with the owner of the restaurant, plays there sometimes, and once even brought in Aerosmith's Steven Tyler for a night of play.

As I'm sitting here typing this up, Bon just said to me, "He's really nice and everything... but he's not Steven Tyler." (She'd seen him in the audience at a Cirque de Soliel show in Vegas last year.) "He didn't seem out of place... he seemed to fit right into the local scene, it wasn't as jarring."

Maybe not for us, and I hope that for Willie it was the same. He's probably got less reason to feel strange about his celebrity than a guy who worked as a kid on the best known bad sitcom of the seventies, someone who just wanted to move on and make some cool software. Whatever the hell that software was. It obviously didn't have the lasting power of All the Girls I've Loved Before -- nor even of the immortal line, "Mom always said, don't play ball in the house."

East Coast Time

It's 10:36am at home, but here it's 4:36am and I'm sitting in the Ulua Cottage at Mama's Fish House, a very fancy restaurant outside of Paia that happens to have some rentals and a private beach. The time change certainly isn't as easy as just going to California, especially after the bad night's sleep we got before the flights. But we're also determined to keep our bodies in the east coast time for a couple of days at least because we have to be up even earlier than this tomorrow to drive to a volcano (Haleakala, which the Wife says is pronounced Hell-ee-ak-ah-luh, but I've been saying Hell-ee-ah-kal-uh. Whatever. Toe-may-toe, toe-mah-toe.) so we can see the sunrise from the summit before taking bicycles all the way down. Most frequent question I get about this: no, we don't bike up. They drive us up in vans, give us bikes, and then we coast down 38 miles.

That's tomorrow though. Today is going to be spent shopping and standing on beaches. The dial-up connection is painful though --I haven't heard that modem sound in may years -- but I know where a couple of hotspots are back in Kahului, the nearest city, so hopefully will up load some pics and/or videos later so you can all be extremely jealous.

Always Look On the Bright Side of Life

At 32,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean --about one hour from the island of Maui and five (or is it six?) hours behind the East coast-- the Wife asked me if I was going to blog, so I am.

Our preparation for this vacation, like all our previous vacations, was over-abundant. Every move down to the second is calibrated like the parts in a classic Swiss clock, as we mesh easily with our surroundings and the surprises thrust upon us.

Okay, not so much. We do plan the hell out of everything -- down to have a nine-page document I call the Hawai'i (I plan to spell it pretentiously for the next two weeks) Cheat Sheet, filled with facts, figures, directions, and suggestions. But our cogs don't fit the gears of travel that much.

(Aside: The Wife just proudly showed me that she's listening to Margaritaville on her iPod. Perhaps it will be her vacation theme song.)

Our problem with travel is, that because we plan so much, any little deviation off the course, any timing snafu, sends one of us into paroxysms of rage. We snarl and curse and usually take that anger out on the only person who won't get us arrested for the public cursing and stomping of feet: each other.

This morning, when I placed us the wrong lane at the Syracuse Airport (after an ungodly bad night's sleep one block away in the craptacular Best Western), unable to drop Bonny in front of the doors for United with our heaviest bags, I started in.

"Godless fucking bastards in hell!," I probably sputtered, "Who can be expected to drive accurately at 4:45am to catch a flight?!?" Words to that effect.

And Bon, to her everlasting credit, says we must, must, must adopt a new attitude. The Hawai'ian attitude -- let water roll off this ducks back, so to speak.

Usually when she talks like this, I just ask her "Who the hell are you, and what have you done with my wife?" But she had a point, and starting out a 14 hour stretch of travel (Syracuse to O'Hare in Chicago, then on to San Francisco, and finally landing in Kahului on Maui) by yelling wasn't a good idea. I suggested we needed a code word, akin to what a practitioner of S&M has in a 'safe word' so they can stop the hot candle wax or cat o' nine tails. Only this would be preventing the cut of words. She suggested "Calm the fuck down."

