Vacation Hard: Part 9 - It's the end of the world as we know it......because I forgot to take my watch off?!

First a gentle reminder. If you experience any of the following:
Easily hurt and/or compromised feelings
Extreme religious and/or political opinions and mentality
Diarrhea of the mouth while suffering the above afflictions
Please do not read my blog.

If you have an aversion to cursing, violence, sex, destruction of property, having a sense of humor, or Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights please do not read my blog.

If you dislike or have difficulty understanding satire/sarcasm, just don't even bother. Nobody likes you anyway.

Let's have some back story before I begin the next part of the tale. I was adopted and raised by wonderful people. My folks were strict, but fair. I know, without a doubt, that if not for them I would be in prison right now instead of doing nerdy things like writing a blog.

That being said, and with all due respect, my parents were a pain in the ass. Most people's folks are, and you and your siblings sit around in your 20's and 30's talking about all the times you got in trouble and laugh, but when you're an only child........you get in ALL the trouble. The focus is all on you.

 

 

My Mom was notorious for waking me up for school with an animistic sort of shriek. Dad would just come in and pull covers off and threaten to pour water on me and I knew I had to get up because he'd actually do it. He threw away an $80 pair of sneakers once (Reebok Pumps....remember those?) because I didn't get them out of the living room before I went to bed one night. I never take a threat from him lightly, cause he'll do whatever crazy ass shit he thinks needs to be done to make a point.

The absolute worst habit he has is getting anywhere on time and I think he actually gets off on blaming other people for him running late. He gets himself worked up into a super shitty mood and has this whiny sort of growl when he talks, very much like I imagine my voice to be when I'm bitching at some of you Village Manor people when you don't do something I want or don't follow my instructions or when there's bickering. Y'all know I hate that shit.

Vacation Day 6:

So anyway, I'm woken up at 0430 by a slamming bathroom door. A moment later I'm in that twilight state right before sleep and I hear my father's whiny growl: "Danny! It's time to get up!" Needless to say, I'm grumpy. I had finally found a position on that bed where the iron bar wasn't raping my back about an hour bef-"Daniel! Get up!! Let's go!! Do you want to be late?!"--ore and I was comfortable and didn't want to move. I layed there, trying my best to remember that I'm a grown ass man now and I don't have to take this shit anymo---"Hey! Are you awake? IT'S TIME TO GO!!"

Here it comes, Reader: "I BEEN AWAKE, DAMN IT!!"

"WELL THEN.........GET THE FUCK UP!!"

So...........I got the fuck up. If it is possible to violently get dressed, I did that. Also violently brushed my teeth and violently packed my shit. I sat down, violently, to have a cup of coffee Irma had put on minutes after the bitching started, and again: "We don't have time for that! We gotta go! Right now!"

Pushing.......my........mother........fucking..........buttons...... "OK then! You wanna go? Let's go!" - So I grabbed my luggage and blasted out the door. I got about 20 steps away from the room and realized I had forgotten my camera bag and hat, so I turned around and came back. As I entered the room I hear Irma ask my Dad what was wrong. Dad says: "Oh, he's just being an asshole cause we have to go and he didn't get to sleep in and have his coffee." I grab my camera bag and Larry turns around and realizes that I heard him. "Well, it's the truth," he says. "Got that right," I say, because it was indeed the honest truth. Of course the annoying wake up call had nothing to do with it.

 

 

We get all our crap packed in the car and head out. Smooth sailing to the airport, park the car in the long term parking and make our way into the wrong end of the terminal. Got to the Southwest desk, checked in and boogied down to TSA, where my hazy, caffeine deprived brain caused serious issues at the metal detector. I was shuffled down to one of the stations where I mumbled something like "Whassamatter?" assuming that it was even English I was speaking. "You didn't take off your watch.....I have to scan you now." I look down and notice it there, something so simple, and become highly frustrated with myself. "Well, shit," I say. TSA guy frowns at me and says, "It's not the end of the world, man."

