BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

As promised, I am throwing together a few blogs about our adventures on vacation. Please make note that they won’t necessarily be in chronological order as far as the vacation itself went. They are actually in “transcribed jotted down note order,” which makes sense to me, but not really everyone else. At any rate, this is number three in the series…

A Yellow Headed Blackbird... Native to the Tetons

So there we were… Grand Tetons… Jackson Lake… Signal Mountain.

Beautiful scenery, wild “thangs” running around all over the place, and I’m not just talking about E K, mind you. Yes… She is the quintessential “Redheaded Wild Thang,” but there were other furry, feathered, scaled, and otherwise armored critters running about the land of desert, prairie, mountain, whatever…

Seriously. There are pictures. One of them is over there to the left. We saw that crazy little bastage running around at one of the scenic pullouts that overlooked a prairie-like tableau, complete with the Teton mountain range in the background. Just for the record, I can show you the pics of the critters, but not of The Redhead being all wild. There are laws…

So… Again… There we were, coming down off yet another mountain. Or maybe we were cruising about on the two lane highway betwixt point A and point B. Or maybe it was a combination thereof. I’m here to tell ya’, it tends to get mixed up after a bit… The thing is, we were in the rental Jeep, with E K behind the wheel – Why? Because we were on our way somewhere and because E K has to be in control at all times. Y’all should know that by now.

Something else I’ve mentioned about The Redhead Who Shall Be Obeyed, is that she has some sort of organic GPS built into her brain. That, or a lodestone. Probably both. The only problem she will run into with it is, of course, construction that she wasn’t warned about, and the unfortunate occasions when she neglects to download the map updates to her brainpain – she has a Firewire socket on the back of her head, ya’know… This was one of those incidents.

The Tetons hiding in the clouds...

Where was I? Oh yeah… We were traveling and The Evil One hadn’t updated her Grey Matter 2000 GPS. Not to worry… Liz was in the back seat with a map, and she was feeding coordinates to the redhead, so all was good. In fact, Liz not only had a map, she also had a book that contained all manner of info about various attractions in the area – a tourist guide of sorts. We not only used this to figure out what we WANTED to see, but also what we should probably avoid – as in, too many tourists. Now, during all of this map deciphering, Liz enlisted the aid of the O-spring to read some of the smaller print.

“Why?” the child wanted to know.

“Because I’m blind as a bat,” Liz replied.

And so, all was still good. The o-spring read the small print, and together she and her Aunt Liz provided targeting coordinates to the Redheaded Tank Commander behind the wheel.

At one point, after offering up some pretty spectacular information and directions – much like the folks on the Bing commercials who spit out a whole list of things – we all mentioned how great it was that Liz had the book along with her.

Liz replied, “I just love books and maps.”

This prompted a comment from the tween, “If you’re blind as a bat then why do you love books and maps so much?”

“What do you mean?” Liz asked.

O-spring rephrased her question. “Well, if you’re blind as a bat you can’t see, so how can you read them?”

Instant logic. Just add gifted tween.

We all chuckled. Well, all of us grups did, anyway.

Liz, being quick with a comeback herself, explained, “I just use my bat sonar.”

I'm A Bison... Moooo

Again, we all laughed. Except the o-spring. She puzzled over the comment for a moment, remaining silent as we drove along. After a few moments, our chuckling and chittering died down, and all that was left to fill the void was the sound of the tires against Wyoming pavement.

Then, without warning, child-o-mine spoke up again, deadpan serious as she explained,  “I don’t think you can use echolocation to read maps and books…”

Good thing E K didn’t wrap the Jeep around a Bison on that one. The damn things were everywhere. As it was, we had to clean Cherry Coke off the inside of the windshield and driver’s side dash. You know how those rental car outfits are about the extra cleaning charges…

More to come…

Murv

As promised, I am throwing together a few blogs about our adventures on vacation. Please make note that they won’t necessarily be in chronological order as far as the vacation itself went. They are actually in “transcribed jotted down note order,” which makes sense to me, but not really everyone else. At any rate, this is number two in the series…

You just can’t trust anyone these days… Not even family. Seriously. They will rat you out on something in a New York Minute. Which begs the question, what exactly is a New York Minute? Is it slower or faster than a regular minute? If so do they have to sell special watches and clocks in New York? If it’s faster, is that why they have the New Years celebration there, so they can get it over with quicker? Do you have “time lag” if you go to New York then return to the temporal dimension that governs everyone else?

Could make you crazy just thinking about it, ya’know?

Anywho, back to the ratting out thing.

Gratuitious "Tourist Snapshot" of walkway atop Signal Mountain

After our Snake River Adventure with Philosopher Steve (which is on my schedule to blog about) we took his advice and went up to the top of Signal Mountain. Great view, but why is it called Signal Mountain? Well… I don’t know quite how it originally got its name, but there does happen to be a rather large cell tower on top of it, and you can definitely get signal there.

However… After going up a mountain there’s very little left to do other than go back down, which eventually, we did. On the way we kept on the lookout for wildlife so that we could go “Ooh, Ahh, never seen one of those…” and then take pictures like typical tourists. In point of fact, my Brother-in-Law was on a mission to take pictures of a Bear (or three, or four, or five…) He had come to Wyoming, as he said, “Loaded for Bear”… Judging from some of the lenses he was packing, I certainly couldn’t dispute that.

And so, as we traveled down the mountain, watching out the windows, we eventually came upon some wildlife. This particular wildlife took the form of a small clutch of German tourists. They were stopped along the side of the road snapping pictures, so we pulled up slowly so as to not spook whatever it was that happened to be the subject of the picture taking. This is when we discovered they were German. By this I mean, one of them stood there nodding her head and smiling at us, while a couple of the others kept saying to us, “Ja… Ja… Das Cinnamon Bayer…”

The other few behind them were also nodding and saying, “Ja… Ja…”

It was sort of sad. Not them. I mean us. Why? Because none of us could speak German. Well… THEY could, but we couldn’t…

From lookout at end of walkway: Jackson Lake with Grand Tetons

Either way, we parked, climbed out, and milled around waiting to see if we could get a picture of “Smokey the Bear.” Unfortunately, if Cinnamon (Nutmeg, Turmeric, Ginger, or even Mary Ann) bears were in the vicinity we never got to see them. Why? Because of the horn honkers. But we’ll talk about them in a different blog. Right now we need to talk about me being ratted out.

And so… Due to the horn honkers we climbed back into the rental Jeep and started back down the mountain. We hadn’t traveled more than 200 yards when the seatbelt chime began to ding, dong, squeal, and otherwise demand we pay attention to it.

E K, who was in charge of driving (as we’ve already established, what with her control issues and all) said, “All right. Who doesn’t have their seatbelt on?”

Our Sister-in-Law replied, “It’s John.”

John, being my Brother-in-Law you understand, announces, “Neither does Murv!”

Guess which one of us got smacked by the redhead…

Okay, guess I should wrap it up for this installment… Gotta go get the stitches taken out in a bit…

More to come…

Murv