Later, we settled on saying "Bright Side!" whenever feeling overwhelmed by the (truly underwhelming) negatives of the day, such as finding the food court in SFO so busy that we could only get crackers with peanut butter for lunch (well, that and corn nuts!), watching the movie The Terminal (started okay but turned to cheese) on the second leg and getting into a second movie -- the updated Manchurian Candidate-- only to get cut off before the ending so we could land the plane, or finding that in both airports our layover met up with the Murphy's Law of airports: you will always be walking to the farthest gate in another terminal -- and at SFO, we actually had to go through the security screening again since they parked our arrival at the International Terminal. I had to get my sneakers x-rayed there, even though in Syracuse they hadn't bothered. Note to John Kerry: when you're president, seeing about making that process consistent across the nation, would ya? 'Kay.

We've only had to say "Bright Side" to each other about seven or eight times today. And once, Bon publicly said aloud thanks to Eric Idle for inspiring it.

We're about half an hour from landing now and I'm going to have to stow Maui (the laptop) for the landing on Maui (the island). Will post this later as we find our Internet access abilities.

Unrecognizable Me

This past weekend I attended a wedding of friend's Brett and Kerry back at the old homestead. Nuptials/reception were actually held at the quite lovely Lake Lodge outside of Alfred, where my brother is known as The Law.

Anyway, it was nice as I got to sit at a table with my friends from HHS, watch another friend have a very funny wedding ceremony (pictures here) and eat some good food.

We had a couple of seats open at our table of eight. Over to the table to say hello to my friends Mark and Bill comes Kathy, who, at a year older than me, looks about 12 years my junior. I have no idea what time machine wrinkle cream she's using, but even after having two kids, she looks exactly like she did the day she graduated high school. It's unbelievable.

I'm watching her talk to Mark and Bill, wondering when I should say hi, and realize quite suddenly in my head: she has no idea who the hell I am.

Mind you, she and I were in theater productions together for several years. This woman was my date to my junior prom. She went on dates with me and one of my best friends at the same time and he and I had a very 16-year-old mind-blowing talk about that when we realized it back in 1986... neither of us had conceived up to that point that women play the field, too! (Had I only been as good at that as she...)

I haven't seen her since the summer of 1989 when she won a plastic frog at the Hornell Fireman's Carnival that became the first "squished frog" that Bill, Brett and I ever immortalized on film (we hit it with a bat, I think... or maybe we drove over it? I forget).

Finally, she sat down, she looked over at me, put her hand out to shake and introduced herself.

And I did the same, and I think the moment she heard my voice, maybe she finally clicked to who I was.

Laughter was had all around.

Later, as I was telling the groom about this, he pointed out with far to much honesty that she was probably thinking an instant later, "Boy, did you get fat!" True. Considering that even with my Freshman 15 in 1989 I was still a few pounds lighter when she last saw me, not to mention I no longer wear the coke-bottle glasses of my pre-LASIK life, it's a wonder she would click to who I was at all.

Kathy, standing nearby as Brett said this, blamed it on the beard (only seven years old itself) which was sweet of her.

Earlier that same day, the Wife and I were shopping up at the Hornell Wal-Mart, which based on the crowds is the only place to go in town for anything, and I saw another woman I knew back then, also from the high school plays. She too, back then, had been a beauty to behold, a gorgeous creature. However, the ravages of the last 16 years seemed to be etched in her face, her extra weight, her dead eyes. She pushed a cart accompanied by a small boy, no doubt hers, and seemed to have all the energy and vivaciousness of your average Romero zombie.

She didn't recognize me at all, of course -- I swear I could walk into my own high school reunion with an uzi and mow everyone down and no one would know to tell the police was me -- which was a good thing, as I couldn't imagine having to say to her, "hey, you look... great?"

Kathy, however, did say that to me. All hogwash, but she always had the ability to make a person feel good about themselves, a trait sorely lacking in so many. Including myself.