Somehow I am accutely aware that is not the end of the world. I am severely agitated that this guy (who was only doing his job because of my ignorance) would remind me of something so evident. I think the lack of earthquakes and boiling oceans and, you know, Jesus didn't drive by on one of the little airport wagons and say "Hey everybody......just a head's up. Might want to start doing some praying," might have tipped me off..........and then the truth of the situation hits me: I'm having a man-period. My sissy ass has been in airplanes and cars and in the heat entirely too much over the last few days and the idea of having to get on another sardine can coupled with no sleep, breakfast, or coffee has decimated my internal monolouge filter to the point that my most cynical of thoughts were going to declare war on everyone in the airport, especially Larry. 

 

There's no reason everyone else should have to suffer because I'm "being an asshole", so I apologize for my language and finish up with TSA and we get moving. Irma and I decide we want to stop by a McDonald's there in the terminal for a quick cup of coffee because (like you need me to tell you) she had forgotten to grab her cup back in the room because Larry, the fucking time nazi was rushing everybody out the door. So we stop and get our quick meals to go and then book it on down to the gate. As soon as we get there, I noticed people lining up to board. Since I have an early bird pass for this flight as well, I get no time to enjoy my coffee or shitty hash brown.

 

 

So........as much as I do not want to admit this, the time nazi was right all along. If we had left any later I wouldn't have been able to enjoy my precious early bird boarding pass. So all you Readers keep your traps shut about it, because you don't know what it's like to suffer that man, ok. It's a terrible, ego-sucking ordeal that I hope to someday share with my own child, along with many other Larry traditions such as:

 

 

Taking F-O-R-E-V-E-R to get up on Christmas morning so we can open presents.

NOT telling me when to be careful of something when working on a car. Well, technically he'd tell me, but only after I've busted a knuckle or crushed a finger by saying "Ooooooh.......that shit hurts, right? Yeah, don't do that", and then laughing about it for 20 minutes and telling his compadres when they come over to shoot the shit. A routine question some of these guys would ask when I was at the shop, "Hey, Danny....anything bleeding today?"

Stealing anything in my apartment that he may have thought was initially his. Fucking pack rat disease.

Pretending like he can't hear you when you're spelling something unless you use the NATO phonetic alphabet.

Calling me to ask about something on his computer that's frustrating him. The man has worked with computers in cars and on multi-million dollar government aircraft, and yet a Windows operating system baffles him for some reason.

 

 

And the list goes on.

 

 

On the next episode of Vacation Hard!: An Adventurous Venture for the Venturless Adventurer

.........What's that Stirdivant?.........You want to wait until Daniel Briggs is on vacation here?......Hmm....sounds reasonable. Did he buy a really expensive camera just for this trip?......perrrrrrfect......."

Vacation Hard!: Part 8 - This ain't vacation. Normal people sleep on vacation. And there's less yelling......

First a gentle reminder. If you experience any of the following:
Easily hurt and/or compromised feelings
Extreme religious and/or political opinions and mentality
Diarrhea of the mouth while suffering the above afflictions
Please do not read my blog.

If you have an aversion to cursing, violence, sex, destruction of property, having a sense of humor, or Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights please do not read my blog.

If you dislike or have difficulty understanding satire/sarcasm, just don't even bother. Nobody likes you anyway.

Awesome blog reading discretion has been advised. Don't be mad, Boo.

Vacation Day 5:

We all get some much needed rest and wake up late in the morning, which for me (with this whole 'sleep at night' thing) is like 7am. I take a quick trip to Corpus Christi to have breakfast with Terri and Allesyn (another part of my second family and Laura's mother and younger sister respectively). We went out to a pretty good Mexi place Terri frequents where we chatted and reminisced. I was told later that when Terri went back there the folks asked about who I was and she said "That's my other son", which gave me the warm and fuzzies. The older I get the more nostalgic I become and that meant a lot coming from her. We get back to their place and look through some pictures I had mostly forgotten about and found some of the only pictures left of my Mom (Loretta) that were taken before she died, and on the night of my high school graduation. It was kinda hard not making the eye water when I saw those pictures, because I thought they were gone. And so I extend my sincerest love and gratitude to Terri and the whole family for keeping and caring for those pictures. It means a lot. And now that everybody knows what a big titty-baby I am, we can continue......

