Disneyland, far from home.

Ever gone to Disneyland?  How about for three days and two nights, with 75 fifteen-year-olds?  And only two teachers?  Yeah, there were more than a half dozen more adults, but parents are not used to ordering around that many kids they don’t know.

In 2001, the Dance Company of the school I was at was invited to perform at both of the Disneyland Parks (California Adventure was still fairly new).  It was quite an honor,and the trip was actually a lot of fun, but not without some, uh, ‘experiences’.  On the airplane, not including 1^st Class, we took up close to ¾ of the seats.   They were pretty well behaved on the plane, although a businessman made the mistake of falling asleep next to a couple of the boys.  They didn’t seem to bug him, but later I saw a few pictures of the guy with one of the kids pretending to sleep leaning up against him.

We got from the airport to the hotel without any lost kids or other incidents, but were unhappily surprised when we got there.  We had specifically asked for rooms in separate wings of the building, in order to separate the boys from the girls.  The had told us that we could be accommodated, yet when we got there all the  rooms were in the same wing.  We tried to do our best, arranging the boys on one floor and the girls on another, but this ended up placing a room of boys two stories above a room of girls, with regular guests in between.  This, as you can imagine, caused some problems.  Once they realized they were right above one another, they were yelling up and down the side of the building at each other.   The manager had to come ask me to get them to stop, the regular customers had complained, and I told him that I would take care of it, but reminded him that we had asked for separate wings just because of things like this.   Other than that the kids were reasonably good, except for the group I was directly in charge of.  My group a) broke a bed, b) knocked down an Exit sign playing football in the hall and c) discovered that it took 1½ rolls of  toilet paper to plug up their toilet.  I made them a) pay for the broken bed, b) reattach the Exit sigh and c) borrow a plunger from the front desk until the toilet was working again.  Fortunately I had a good relationship with these kids, so they didn’t even argue about their consequences, just paid the money and  fixed the stuff.

Once we were in the park, things were great.  The dances went off without a hitch, and since the parks are designed for kids, as soon as we got them through the gates we chaperones were off duty.  Only thing we were supposed to do, but not required, was to show up for the dances for a show of support, which we wanted to do anyhow. 

The last day we left for the airport giving enough time to stop by the ocean for an hour or so.  It was quite relaxing, after the hustle and bustle of the amusement parks, to just sit there on the beach and watch the kids running around.  Perfect end to the trip, because I can’t even remember the rest so there couldn’t have been much going on .

From far to home.

“Far from home” is a relative thing, depending on where you define home.  And as time passes, and “Home” changes, so does what we think of as far from it.

I was 14 when we moved from Lexington, Mass. to Salt Lake City.  Not only did I see myself as moving 2/3 of the way across the country, I thought I was moving out to the wild west.  It was 1974, I’d grown up on The Brady Bunch and John Wayne movies, so I won’t fault myself for really believing I was going to live on a ranch and ride my horse to school every day.  Nope, no such luck.  It was a city.  Very small city by my east coast eyes, but still my school had no hitchin’ posts, the sidewalks were concrete instead of wood and there were buildings more than 2 stories tall.

When I first saw this house, it seemed like the furthest thing from home.  All our furniture and worldly belongings were lost somewhere in the mid-west so the moving company put us up in a hotel.  For about two months “home” was an empty shell we were painting and re-flooring, the breakfast table was at Marie Callender’s restaurant and dinner was whatever fast food place struck our fancy that night. But, despite still considering myself (partly) a Bostonian, it did become home and even though I was no longer living there when it was sold, it was hard to see it go.  

Wordle for this blog.

Can you tell what I talk about on this blog?  Remember – the bigger the word the more often it appears in the text.

Knights of the Round Lens.

Night.  I’ve taken a slew of night pictures, I love seeing what happens when I mess around with shutter speeds and aperture openings with little light.  When I read Carmi’s choice for this week, I immediately thought of 4 specific sets of photo’s, and picked these six from them.

