Terrible Analogies

…to recover from my vacation.

Many thanks for all of the well-wishes!  Tyler had a great time ripping open his presents, shoveling fistfuls of carrot cake into this maw, and being manhandled by family members both alien and familiar.  Through it all Tyler never lost his smile or blew his cool.  Man, if only I could go with the flow as well as that kid can…

We’re pretty confident that Tyler’s favorite toys are the rocket ship tent and cow noisemaker (many thanks, Dash Riprock!).

Since Karin’s parents had never been to Disneyland we managed to find a sitter on Thursday, piled into the FJ and 80 minutes later were on the doorstep of the happiest place on Earth.  We had a great time on the various rides, stuffing our faces with churros and people watching.  I was even cajoled into getting on Space Mountain.  I don’t do well on roller coasters (they scare the bejesus out of me), but I think I kept a brave face for the duration of the ride:

In space no one can hear you scream…

I was hoping to run up Mt. Whitney this year, but I awoke at 2am the day of the run sick with a severe cold.  I had absolutely no strength, and after quickly assessing my condition I crawled back into bed with a bottle of Nyquil and an acute sense of failure.  All of that training wasted due to a illness.  Damn.

I guess there’s always next year.  Can’t tell you how bummed I am about this.

And so, instead of running up Mt. Whitney, Karin and I headed off to Mammoth to chill out for a few days.  I’m still trying to recover from the drive back home (I need a vacation from the vacation), so I’ll keep the writing short and stuffy.

Needless to say, I’m glad to be back…although I could have used a few more days soaking in the hot tub under the Mammoth stars…

The cabin we stayed at just happened to be a castle in disguise, complete with hot tub, wireless internet access, and satellite television. Yep, we sure were roughing it...

Chillin' with Tyler

Lake Maime, just a few minutes from our cabin, was dotted with fisherman in float tubes.

The view opposite of Lake Maime looking down toward Twin Lakes

Twin Lakes from the far side

Lake trout at the local fishery ready to be released out into the wild

Movie Road in the town of Lone Pine...

...where we threw my FJ into 4 Wheel Drive and raced around the roads

We even managed to swing by Yosemite on our final day!

On my day off Karin and I decided to go to Disneyland.  Man, was I excited.  We had a nice breakfast at the Carnation Cafe, took in our usual favorites rides, relaxed in the central park area with our traditional frozen deserts, and wandered through the shops.

Can you spot me on the Space Mountain ride?:

Thumbs up, buddy!

Quick!  Can you name all of the otters shown on the of Otter Pops box?

Aww….you cheated, didn’t you?

While you’re busy memorizing them, I’ll be busy taking the next four days off of work to go on a few extended trail runs and hopefully squeezing in a few rounds of Arkham Horror.  Now, I know that Lovecraft was a racist of the highest order (“The Rats In The Walls” and “The Horror At Red Hook” anyone?), but putting that aside he wrote some amazingly frightening stories of people placed in situations where humans were never meant to be, exposed to knowledge they were never meant to know.

See y’all Wednesday morning!

Whelp, tonight wraps up our grand tour of Wisconsin.  The wife has successfully caught up with friends and family, and as we head back to sunny San Diego we’re left with the feeling that we’ll be missing all of the kind, honest people we’ve seen this past week.  The suitcases are packed up, the alarm is set for 4am, and the plane tickets are at the ready.  

And so, with a fond “farewell”, we bid adieu to Widmer’s Cheese factory (awesome cheese!),

Dr. Myerson’s teeth,

the John Deere factory,

the never ending fields of corn and soy beans,

Amish literature,

and last, but not least, this orange moose:

That, in a nutshell my friends, is Wisconsin.