I jump in the truck and head back to Kingsville. Irma booked us at the family barracks on Lackland AFB in San Antonio for that evening, so we wouldn't have to get up early and drive all the way from K-ville for the flight out to D.C. that left around 8am. So we fart around, nagging each other to death, Dad showing me how well he's honed his considerable pack rat skills and Irma and I rolling our eyes at him like some kind of synchronized event in the Suburban Olympics.

We get the car loaded up with all our luggage and get going back to San Antonio. On the way I text Bunny and let her know I'd be in town in a couple of hours so we could hang out. We get to Lackland and get all our stuff unloaded and get ready to go out to the Naval Exchange (military shopping mall), which my Dad finds fascinating because there's no sales tax on base (something I enjoy statewide in Oregon).

After wandering around at the Exchange, we head out to Wal-Mart to get some much needed medicine for Dad, and I let Bunny know where we were and she picked me up. Off we went to Casa Rio (a popular mexican restaurant) on a Sunday evening. This place is right on the Riverwalk in San Antonio, which most people from those waters can tell you, is packed on any given weeked. But this is Labor Day weekend.......so yeah. After waiting outside in the stagnant heat we go in to eat...........Ok, Reader, I know I whine a lot about the heat, but you should go live in tropical climates where the only seasons are 'wet' and 'dry' with 4-6 storms a year that leave you without electricity and running water for days, take baths in trash cans filled with rain water, go to schools with no air conditioning, deal with bugs that will carry you off in force right after they give you any number of respiratory diseases and then tell me if living with the heat is worth it.

We spend less time eating than we did waiting to get in. I'm already in a foul mood because I'm uncomfortable with the heat, not to mention I've been couped up with all the traveling over the last 4 days, and I'm ready to really start taking pictures and having fun. So we finish up dinner and get out of there, walking all along the River Walk and the surrounding streets in downtown San Antonio, which at night is quite nice.

 

After that Bunny takes me back to the Lackland gates and Dad comes out to get me back on base. We get to the room and I feel like I need a pressure washer to get all the sweat and grime off of me. After a quick shower, I walk out and Dad's watching TV:

"Boy, I dunno what's wrong with these dumbasses. They can't seem to catch that Jason Bourne. He's a crafty motherfucker."

I chase him off to bed and......uh......well, I guess you could call it "sleep" on the pull out bed in the couch with the enormous iron rod cross bar that effectively raped me for the entire 4 hours I "slept". I was violently woken by a slamming bathroom door and began suffering flashbacks from my childhood:

"Danny! It's time to get up!"

On the next episode of Vacation Hard:  It's the end of the world as we know it......because I forgot to take my watch off?!

"Pushing.......my........mother........fucking..........buttons......"

Vacation Hard!: Part 7 - Keep your foot hard on the pedal - Son, never mind them brakes......

First a gentle reminder. If you experience any of the following:
Easily hurt and/or compromised feelings
Extreme religious and/or political opinions and mentality
Diarrhea of the mouth while suffering the above afflictions
Please do not read my blog.

If you have an aversion to cursing, violence, sex, destruction of property, having a sense of humor, or Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights please do not read my blog.

If you dislike or have difficulty understanding satire/sarcasm, just don't even bother. Nobody likes you anyway.

Awesome blog reading discretion has been advised. Don't be mad, Boo



Vacation: Day 4

 

 

 

Ohhhhhhmyfuckinghead.

I checked my phone and it was.....oh God, the pounding!!........about 10am. My Dad hadn't called so I figured.....I'd shoot myself in the face to end this suffering.......I should call him. The T-Mobile reception where they live.......I think someone poured gasoline into my mouth.......sucks, so I had to borrow Roger's phone to call to see what the plan was.....besides vomiting copious amounts of intestine into my new best friend, Mr. Toilet......for the day.

Brrrrring, Brrrrrring...."Hello?"

 

"Arrum.....Good Morning--"

"Where the fuck are you?"

 

"Livingston Texas, Dad. How are you this morning?"

"All I know is you better get your ass back here in a hurry. Carlos (one of my step brothers) started your brisket last night and everyone is expecting you here before 5 O'Clock and it's the Labor Day weekend so get in the truck right now and move. Be careful. Love you."

 

 

"Uh-Huh. Can I have a cup of coffee first?"

"...............*silence*..........................."