The first was from out at the Bonneville Salt Flats.  In my opinion the two best times to visit the Salt Flats are at night – when there is no moon and when there is a full moon.

We went out there once on the 4th of July to set off some fireworks we got in Wyoming.  In the city and the surrounding foothills they are dangerous, the dry brush catches fire easily and the fire spreads fast.  We’ve had people lose their homes because of careless, and inconsiderate, amateur fireworks shows.  But out at the salt flats there’s nothing to burn.  Just salt, salt and more salt.  Oh, and a little bit of water popping up every there and there.  Not a huge fire hazard.  There was no moon that evening, so out there away from any lights it was pitch black.  Serious darkness.  We got about 10 feet from the cars, turned around and couldn’t see them.  Not at all.  We had to backtrack, following in our footsteps in the crusty salt to find our cars.  We needed to be far enough away that the fireworks wouldn’t hit the cars, so we had to leave the dome light on one of the cars so we would be sure to find our way back.

Later we went back when it was a full moon.  That was even eerier, it was so bright it seemed like daylight, but not normal daylight.  Like being on a different planet.  The dark mountains in the background added to this other-worldly feeling.  The first picture for you is of my 1980 Toyota Corolla out on the salt flats.  This was back in the mid-80’s, so it was taken with my old Nikon 35mm film camera.  It was taken sometime between midnight and 1 AM, and at a high enough shutter speed that the camera was hand-held, no tripod, not sitting on a rock or other car or anything.

This second picture is from sometime in 1979, night pictures was an assignment for my Photography class up at the University of Utah.  This is on what is known as “President’s Circle”, where most of the original buildings stand, possibly even from back when it was The University of Deseret.  The building at the top is the Parks Building, the main administration building for the University. Almost every Halloween my friend and I go up to the Salt Lake City Cemetery for a traditional scare-the-heck-out-of-you ritual.  We also have visited “The Haunted Old Mill” and other spooky sights in the valley.  This evening we brought my camera (the new digital SLR Nikon) and a tripod and attempted to make our own spooky pictures.  I set the shutter speed to 20 or 30 seconds, then we would run into place, sit for 10 or 15 seconds and run out of the picture.  This is the result of one of these:   This one is another picture of the Salt Lake Cemetery, but without the artificial ghosts. The last two pictures are from an October trip down to Arches National Park.  They were taken in the campground, looking up at the stars over the red rock that surrounds the site. These two you will definitely want to click on to get the full view of.  Don’t to forget to check out all the other great night pictures at:

Thanks for dropping by.

Snow day, in the car.

It was a day much like today; it had snowed in the morning and had warmed up enough by the early afternoon that the snow was melting.  This leaves slush all over the place, including on cars that had not been previously cleaned off.We know from previous stories that my first brand new car was a 1979 Mazda GLC wagon.  One of the first things I did to it was to have a sunroof installed.  One of those ones that flips up or can be completely removed.  I really wanted T-tops, but that would have taken way too much reconfiguration on the car, since the doors had rims around the windows. (Hmmmm, T-tops would be relatively easy on my Subaru).

Anyway, it was a day like today.  My sister and I had to go somewhere up in the Bountiful area, I do not remember where or why but it’s about a 20 minute drive on the freeway from home.  The car was covered in snow, so I had to clear it off.  I cleaned off the hood, the windows and all of the roof except for the snow in the roof rack.  After all, it won’t block my view at all.After the car warmed up it was time to open the sunroof.  Anyone who drives with me knows that even in the coldest weather I have at least one window cracked for fresh air.  My theory is that the heater has two levels; off and full heat, full blast.  The rest of the temperature regulation is done with the windows.  So we’re driving up to Bountiful with the heater on, the sunroof flipped open and a roof rack full of slush.

