The Rubber Band played at yet another block party on June 13th to celebrate the end of school and the start of summer break. We played for about an hour-and-a-half, running through about twenty songs.
Good photographs were few and far in-between this go around. I stole this one from a GoPro we clipped onto the speaker stand.
I think everyone had a good time. The only complaint was a lack of water bottles – but that’s what happens when six guys plan a party. Beer? Plenty. Water bottles? None.
My oldest daughter, Ashley, and I.
The band is going to take a much needed break for the next two weeks before hitting it hard for our upcoming gig at Rancho Bernardo’s upcoming Oktoberfest celebration, “Rancho Beer-nardo”.
“I almost walked up to the office to call you guys the first night, but my friends convinced me not too.”, Kaylee told Jodie and I, not long after returning from 6th Grade Camp.
It was probably a good thing she didn’t because, although Jodie and I had fully intended to leave our phones turned on as we slept, we had forgotten to. Awesome parenting, right?
“So…?”, I prompted her.
“The food was bad and I didn’t sleep at all the first night!”, she told me.
“Would you do it again?”, I asked her.
“No!”, she said, firmly.
“Really?”, I asked again.
“No!”, she demanded.
“Why?”, I asked.
“The food was horrible!”, she repeated, adding, “And the beds had graffiti all over them, and….”
“….it wasn’t that bad, then!”, I interrupted.
“… and everyone kept farting! My friends and I all used the bathroom at the same time…”, Kaylee continued.
“…so no one knew who was farting?”, Jodie interrupted, laughing.
“YES!”, Kaylee confirmed.
Although I missed my little girl, I am proud of her. My own experience with 6th Grade Camp some 36 years ago – ironically, at the same campground and ( likely ) bunk houses – was disastrous.
Due to nerves, bad food choices, or both, I didn’t shit for the entire week. Showering was also traumatic. I spent the first two days with unrinsed shampoo in my hair before I gave up on bathing altogether. I was all-too-happy to return home, or at least I would have been if my mom didn’t immediately whisk me off to an event at the Portuguese Hall upon picking me up – unshowered, filthy, and still very constipated, in dress slacks and a tie.
So, no Kaylee. I’m not sure I’d do it again, either…
Let’s go Broncos! Make us Proud! Touchdown Broncos! For the Crowd! Stomp Your Feet! Rattle the Stands! We cheer for you. Your biggest Fans! …..BEE!
Pop Warner is over for my cheerleader, which means it’s competition season. On January 20th we’ll be headed ( again ) to Last Vegas for the 2024 JAMZ Nationals. It will be our third such trip. Our first competition was met with the untimely demise of the family van. The second resulted in a new pet. Who knows what will happen this time. Hopefully? Just a trophy. First place would be nice.
On the upside, the smoke kept the mosquitos away. No one complained of a single bite!
William Heise Campground. Seven families. Thirty people. And one bathroom, at least for the first night.
Apparently, at some point in my distant past I was a camper, because I surprised myself and my much more outdoorsy neighbor, Missy, the organizer of the expedition, by the sheer amount of camping equipment I had stuffed into the deepest, darkest corners of garage. It was almost as if I never wanted myself to find it again. Planning ahead I had bought a brand new tent in celebration of Amazon’s Prime Day, only to find two more hidden in my garage during my excavation.
“This new tent will work out better“, I insisted, “It’s bigger and we’ll all be able to sleep together!”
Mistake.
On the first night I realized that our massive 6-person tent was a tighter squeeze than I expected. Worse, I shared an air mattress with Kaylee. Being heavier, I created a depression that she couldn’t help but roll into and subsequently, on top of me. I escaped to the van and spent a sleepless night reclined in the driver’s seat, sleeping for maybe an hour or two in 15-minute spurts. I wasn’t the only one, either. Jodie ended up reading through the night. As for my other daughter, Ashley? She rolled off the air mattress she shared with Jodie and slept, face-planted on the bare vinyl floor of the tent. To each her own.
The toilet and showers gave out early the next day. Suspiciously, the outage coincided with our fearless leader, Missy, contracting a very nasty stomach bug. Being the trooper she was, she insisted on toughing it out, to the extent of trying to follow along on a 3-mile hike in 90+ degree weather. Mercifully, she retreated back to camp only to be voted “off the island” and chaffuered home with a crate of Gatorade and saltine crackers.
A trip to Miner’s Diner in Julian and heaping scoops of ice cream cheered everyone up. Heck, I would have paid good money just to sit in the air conditioned splendor. As luck would have it the diner had an entire basement full of candy which each of the kids took turns exploring.
Some campers truly roughed it, if only by keeping their car’s A/C above 78 degrees.
“Hey, Kay! “Check these out!”, I called to my youngest, Kaylee.
“What are those?”, she asked.
“Sugar candy cigarettes!”, I announced.
“I haven’t seen these in years. Pretty inappropriate for this day and age.”, I reminisced.