"Ugh.......FINE!!"

 

"Ok. See you in a little bit."

By the tone of his voice, there was no way I was going to get to stay for lunch like I had planned the night before, so Roger hooked me up with one of those canned coffee drinks, and if a beverage ever saved my ass, it was that one.

So I got all my crap packed up and gave hugs to a busy 3 year old and got to hold Mia one more time.......and that's when she smiled at me......it's like she hypontized me with her little baby eyes.......and they said: "You are mine now, Daniel. You will love me all the days and buy me many things. And it doesn't even have to be my birthday. Go now and miss me terribly."

And so, totally dehydrated and hung over, I left. I thought it was totally unfair that I didn't get to spend more time with them, but I did say I'd be back to have dinner with my step family before we left for D.C., so this is all the Frontier's fault for breaking down the day before. Oh well, at least I got to spend a little time.

I hit Houston around noonish and it was pretty much the same as it was coming in the day before, but in reverse because going south is like traveling down hill. Since it was the Labor Day weekend, smokey was out in force. Out in force with the giant smokey asshole stick shoved up their collective rectum. These fuckers were looking to make some money off of people who were doing practically nothing. Are your passenger's feet on the dashboard? Ticket. Going 2 miles over the speed limit? Ticket. Got those fuzzy dice hanging from your rear view mirror that you've had there for like 5 years? Well, you'll find out on Labor Day weekend in Texas from a man wearing a giant coyboy hat (who isn't doing a fucking thing associated with being a coyboy) that your precious fuzzy dice are considered an "obstruction of view". Ticket. I had a state trooper follow me for (no joke) eleven miles. I know because he was the third one to get right behind me (or right along side) and tail my ass like I owed him money, so I hit the trip meter and watched. Buncha douchers.

Even with a bitchin' hangover and gasoline mouth, and on Labor Day weekend no less, I still made Houston Texas traffic my bitch. That's how nerds roll.

Thank God the average Texas freeway speed limit is 70mph. I got home in record time, I think, rolling into my step sister Claudia's house in K-ville around 4pm. Since Larry took up residence in my ass about getting home quickly, I figured he'd be there, but noooooooooo. He's still at the shop. Figures.

 

 

 

I go in and greet everybody and the house smells fantastic. Like a Mexican food flavor explosion. I get a beer and park it at the kitchen table and wonder at how much my step sister Claudia's children (who of course barely remember me) have grown. Claudia's son, Aden, quickly ropes me into watching him play his Star Wars video game on the Wii......let's face it: if it's got Star Wars in the title, I'm so down for whatever it is. So I'm sitting there watching him play, yelling at him to "watch out.....the guy is right there!! You gonna git kilt!!", and Larry walks in and starts teasing me about my affinity for all things dork. I've suffered this for years, so it's easily dealt with and we file off to dinner when Carlos shows up with the enormous brisket he'd been smoking for 18 hours.

 

 

 

I love the Chapas......they fed me until my pancreas screamed "One more fucking bite, and I'll give you diabetes so bad you'll need to DRINK your insulin from a Big Gulp cup!!"

It's a beautiful thing, to be surrounded by people who love you. I forget this much of the time, because I'm not around any family up in Oregon, and I live a fairly quiet hermit like life style, which suits me fine, but can get pretty lonely. That being said, when you are seperated from family and come back to it, you appreciate it so much more than when it's around all the time and peeing all over your toilet seats and losing all your nice spoons.

 

 

 

Next time on Vacation Hard!: This ain't vacation.  Normal people sleep on vacation.  And there's less yelling......

 "Danny! It's time to get up!"

Vacation Hard! Part 6: Been makin' a fool out of folks just like you.....and helping white people dance.....

First a gentle reminder. If you experience any of the following:
Easily hurt and/or compromised feelings
Extreme religious and/or political opinions and mentality
Diarrhea of the mouth while suffering the above afflictions
Please do not read my blog.

If you have an aversion to cursing, violence, sex, destruction of property, having a sense of humor, or Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights please do not read my blog.

If you dislike or have difficulty understanding satire/sarcasm, just don't even bother. Nobody likes you anyway.

Awesome blog reading discretion has been advised. Don't be mad, Boo.