As we left the reception, I gave Kath a quick hug and told her I'd see her again in 10 years and see if she recognizes me then. Maybe I'll have lost weight, shaved and have reading glasses... but probably I'll just have the glasses.

Over the Hump to Maui

And like that, the curtain is lifted. All is clear sailing until the plane takes off to Hawaii.

I've been swamped the last few days, just feeling under the gun, way behind, like I wouldn't be able to catch up. Everyone and their monkey decided to make some announcement about some earth-shattering Wi-Fi thing I had to cover, or assign for coverage, which I then still have to deal with so it's not like I don't work here, despite what everyone tells them when I say I work from home. Plus I have been doing the tech edit, trying to get through a library book (Sock) before it was due back, and buy a digital camera for the trip.

Well, as of today, the Camera is in the mail. After vacillating for a few days between various 10x zoom models with 4 megapixels, all way over priced at the mall -- but the three trips to the mall to comparison shop seemed necessary if I wanted it in time for the trip. Then I changed my mind and went to a 3 megapixel because it had a fancy image stabilizer -- it's like a steady-cam in a still camera. Plus it takes videos with sound. (It's the Canon Powershot S1 IS, FYI.) Couldn't justify spending what they wanted at Best Buy, and a last minute look at Amazon showed I didn't have too: they had it for $50 bucks less (which I used on a case and a high-speed Compact Flash card). It will arrive tomorrow, giving me a new laptop and new camera in the same month. Vacations are technologically expensive for me.

Today, I got over the hump day of Wi-Fi announcements -- if this week is like previous weeks, then the next two days I'll be scraping the barrel to find stuff to write, which is much preferred.

I've been working on the tech readings at night -- during commercials in primetime (no one disrupts my Gilmore Girls!). But then today that assignment kinda got dumped -- they're asking the author to revamp a bunch of pages and add more stuff, so they don't want me to tech read stuff that will get more tech added later. So I'm off the hook there.

Now, I have to finish Sock before the library closes tomorrow and I'm all set for vacation.

The New Arrival

Maui has arrived.

The computer, not the vacation.

I decided I would take the Wife’s suggestion and name my newly unpacked laptop after our future destination. It’s only fair, as she didn’t get to name our last two dogs, I think I did, and I’m sure she’s been filled with bitterness and resentment ever since. Or maybe it’s because I call her Squanto.

Anyway, it’s here, the Sony S170. I spent the entire day loading and reloading the page at Fedex.com indicating the deliver time. After 8:30am (leaving the dock in Syracuse) today it seemed lost in limbo and all I had to go on was the knowledge that my regular FedEx guy comes usually between 3 and 5pm. At 4:21, there he was on the porch -- it was hard not to give him a hug. He had a medium sized box for me that was so light, it felt like it had nothing in it but packing peanuts.

Sadly, the initial out of box experience -- what we in the computer journalism industry once tried to turn into an acronym called the OOBE (pronounced "ooo--bee!"), until we realized it sounded stupid -- is not exactly great. First off, it is black, which I wasn’t expecting. But that I can live with. The initial startup, where Windows XP does a survey of all your habits and what you eat and asks you what you plan to buy next so they can coordinate their marketing attacks almost didn’t go -- it hung twice when it wanted to go online. Why would Microsoft expect that the registration could be sent online before you can go into the OS and configure your Internet connection? After two hard reboots back to the same page of the survey, I got to hit the “skip” button so I could go into Windows and start computing. Well, eventually.

I already knew I’d find little more than the laptop, the battery and the AC adapter in side, but I had high hopes that spending this much money earned me the right to have a full Windows XP CD inside. Silly me, apparently not. I have to make my own recovery disks for the laptop for the future when it’s gunked beyond use and needs a clean, fresh installation. Its going to take 5 full blank CDs to back up. I’m going to do it now and then run the same utility again later after I’ve got Service Pack 2 and other updates on it. I’ve already read on some online forums that I should upgrade the video drivers if I want to play DOOM 3 at all.