She nodded in agreement.
Later that night, back at the campsite, we dined on packaged ramen, canned beans, and store-bought tortillas in an effort to hedge against any more food poisoning stemming from the BBQ’d burgers we had eaten the night before. After getting the campfire started my friend, Mike, strummed guitar while the kids all lined up on a squat fence bordering the campsite.
“Uh, what are they doing?”, Jodie asked.
“Smoking cigarettes.”, I said.
I averted her eyes.
“Don’t worry, they’re sugar. I couldn’t resist.”, I smiled. “It’s nostalgic”.
The second night was quieter. Unsurprisingly, many campers decided to hoof it rather than risk stumbling through the brush in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. My bedroom, the van, was commandeered at least once to make the journey to the remaining operable bathroom a half mile down the road. Sleep was elusive, even more so when Kaylee popped her head in.
“I can’t sleep in the tent”, she moaned, “Can I sleep in here with you?”
“You can try”, I laughed. “I haven’t had any luck.”
She was out cold within minutes in the passenger seat next to me, snoring.
I would say I was up early the next morning, but as I never really went down it’s kind of a misnomer. We managed a pretty good spread of pancakes and scrambled eggs before everyone decided to cut their losses, beat the heat, and head home early.
“Next time? Cabins.”, Jodie suggested.
“Right?”, I agreed absent-mindedly. My exhausted mind theorizing where in the garage I could re-entomb my collection of tents and camping gear so that they would never, ever, be discovered again.
Any road trip with my dad was the best road trip ever. For more go here.
In the late 1980’s my dad took my brother and I on an unforgettable road trip to Yellowstone. We spent the majority of the trip lying down in the cramped shell of his compact red pickup surrounded by camping gear, coolers, and a questionably watertight portable toilet. The cool thing about growing up in the 80’s is that you could do this, the bad thing about growing up in the 80’s is that you could do this. Today, if you were to ask me the most memorable thing about the trip, it wouldn’t be the geysers, or moose, or the camping – it would be the hours upon hours of conversation with my dad through the narrow sliding window joining the cab where my dad drove, and the bed, where my brother and I laid down.
Take care. Stay healthy. Live life. Enjoy the journey.
My family and I were invited to join our good friends for a beach party on Coronado for an end-of-summer marshmallow roast before all of our kids went back to school. The waves were just big enough, the weather was just perfect enough, and the Del provided an endless supply of s’mores. As I watched my oldest get churned up in the waves I kept expecting her to stomp out of the water, throw down her board, and give up. She never did and her reaction after we finally had to fish her out of the water for s’mores was priceless.
Our friends, the Cawlfields, invited us to Universal Studios Hollywood to celebrate their son, Allan’s, birthday. It was a lot of fun and a fantastic distraction.
“That was awesome!”, my oldest daughter, Ashley, screamed.
We had just gotten off “Harry Potter and the Hidden Journey” at Universal Studios, Hollywood. We, along with some of our friends, had taken advantage of a teacher “prep” day at Westwood Elementary and braved the 5N to Los Angeles. Traffic was horrendous, there was a five car pileup just past Camp Pendleton that had snarled traffic for over an hour, but we made it. Now we were getting our first taste of what Universal had to offer.
I smiled at her, glanced at my phone, and noticed a message waiting. After listening to the message I squeezed Ashley’s shoulder and quickened my pace to catch up with Jodie.
“Are you okay?, she asked.
“Yup. I just got a call from Dr. Kane’s office. Surgery is set for March 16th at 7:20 AM.”, I told her.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Yup!”
Then my phone started ringing again. This time it was from BriovaRx, the specialty pharmacy that supplies me with Zytiga, one of the two hormone therapy medications that I’ve been taking. Instead of picking up I let it go to voicemail and put the phone back into my pocket. By then Ashley and Kaylee had caught up with us.
“So, what’s next?”, I asked them.
Their attention was elsewhere. I followed their eyes to a nearby cart with a big sign marked “Butterbeer” on it. Six dollars and ninety-nine cents later we were sharing a cup of the frozen concoction, remarking how it tasted a lot like cream soda.
My phone rang a third time; it was BriovaRx again. I let it go to voicemail, put my phone back into my pocket, took a big chug of the Butterbeer, and smiled.
It tasted better than cream soda.
Surgery is over a month away, today is now. Phone calls and diet be damned, I was going to have fun with my family.
…and I pretty much proved to myself that I probably shouldn’t go mountain biking anymore. I used to go a lot when I was younger. Key word : younger. This time I was a flailing 40-something precariously walking the line between between mortal injury and questionable control.
I love oak trees. Occasionally my family and I are invited to stay at our friends’ cabin in Angelus Oaks and I am always drawn to them. They are gnarled, musty, and just a little spooky. I’m pretty sure the old trees have a lot of stories to tell, too.
drawnandcoded.com 