 

Dad finished up on the truck around 7pm and I decided to wait until the next morning to make the trip to Livingston. We get to what we call "the little house" in Kingsville (the first house my folks bought after I was born) and I get straight to the task of washing the smell of baked ass off of myself and doing all the personal hygiene required to make me not smell like a homeless person then lurch off to bed.

The next morning I hear the old man grumbling and slamming shit around in what I assume was an attempt to make a point without actually saying anything directly to my face. I crack my door open and give him the "what the fuck" look. He stops in the hall and glares at me, pointing toward the bathroom:

"I don't know what the hell you're doing at your fucking house, son, but this here.........this is a man's house. We don't put toilet seats down in a man's house."

You damn women have me brainwashed even when I'm on vacation.

Vacation Day 3:

Larry and I poke around all morning, running errands, talking about a hundred different things. We had a quick meal at Lydia's, a popular place for breakfast in Kingsville, where we ran into a couple of his compadres and a couple of the nurses I used to work with and my first nurse boss ever, Mrs. Sears (who doesn't have a first name as far as any nurse at Spohn Kleberg Hospital knows) and her husband. Gave her a hug and chatted for a second and she gives me that same stern look she used to when I was a 19 year old punk and she says: "I'm watching you." I thought about it after we left and here is what I think she really meant: "I'm watching you on facebook, Dan. You seriously need to consider cleaning it up a little."

**Note to Mrs. Sears: Mrs. Sears, if you're reading this, I'm really, really sorry! I was raised in a military family and around guys who use the f-bomb as a noun, verb, and adjective. My Mom even cussed worse than some of those guys, so I have a hard time expressing myself without bad words unless I'm around people I respect, like you (what does that say about the rest of you nerds?). Love you, Mrs. Sears. Thanks for giving me a chance all those years ago and then putting up with me once I got there. No promises on the bad language, though.

So I left for Livingston around 10am which, according to everybody, was a bad time to leave because I would hit Houston during the clutches of rush hour hell. Here is my theory about that: every hour, with the exception of between 3 and 4 am, is rush hour hell in Houston, Texas. Just like it is in Atlanta, Dallas, L.A., Miami, Chicago, and any other city with shitty crime statistics. The blue collar criminals run until around 3am performing muggings and vandalism, then the white collar criminals wake up early for coffee and cocaine before they start a busy day of insider trading and various forms of securities fraud.

After an uneventful 4 hours of driving, I get to Houston. It's like driving in a Nascar thing (match? game? tournament? who cares?). People dart in and out of traffic and I begin to notice a trend: the only ones doing it are either suped up trucks and tricked out coupes or high end Mercedes and BMWs. Translation: Gangsters and Securities Traders. And now you understand.

Anyway, I get through Houston without a scratch and make it to BFE, Texas in a short order. After some initial confusion I find Laura's house and go in to meet the chillrun, Jackson 3 years old and Mia only 4 months. I've known Laura and my "second family" since I was 17 and for whatever reason the girls in that family have always called me "Boo". So Laura instructed Jackson to call me "Uncle Boo" which I thought would be uber cute.......until he started calling me "Uncle Boobs". Of course, he doesn't really know what he's saying and Laura tried to correct him, but let's face it: we're all laughing on the inside cause that shit is funny.

So Uncle Boobs held little Mia and instantly fell in love. With both the kids really; they're being raised to be polite and respectful, qualities many children severely lack nowadays. Jackson is a character if I ever saw one and sharp as a tack, and Mia's so damn cute it makes you want want to punch your significant other in the mouth and holler "It's your fault we can't make babies that look like this!" Maybe they ain't blood, but I'm damn proud to be Uncle Boobs to them chillrun.

"Hey Jackson!  Lemme get a picture of you......uh......ok........that works I guess."

Gotta go feed the evil goats

Been a long time since I've held a baby. Laura watched me like a hawk.

Roger made it home from work and we started the drinking pretty early in the evening, Laura being the only responsible one. I quickly insulted Roger's choice of whiskey and bastardized it by drinking it with Dr. Pepper (I regret it in retrospect and apologize humbly). We finished off the whiskey and made the switch to Bacardi 151 and some lager that was darker than that swamp water shit they serve at McMinneman's (The Terminator) but delicious; then started smoking cigars and I made my first attempt at playing guitar drunk. I know I sucked, but the sauce had me thinking I was rocking hard, tasty abs when actually I was rocking wet, soggy noodles. And then the greatest thing in the history of alcohol happened: Roger made us flaming Dr. Peppers.