We get our exit, one of Utah’s notorious short exit ramps, and I have to come to a quick stop at the light.  The slush doesn’t.  A two and a half foot by four foot, 2'” thick slab of slush comes sliding right through the sunroof onto our laps.  (That’s over 12 gallons or 47 litres).

To this day I never leave without cleaning the snow out of the roof rack, if the car has one.

Why college students are better renters than middle-class families

Between August of 1970 and June of 1972 I spent a little over 4 months in my own home.  My dad liked playing the traveling Professor, and, in retrospect, thankfully dragged his family of 6 along for the ride.  We spent the first 12 months roaming around Europe in a 1970 VW Microbus (Lee Iacocca and Chrysler did not invent the minivan) and the last 6 months in Seattle.

While we were in Europe my parents rented out our house (2 cats included) to a family.  They destroyed our washer and dryer, lost my bicycle and, I won’t say they killed it, but my first cat Tancy died during their stay.  They also apparently threw away a bag full of my photos.  Even at 10 I was taking pictures, with my Kodak Instamatic, and in my completely organized way (which continues to this day) had them stored loose in a shopping bag. 

The six months we were in Seattle my parents rented the house out to a group of Graduate Students from the college my dad taught at.  They fixed the broken washer and dryer, repainted the playroom in the basement and fixed a few other things that I can’t remember.

What I do remember is how happy my parents were at the condition of our house after getting it back from the college students, and their unfavorable comparison to the condition the family left it in.

What made me think of this story is a blog gem that I found.  Written Inc’s Thematic Photographic series has given me an opportunity to look back at my photos, and to lament the loss of that big bag of snapshots I should have taken better care to hide.  There were hundreds of pictures in that paper sack, and I remember crawling though the attic space alongside my bedroom looking for them, going over the same areas several times desperate to find them.

I never did find the bag, but I did rescue a few snapshots, some of which are the ones posted here.  The top one is looking down the center the town Bradford, New Hampshire.  My parents bought some property just outside of town and built the cabin you see in the picture right below on the left hand side.  The top one on the right hand side was taken in the kitchen at the house I grew up in, in Lexington, Massachusetts.  The kid in the front is my best friend, Ed, behind him is my little brother and standing up is my mom.  The last picture is from our apartment window in Grenoble, France.  We stayed there for 5 months, and half of my 5th grade school year was spent in the public schools there.

2 cars, 1 wreck.

I just had a comment on my other blog that made me think of this story.  I did have 2 of my cars in the same wreck.

It must have been the early 80’s, I was living at my parents house while going to the University of Utah.  In typical Utah fashion, it snowed one day, got warm enough to melt the snow but not evaporate it off the roads, then overnight cold enough to freeze the melted snow and snow some more.  I woke up to about an inch of snow on the roads, usually not very much problem.  Except that under that snow was a nice sheet of smooth, slick ice.  I came down the hill and about 2/3 of the way down noticed there was a little fender bender at the intersection, I think there were 3 cars there already.  I was already going only about 20 MPH, driving my 1967 Mustang, and tapped the brakes to slow down even more. 

Nada.  Not even 1 MPH difference.  So then I tried a trick that worked for me my senior year in high school, turn the car into the curb and rub along it to stop the car.  Yup.  Almost nada again.  I ended up plowing into the tail end of the back car at about 14 MPH.  Nice.  Fortunately the lead car had already gone and found a phone to call the police, ‘cause at that point cell phone meant putting it out at the garage sale.

About 10 minutes and one more car in the pileup later, I’m looking up towards my house and I see my mom starting down the hill, in my 1979 Mazda GLC.  (Her car was in the shop so it’s not that she stole it.)  Crap, crap, crap.  (Yes, I cleaned it up for the blog).  I watch as she tries everything I did, getting the same results.

I ended up with two claims on my insurance, missed my class and just turned around, went home and went to bed.  The whole thing took long enough for the day to warm up and melt the ice, so I made it home just fine.