And oh yes, I want to play DOOM 3.

The first laptop I ever got to use was back in 1993 while working at my first real job, editorial assistant at Windows Sources magazine (an early motto: “No DOS Bozos!”). The laptop was a PC Brand, about as generic a name as they get, and had maybe a 6 or 7 inche LCD screen. There was so much plastic around the bezel that it looked like a kids toy. But, it ran Windows 3.1 and better yet, it ran the first version of DOOM for DOS. I played that game until the bitter end on that laptop (and my desktop at work), a lot on the train in and out of Grand Central, and occasionally the full color violence on screen would attract some on-lookers who wanted to know what all that blood was about. Luckily -- or sadly, for me -- the laptop didn’t have any sound capability at all, so no one heard the screams and grunts of the demons I was popping with a shotgun. Good times.

This Sony -- Maui -- is pretty gorgeous to behold however. It’s a wide screen with an extra bright technology (called Xbrite -- clever!) that is supposed to make it, well, extra bright. Since I’m typing this entry on one of our old laptops right next to Maui, I can say that I’m already seeing the difference. Not that I’ve done anything with her extra brightness yet except make recovery disks. That’ll take another half hour to finish.

After that, she’s going to get out fitted for work and play in and out of the house. T-Mobile sent me a 30-day trial for their hotspots (one of which is down the street at Borders) and I’ve got a free iPass account that should get me on the T-Mobile hotspots and more worldwide (I’m a jet-setter). Plus there’s the free hotspots in town at the good sandwich places. I look forward to blogging soon from outside of the dank basement hole I call home.

A Big Fan of My Work

A smart person would probably spend what little warmth and sunlight they have left to enjoy in the calendar year of 2004 in a hammock, with a good book and an iPod filled with showtunes and a container of cornnuts to munch on.

Not me. Here's how I spent my past Saturday. Notice the wacky-ass ceiling fan up there? Yeah, that's what I did. (That's in my parent's kitchen, part of the Never Ending Kitchen Remodeling Project of Aught Four.)

At least, I helped. As my brother would say... okay, as my brother actually said—he gave his usual 110%, I gave my 50%. He might have been being facetious, but sadly, it was still true. Then again, when he starts working, everyone else looks like they're standing around with their thumbs up their ass. (At least I did have the pleasure at the end of the day to tell him that he hung a bunch of lights in the ceiling up-side-down. Take that, Mr. I -Never-Have-To-Read-The-Directions!)

That, by the way, is an all wood ceiling in the center—it's raised in the middle to accommodate the Jetson's ceiling fan. The rest will be wooded later, but we had to finish framing it out and putting in the lights.

You can't see it in the picture, but there were old fluorescent lights up in the ceiling that we had to pull out, one of which I inherited (translation: My dad didn't have any place to put it, so he put it in the back of my mini-van). That's how I spent my Sunday: I hung an 80 lb fluorescent light in my basement utility room, which heretofore was illuminated with naught but a single bulb, barely enough luminescence to prevent hitting one's noggin on a pipe. Now it's bright enough to sun bath under.

Seeing as I was already perspiring from that (a short trip for one of my stoutness, worsened by inheriting the profuse sweat glands of my ancestors), I spent the rest of the day in equally manly household pursuits. I put a table top on an antique 25-gallon crock (don't ask) and hung a bicycle with a fancy pulley system from the ceiling of my garage. Then I washed all three dogs. And folded about 200 lbs. of laundry.

Then I watched Desperate Housewives and went to bed.

And that's how I spent my weekend.

Crossing Over

Creepy... I just got an e-mail message from my great-grandmother.

My late great-grandmother.

I know it was her, because it has her name, Edna Stevens, in the "From" box in my email.

Of course, she sent it to me and about 40 other people in my company...

And she spelled her own last name wrong (its actually "Stephens"), but I don't recall what her level of literacy was...