  I don't know if you've ever had a flaming Dr. Pepper Reader, but if you have not, you must stop reading this right now and go have one. I'll wait.

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Jeez......take forever why don't you.

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.........HOLY SHIT, READER!! You look totally fucked up!! Told you that shit is ah-ma-za-zing!

Poor Roger was wore out after working in the Gulf and then driving all the way home.  You can see the lid of the Tums bottle in the lower left corner.....cause we're old now and partyin' ain't easy no more.

We park our asses outside on the patio and continue the drinking. We talked about so many different things and I honestly can't remember it all; I just know the McGregors and I were nerding out over everything from diving (their profession) and guns to music, movies and military history (a right good Texas hoot'n'anny, Brother Cousin). There are only a handful of people I know that can bang out a conversation with so many different topics and never get tired......Roger and Laura: y'all complete the nerd in me and shit.

Off to bed around 3am and instantly slip into an alcohol induced coma.

Next time on Vacation Hard!: Keep your foot hard on the pedal - Son, never mind them brakes......

"You are mine now, Daniel. You will love me all the days and buy me many things. And it doesn't even have to be my birthday........"

Vacation Hard!: Part 5 - It's getting hot in here! So take off all your cloth---NO DAN!! You're in public!

First a gentle reminder. If you experience any of the following:
Easily hurt and/or compromised feelings
Extreme religious and/or political opinions and mentality
Diarrhea of the mouth while suffering the above afflictions
Please do not read my blog.

If you have an aversion to cursing, violence, sex, destruction of property, having a sense of humor, or Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights please do not read my blog.

If you dislike or have difficulty understanding satire/sarcasm, just don't even bother. Nobody likes you anyway.

Awesome blog reading discretion has been advised. Don't be mad, Boo.

Vacation Day 2:

Irma went to work that morning and Dad and I got packed up for the trip back to Kingsville, where he has an auto shop that's always overloaded with work. We ran a few errands and stopped by the original Iwo Jima memorial which was relocated to Harlingen (God only knows why) after the much larger one in Arlington was built.

Dad's checkin' it out.

Once we got to Kingsville, I'd be leaving with the Frontier to go see my good friend Laura, her husband Roger and all the children they've had since the last time I saw them in 2006. She lives in Livingston, a little town about an hour north of Houston, so it's about a 6 hour drive from Kingsville, depending on Houston traffic, so it was important that I leave as early as possible to avoid Satan's rush hour.

So after a brief explanation on how to operate the Frontier, Dad let me go. Once again, if you know mechanics, they never have a completely functional automobile. The Frontier had a problem with the A/C where I'd have to open the hood and hit the clutch plate on the front of the compressor with a long stick Larry had specifically for that purpose, because the magnets were so worn and old that the plate got stuck in the off position every time you turned off the engine.........which led to him not turning off the engine even when it was appropriate:

"Aren't you going to turn off the engine before I pump the gas, Dad?"

"What for?"

"Uh......so I don't die. Isn't it dangerous to have the engine running when you do that?"

"Naaaaaaah." Which is "Larry" for "Just fucking do it, shithead. I know what I'm doing.".......needless to say, I've heard that A LOT.

Anyway, I get going a little later in the day. I miss an exit about an hour north of Kingsville and have to double back to get on the right track. The A/C goes out because I was probably pushing the truck too hard in my frustration, so I pull off on the shoulder so I can whack the plate to get it to go back on. I pop the hood and get out, whack the thing 2 or 3 times and it won't catch. So, like the mechanically impaired moron I am, I turn off the engine and wait for a couple of minutes to see if it just needed a "rest". Hit the key again and the bastard won't turn over.

Now, because of the understanding I have that bad shit happens to me on vacation, I'm much calmer and accepting of this situation than I thought possible. I calmly call Larry and field a bunch of questions that annihilate that patience:

"Well, what the fuck did you do?"

