Aug 17

I Don’t Know If I Am Proud Or Ashamed That My Son Plays Boggle On The Iphone

Posted by Big Daddy Paul in Travel Stories

I used to think that giving your kids a million kinds of technology was ugly parenting. I would see kids playing games on their handheld Nintendos, Ipods, and PSPs and I thought, “Wow, their parents must be really fucking lazy. Tsk, tsk.” Having traveled all over the western United States in the past few weeks and asking Malcolm sit through things that no four-year-old easily consents to (like seven hour long car rides or lengthy waits at the doctor’s office to get his stitches removed), I now know that the parents weren’t lazy. They were fucking smart.

It’s a fact. Little gizmos make your kid tolerate situations they would otherwise drive you crazy in. Four-year-olds are hard wired to run, scream, and talk about their butts. This does not bode well for long airplane rides. Under the circumstances, you can either corral their fragile little attention spans by showing them Mary Poppins, or risk having your aisle-mates learn that your new nickname is “Poopy McPooperstein.” Sure, I could stash the technology away and try to to occupy Malcolm’s time by reading to him and playing games, but such heroic efforts at parenting are better left to people who aren’t busy downing as many rum and cokes as they can between takeoff and landing.

Additionally, “regular” parenting will always entail your child having at least one tantrum during plane flights. I swear, if there is anything I hate in this world more than the stink-eye that single airline passengers shoot you when your kid is screaming in their ear, it is the the patronizing tone that other parents use when they take it upon themselves to instruct you on what you should do to make your child happy. Lose, lose. Much safer to just plug the kids in, sit back and let the rum take its course.

Monsters, Inc. Life saver, or gateway drug?

In light of this reality, Malcolm now has a portable DVD player and my old Iphone. I try to limit what he can do on each of them, vetoing both his attempts to watch “Showgirls” on DVD and play “Ragdoll Blaster” on the phone. The downside is that he now asks for each constantly, and I am, for the moment, resisting. These tools are useful ways to survive significant hurdles, like sitting in the car for 15 hours in a three day span. They are not, for now, used for more mundane things like driving to summer camp or waiting in the car while I knock over liquor stores. Maybe one day Malcolm will win out and I will have to deal with a child that has absolutely no patience, but then again, that’s what rum and cokes are for, aren’t they?

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Aug 9

You Think Your Day Was Bad

Posted by Big Daddy Paul in Travel Stories

It was Saturday, and my eye wouldn’t stop twitching. It wasn’t twitching in a good way like it does on Christmas or the morning of our fantasy football draft. It was twitching, and for a brief, glorious moment, I didn’t know why. Then, I remembered.

I remembered that our cars and garage had been ransacked the night before. We had been back in town for a grand total of three hours when someone came down our driveway, opened up each of our cars and rummaged through them, going so far as to open the one suitcase remaining in the trunk in a search for valuables. Finding nothing but my sunglasses the thief then opened our garage hoping to find some good loot. Luckily, both the garage and our cars are in such a state of disrepair that the thief was unable to find much of anything worth taking. Joke is on you, thief!

I cursed my inattention to detail, but then cut myself a little slack because we had returned from our trip at midnight the night before. Why were we so late? We missed our original flight home. We were scheduled to fly out of Kalispell, Montana but after arriving a whopping three minutes after they closed the ticket counter (still 27 minutes before our departure time!) the good folks at Horizon Air decided to cancel our entire reservation and, as luck would have it, there were no seats out of that airport for five more days. Fortunately, there were seats available in Missoula (120 miles away) so we rented a car, drove like Helio Castoneves through Arizona, and made a connection to Seattle. In Seattle, they got Amy on an earlier flight to San Francisco while Malcolm and I had to beg and plead to let us on the last flight out of Dodge. Fortunately, the gods smiled on us (owing mainly to my story that mommy was “in heaven now” and that we were still getting used to traveling alone) and we got two seats to Oakland. We got home late, but it was sure better than spending a night in Seattle.

I then remembered why we missed our flight. Actually, there were two reasons. First, Amy and her mom (on my insistence) waited in line at a Mexican restaurant for what seemed like an eternity for a lunch. Even if we hadn’t wasted 20 minutes on a couple of tacos and a quesadilla, we probably would have made our flight, which explains why I took it upon myself to “run into” a Super-Target for some Children’s Ibuprofen. For anyone who hasn’t been to a Super-Target, “running into” a Super-Target is just about as easy as “running into” the Library of Congress for a newspaper. We had no chance, really.

This looks too eerily similar to a mugshot that I have no doubt will one day be taken.

The memory of  why we needed the Ibuprofen then came to mind. Earlier that day, Malcolm walked right in front of someone throwing a bocci ball, opening a gash on his forehead worthy of a IFC combatant. His face stained with blood, we took him to a local trauma center to get stitched up. (Since it was Montana, I was glad that he wasn’t getting worked on by a taxidermist!) Malcolm was brave, but I was braver, as I had to hold his head down while watching the doctor repeatedly poke Malcolm’s wound with a needle to give a local anesthetic. Yowza! Somehow I managed to avoid both vomiting and crying. Maybe I would have if I knew what the rest of the day would hold for us. Looking back at it, I was lucky to get out of it with a stolen pair of sunglasses and a twitchy eye. Some of us didn’t make it through so well.

