Penny pitching
Brad Penny is having a Cy Young kind of year. He will be pitching against Bonds tomorrow night. It’s a record-breaking situation for Bonds, and it’s a must-win for LA with Padres and D-Backs breathing down their necks. SJZ picked the perfect game for us to attend. I hope Penny is perfect too.
We have arrived at cousin/mission house-mate Josh Zollinger’s house. He has a phenomenal home with a phenomenal little family. We’ll say more when they actually get home!
Bonds
So Barry Bonds is also headed for Dodger Stadium Tuesday night. If he hits one more home-run, he will tie Hank Aaron. If he hits two, he will break the record. We will be there. I hope they skunk him. I’d rather have him get the record in San Diego later in the week since Padres fans REALLY hate him. They will give the moment all the drama it deserves - booing probably. Actually, I imagine they would soak up the historical aspect of it and give it a standing O. Anyhoo, it will make Tuesday night a bit more tense. With a couple of losses to Colorado this week, the Dodgers need wins to stay in front in NL West. So we should be seeing some good baseball. Last I read, the Dodgers’ best pitchers had minor injuries, so I don’t know who we’ll see on the mound. But it should be good baseball no matter.
(SJZ’s Grandpa Morales was a Dodgers fan, and he took SJZ to her first games way back in the day. This will be our fourth year in a row, and third time for the MTN2 and OMN. It will be HEN’s first, unless he can’t break the fever. Yvonne offered to watch him and maybe that’s the best idea. We’ll post pics of the boys with the field in the background.)
coda
Last minute, we decided we want to see the Pacific Ocean too. We try and see one Dodgers game per year, and we thought we missed our chance when we didn’t make it up to Toronto earlier in Road Trip 2007. But we have a few days of no schedule, so off to CA to see the Dodgers and the ocean.
First stop is in Las Vegas at the Henriod’s house. We just barely missed the girls, but Joel is an excellent host. They have a new home and it’s awesome. The boys played on a jungle gym in the back yard. We watched HD tv. And HEN developed a fever. It dropped a bit in the night, but not because he slept it off. SJZ is a bit tired and back in bed. But we will leave shortly for the coast. Death Valley in July-August is not my favorite task, but our car has been a champ all summer. We should be fine.
HEN Walkin’
Vicki claims that the boy walked last week, but I just saw the first true amble (not just a step step crash). The baby is no longer a baby. Now if we can just get him to strap himself into his own car seat….
You know, car seats are the reason people have smaller families than they did in the 70s. In 1979, if you needed milk from the store (because the milk man could only fit four jugs in the box on your porch and your seven children consumed all of it too soon), you could say, “Everybody in,” and all seven kids would pile themselves into the station wagon. Then you’d leave them in the car to fight over the window seats and wheel wells while you ran inside to get the leche. Nowadays, it takes 30 minutes to get two or three kids strapped into the car (after the 30 to get them dressed and clean). The kids are more unruly (albeit safer) because they are strapped down for the ride. Then when you get there, it’s 90 degrees outside, so you can’t just leave them in the car while you run inside…. Add Global Warming to the list of reasons people are having smaller families. If any of you are anthropologists, a formal study of changes in milk-buying procedures throughout generations would reveal all of these societal shifts and probably many more. For example, handwriting excelled more in agrarian cultures where the kids’ hands were stronger from milking goats and cows. The reason middle schools have such high teacher attrition is due largely to their inability to read student work. All because of car seats. And urban sprawl. I predict that the advent of in-car DVD players will lead to larger families within only a few years. Kids love those things. If Toyota made a ten passenger Sienna with individual DVD players per passenger, prophylactic sales would plunge, and fuel consumption would skyrocket even by today’s standards. Now, if the Sienna were a hybrid…
HEN is walking.
happy 33rd SJZ
There’s always a parade on your birthday. Today we went to the Kamas 24th of July parade. MTN2 rode his bike (with help getting started each time he had to stop), and Owen pedaled furiously on his big wheel. They both kept up to the float in front of them pretty well and I only feared for their lives (falling under a float or truck) three times. Tonight we’ll have a small barbecue with my parents and sisters. And tomorrow its back to our lazy summer. Happy Birthday.
MTN
Final Tally
BY THE NUMBERS
6397.9 miles
$488.68 in gas
$124.45 in tolls
16 states
26 days
1 cop
0 tickets
48 emergency roadside bathroom breaks (including three number 2’s)
11 U-turns (not including MA)
innumerable U-turns (including MA)
2 mission companions visited
Too many cousins to count
1 LSMSA friend visited
2 Nashville families visited (including Haglund cousins)
3 museums, 1 aquarium, 0 souvenirs
16 podcasts (This American Life, PTI and Radio West)
3.2 Books on Tape (Wicked turned out to be too naughty)
10 different beds (including 4 airmattresses and 1 sofa bed)
4 NBA Finals read (not seen . . . poor Matt . . . poor LeBron)
1 haircut
1 suit tailored
1 $12 Kennebunkport lobster roll
2 rain storms
50 toes in the Atlantic Ocean
LOST
one tub of laundry soap and fabric sheets
Sara’s glasses
Matt’s glasses
Owen’s fingernail
flip-flops
6 green binkies
Sam B’s phone number
the letter R (in MA)
one pair of pants
one 5T shirt
our way
FOUND
5 green binkies
flip-flops
Ipswich, finally.