And she seems to be selling me Va|ium and Via-Gra and Vic0din....

But otherwise, I'm pretty sure it was her.

Various Tech Updates

Okay, fine, Buy.com, if you can't tell me when you're getting in the damn laptop, then I'm canceling my order. New order for the same laptop is now in with the site TechOnWeb.com who says they have it in stock -- and guess what, bitch? I SAVED $4! Even with two-day shipping. Take that!

(I'm determined to have this laptop before we leave for vacation.)

A backup of all the text in this blog accumulated since June 2001 is 1.6MB. That's more than would fit on a floppy disk from the 1990s! Congrats to me.

Presidential Debate Drinking Game Fun!

Actually, it wasn't a game here (click for actual debate drinking game). Last night, as we pondered the thought of watching Masshole Senator take on the Handpuppet of the United States, my wife—who I call Squanto, and on some occasions, Squanto-licious— said, "I don't think I'm drunk enough to watch the debate."

So I said, "if you mix the drinks, I'll drink 'em with you."

Over the next 90 minutes, we polished off a bottle of vodka mixed with cranberry and some other stuff I couldn't identify, but it tasted good and made the so-called debate tolerable. This is about as much a true debate as I am a a climber of sheer rock faced cliffs, but it is the official beginning of the truly public part of the popularity contest between the two men who will run the country into the ground for the next four years. Hard to call the rest of the campaign public since not everyone is willing to sign the Bush/Cheney loyalty oaths required to get in.

We paused the debate many, many times to insert our own commentary of disgust and incredulity. I was flabbergasted when at one point Kerry slipped in the "one million jobs lost" stat and in the rebuttal the Handpuppet actually said that one million new jobs had been created in his administration! Direct contradiction, and yet the "fact check" articles I read this morning didn't even mention it. Maybe because the candidates were only supposed to talk about homeland security and foreign policy... must be the papers didn't want to embarrass them. (Though I've been searching through this transcription of the debate and I can't find any mention of this... was I that drunk?)

Two things I would add to any future debate drinking game: drink whenever they pound the podium (they should have that trained out of them with cattle prods) and whenever the sitting usurper refered to Kerry as saying "wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time." We get it.

Ultimately, if you had to pick a winner of such a public relations stunt, I'd be hard pressed. Kerry didn't sweat or talk like an over-educated snob, so that's a plus. Handpuppet didn't freak out and send in Ashcroft's storm troopers, so I guess he did okay.

In this house, our absolutely favorite part of the whole night was this exchange:

KERRY: Jim, the president just said something extraordinarily revealing and frankly very important in this debate. In answer to your question about Iraq and sending people into Iraq, he just said,

The enemy attacked us.

Saddam Hussein didn't attack us. Osama bin Laden attacked us. Al Qaida attacked us. And when we had Osama bin Laden cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, 1,000 of his cohorts with him in those mountains. With the American military forces nearby and in the field, we didn't use the best trained troops in the world to go kill the world's number one criminal and terrorist.

[blah blah blah to fill out 2 minutes]

BUSH: First of all, of course I know Osama bin Laden attacked us. I know that.

We both burst out laughing. I sat there and did my impression of Jon Stewart doing W, saying things like, "I ain't stupid, yah know. I'm the president. I know stuff." He's a petulant child caught with his hands in the cookie jar and can't admit that what he's doing is wrong.

After the debate (we missed all the pontificating by the spin doctors since we'd paused the DVR so much, it was already 11), we watched an amazing episode of the Daily Show with said Mr. Stewart that I swear was written between 10:30 and 11pm —an amazing job. I shouldn't say we, as by the time Rudy Giuliani came on to parrot the party line, much to Stewart's obvious disappointment, Squanto was out like a light on the coach with two yellow Labradors curled around her legs.

I extricated the dogs, covered her with a blanket, and went to bed with no clearer knowledge at all if this country was doomed to another four years of criminals running things.