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Aug 6

FU Glacier Park

Posted by Big Daddy Paul in Travel Stories

I hate Glacier National Park. I know I shouldn’t hate something as sweet and innocent  as a national park, but I do. (It’s like hating a puppy!) I hate Glacier Park more than I hate cilantro. I hate I hate Glacier Park like your in-laws hate it when you get to drunk and take off your pants. I hate Glacier Park, and sadly the feeling is mutual.

It wasn’t always this way. I madly pursued Glacier for a while. The first two times I went to Montana, our attempts to make it to Glacier Park were thwarted by snow. Both visits took place in June. Let’s recap. Snow. June. Obviously, some sort of conspiracy was taking place to keep me from the park. Fear not, I was assured, for if we visited just a little later in the season the weather would be fantastic and our trip to the park would be spectacular.

This year would have no excuses, as we were in Montana in August and my sources here told me snow in August was about as likely as coming upon a hairless moose playing an organ. On Monday, seventeen of us made our way to Glacier park, anxious to take in one of the most beautiful spots on earth. Our trek got off to a difficult start when we decided to all take a shuttle up the mountain together, but had to wait 50 minutes for a shuttle with enough space to accommodate us all. Undeterred, we slowly made our way up to the top of the park. During the ride, we began to sniff out some clues that the weather was not going to cooperate with us. One of the waterfalls (which, I was told, usually flows downhill) was actually shooting water uphill, owing mainly to epically strong winds blowing the stream 20 feet into the air. We also noticed that mountains behind us kept disappearing into a thick, dark storm.

At 4:30, we finally reached the top, at which time the shuttle driver informed us that a weather advisory had been issued for a storm that would soon blow through. Not really sure what to do, we quickly ran into the visitors center. Once inside, the skies really opened up, drenching everything in a cold, windy monsoon. Then the thunder and lightening started, followed shortly by a hail storm. It would have been really sad, except for being able to witness the steady current of underdressed hikers return to the visitor center drenched and freezing. Can anyone say, “Wet tee shirt contest?” I did, many times, although my fondest memory is not seeing the mother of two boys in a see-through tank top, but, rather, hearing her kids (while sobbing and shivering uncontrollably) shout, “WWWWWWhy ddddiiiiiddddd  yyyyyyyou mmmmmakkkke usssssssss gggggggo onnnnnnn a sssssssstuppppid hhhhhhhike? WWWWWWWWWWWWWeeeeeee hhhhhhhhate yyyyyyyou!!!!!”

Thanks for bringing me to Glacier Park, daddy.

After huddling in the visitor center for about an hour with the other thousand or so tourists trapped by the storm, we figured we were going to need to stand back in line to catch the shuttle back down the mountain. When we got in line there were 20 or so people in front of us. When the last remaining members of our group made it into line, there were about 75 people in the line. When the first shuttle came, it picked up a grand total of seven people. I did the math and at that rate, (with shuttles coming every half hour) we were going to be on a shuttle in 90 minutes, while the rest of the group would get back sometime around Thanksgiving. Luckily, the park figured out that they needed to get everyone off the mountain and sent every shuttle they had to pick up passengers. Eventually, we piled into a shuttle and the trip down the mountain was wet and cold, sad and quiet.

We finally got home without seeing anything. People still tell me that Glacier is a beautiful place to visit, but they are clearly full of shit. Glacier is an awful place that no one should ever visit, and I hate its guts. The next time we head up here and Amy’s family suggest we go up there again, I’ll tell them that prefer to do something a little more enjoyable, like a colonoscopy or maybe have a mountain goat chew off one of my fingers. Glacier, for all intents and purposes, is dead to me.

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Aug 2

Big Daddy Paul Goes To Montana

Posted by Big Daddy Paul in Travel Stories

We are in Montana this week. Amy’s dad was born here, and a lot of family still remains. We are here to help celebrate Uncle Stu’s 50th wedding anniversary, and we are having a great time. Here is what you need to know about Montana:

Vampires- There are a shitload of vampires here. Big ones. Sure, they managed to hide their unearthly ways under wool-lined jean jackets and lumberjack hats, but I could tell that Montana has a pretty significant vampire population. I though this place was the big sky country, but the bumper sticker ought to read: “If you own a truck and enjoy sucking blood, Montana is the place for you!”

It's like "On Golden Pond" except without all the crotchety old guys around!

The Lake- We are staying on a cabin on a lake. The lake is called Ashley Lake and I would like it even if it were called Lake Shania Twain. We have swam in it, boated on it, jet skied it, and this reporter has even used it as his personal bathroom. The water is a but on the chilly side, but quite nice when you have been drinking beer all day. Amy has been longing for a solid lake-cabin experience and this is like porn for her. We are all having a blast.

Malkie’s First Crush- Malcolm has had girlfriends before, but never this serious. The object of his affections is a 17 year old high school senior who endures his insatiable appetite for baseball. We’ll call her Halle. He follows her around like an old dog keeps after a baby with a steak around it’s neck. She doesn’t appear to mind that he is totally obsessed with her, hopefully he’ll grow out of it by the time he is 30.

Amy’s Family- I know everyone hates their in-laws, but Amy’s family is horrible. They are all super nice and super friendly, and make me sick. Where’s the drama? Where is the creepy uncle that hits on anything that moves? Why isn’t anyone screaming at each other? I have been here for 48 hours and not one single alcohol-related injury has occurred. This isn’t a family reunion, it’s a freaking special on the Hallmark network. My greatest fear is that all their positivity will somehow rub off on me and that I will return to California a kinder, gentler person. Can you imagine?

I’m going to do my best to torpedo the rest of the week, but it’s going to take a lot of work on my part. These vampires is good folk.

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