Matt’s glasses
2 cicada carcasses on the car floor
our way
RUINED
one pack of “go fish” cards
16 crayola twistables
one hand held fan
one set of head phones
one road atlas
one swedish aspen and the side yard lawn
Boulder and Denver
First a word on Colorful Colorado… I have long held that the Utah-Colorado border along I-70 needs no sign; you can tell it’s Colorado by the sudden rush of richer colors on the mountains. The state is aptly named. We came in from Nebraska on the eastern edge, and without having ingested any hallucinogens, I can honestly say that the state is suddenly colorful on the eastern side as well. It’s grasslands, just like Nebraska and Kansas, but there must have been ten different shades from blue to gold. Small yellow flowers line the freeway waving at us like townspeople at a parade. The land is no longer rolling, but more rigid now, like choppy seas. The sky is large in eastern Colorado. I imagine the ghosts of Arapaho and Cheyenne chasing the ghosts of bison. It is hard for me not to romanticize this place. I was born here.
We have lost Sam’s phone number, so we don’t really have anywhere to go. I tell SJZ I think we should just get a motel in Denver. About two minutes later I say we should just go to Boulder and get a Motel. Two minutes later, I change back to Denver. SJZ doesn’t care. We go to Boulder and get a Motel.
I have many childhood memories of Boulder, especially the Pearl Street pedestrian mall where STEVE’S ICE CREAM was stationed in the ’80s. Dad would bring me up (or Jack and me), get us a mixin and then let us run down to the kite store. Or he’d ask us to go count customers at Haagen Daz and return and report. We saw lots of street performers, some as dull as homeless hippies strumming crappy guitars, some as flamboyent (literally) as fire-eaters, jugglers, break dancers, and magicians. We climbed the boulders embedded in the mall and contemplated the irony of playing on boulders in Boulder. My grandfather was a soda jerk during his sojurn at CU (engineering), and his father (if memory serves) was a barber in town.
SJZ is getting all this in her ear as we stroll through the heat in the early afternoon. We park on the end opposite Steve’s and walk down to it, then back with a long stop at Old Chicago Pizza and a short stop at the water fountain. We contemplate the “homogenization of culture” when we come to the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and realize that even if the shops along Pearl are not the same shops as are on Park City’s Main Street, they are essentially the same: galleries, restaurants and bars, tourist kitsch, treats, real estate companies, etc. It’s a smaller version, but the same phenomenon as Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, Boston’s Newbury, Honolulu’s beach strip and NYC’s Time Square all having the same Virgin Records, Saks 5th Avenue, an Apple Store, and all the other same old same old shopping places you can see in the Southtowne Mall in Sandy, Utah. Pearl Street is special to me, though. I feel like I grew up here.
We drive to Denver in traffic that is just as bad as Chicago’s. We found Sam’s number, called and confirmed our reservations. We stop and take pictures of my old house in what is now Centennial. Then on to Parker, where Sam lives.
They have boys that mirror image our own: 6 year old, 4 year old, 1 year old. They treat us to fine Mexican faire. We wish we were neighbors with Sam and Lenita and their boys. It never occurred to me in the heap of bricks down in Vila Quintino that one day Elder Bell and I would be taking pictures of our 3rd children on a sofa in Colorado. Strange the way life goes. Abram (6) treats us to a violin concert before bed. We are anxious to get home, or we might stay a week with the Bells. When we drive away in the morning, MTN2 and OMN are both in tears at not wanting to leave. For much of the Trip, OMN has been weepy at night time about wanting to just go home. Now we are on the way and he is weepy about not getting to stay.
We are on i-70 headed west, headed home.
Des Moines
Goates-in-laws live in Des Moines. We played some yard games, put the kids down and then the real fun began: Playstation Guitar Hero. It was pretty intense. Nathan is a prodigy. Valerie, less so. SJZ was busy making fun of everyone, so she never even tried it. And I was good at the songs I knew (Unsung, More than a Feeling, War Pigs, etc.) and terrible at the ones I didn’t (don’t recall their names either). The most useful comment of the night was from SJZ, who said sarcastically, “too bad we didn’t have this game in graduate school.” I think it was about 1:45 am when she said that.
Before we got to Des Moines, we toured the University of Iowa campus in Iowa City. GORGEOUS. Cool buildings, new buildings, old buildings, lots of greenery and water. We took pictures in front of the Dey House, where Brady Udall got his MFA.
The next day of driving was our longest. Des Moines to Boulder, CO. We broke out the DVD players. SJZ listened to the book on tape of Wicked. We had already listened to a book called “Millions” which was really good.
Chicago again
I love Chicago. I loved Sandburg’s poem about it before I ever went there:
It’s such a vibrant poem but it’s not pretentious or romantic or at all. I look at the skyline (OMN calls it a “building collection” as he did NYC as well. MTN2 vehemently disputes this term saying there is no such thing as a building collection. I intervene and say, “it’s right there MTN2. If that’s not a building collection, then what is it?” He says, “That’s what I call a CITY!” Inside I agree. OMN says, “that’s what I call a building collection!” And now it goes around again, only ten decibels louder) and I am proud of this city. Of course, I have nothing to do with it other than that I like it.
We made a beeline for the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and took pictures of the tracker pipe organ I helped build a few years ago. It’s in a beautiful sanctuary. I wasn’t able to hear it and that made me sad.
Then Paul and Sally hosted us (sans Haglund children who were off on church excursions) again, and did so enthusiastically, which we appreciated. The five of us are two handfuls. We were well-fed, well-rested, and well-chatted. We’d like to be neighbors with P&S. The next day we went to the Science and Industry Museum (incredible) and upon our return, P&S watched the boys while we went out to a movie. Oceans 13 is as good as any 3rd sequel can be (which is to say not great), but the music is so good.
We love Chicago. Stacker of wheat. Tool Maker. Fierce as a dog.