"I turned the engine off and it wouldn't turn back on."

"Why did you turn it off in the first place?"

"I thought it would help."

"The only thing I think it helped is your understanding about why you should not have done that."

"JUSTCOMEGETMEGODDAMNIT!!"

So there I sat. It was only 96 degrees at the time, but according to the heat index, it felt like it was 104. As I stewed in my ball soup, I realized something very odd: I go into the sauna at my gym in Oregon a couple of times a month and I am sweating more profusely sitting in a broken down Nissan Frontier on the shoulder of a Texas highway than I do in a place that is specifically designed to make me sweat. I laughed at this which served to briefly elevate my mood.

Dad showed up quickly with the car dolly and we got loaded up and went back to the shop in Kingsville. During the ride back we had this argument:

"Heat index is supposed to be 104 today."

"What a load of shit. If it's 96 degrees, then that's what it is."

"What? You don't believe in the heat index? It's fucking science, Dad. You lived in Wisconsin until you were 20. You're trying to tell me you don't believe in wind chill factor either?"

"Oh, hell no."

"Oh, what the fu--.....ok, so you don't think that if it's 20 degrees below zero outside with the wind blowing and you go outside without enough clothes on that it's not going to feel like it's about 15 degrees colder than it actually is?"

"Just listen to that sentence......first of all it's your own goddamn fault for going outside without proper clothing. Second, if you go outside and it's cold enough to freeze your spit before it hits the ground, I guaran-fucking-tee you, you're not going to give a shit what the 'wind chill factor' is."

I'm sorry, Reader. Curse words are mandatory when making a point in my family.

Anyway, back in Kingsville, Dad gets busy fixing the truck. He figured out that the alternator was the main problem, after he explained something about the break mechanics of that vehicle and how that somehow tied in to helping the truck not start. Clearly I'm not mentally equipped to tell you exactly what that is, because even though I try to understand what the hell he's saying, it still sounds like a Charlie Brown teacher's conference in my head, but here is the dialouge anyway (bear with me on this):

"Almost all newer vehicles are equipped with a safety feature that makes it so you have to push on the brake before you can start your car, so that means there is a little button at the base of the brake pedal that's engaged when you push it down. Now that's nice and all, but the Japanese, in their infinite fucking wisdom, decided that on the opposite end of that button, there needed to be a "pad" so that the button didn't get worn out as fast.......but the material used to make the fucking pad is kind of like the rubber that a pencil eraser is made out of, so it gets old and it dries up and falls apart."

"Well that's pretty damn stupid. What the hell did they do that for?"

"Hold on.......the engineers down at Nissan didn't call you when they were designing this model? Why didn't they call you, Danny? Obviously you have a lot of insight that can be brought to the table when these highly educated motherfuckers get together to build a new---"

"WAIT, WAIT, WAIT!!! You mean to tell me that the alternator and this pad thingy failed at the SAME TIME when I was driving this piece of shit?!"

"Well, son, you're 6'4", sitting in a truck designed by a small Asian man, and your goddamn leg probably weighs 70 pounds. I don't imagine you were being gentle with the pedals."

".......well, shit."

All of Larry's "work".

 The Briggs' are simple folk; that piece of cardboard he's laying on is known as a "Mexican Creeper" in the Auto biz.

But you want to know the really funny thing, Reader? That truck has been servicing my Dad's trips back and forth to San Antonio to see his doctors for two and a half years. That truck has over 225 thousand miles on it's original engine. That truck has never broken down during that time. I get in the thing alone and it suddenly has a change of heart? I hope you're starting to understand the underlying theme here: I am seriously cursed.

Next time on Vacation Hard!: Been makin' a fool out of folks just like you.....and helping white people dance.....

".........HOLY SHIT, READER!! You look totally fucked up!! Told you that shit is ah-ma-za-zing!"

Vacation Hard!: Part 4 - Everywhere I go, there's weather......whether or not the weather is fair there......never.

First a gentle reminder. If you experience any of the following:
Easily hurt and/or compromised feelings
Extreme religious and/or political opinions and mentality
Diarrhea of the mouth while suffering the above afflictions
Please do not read my blog.

If you have an aversion to cursing, violence, sex, destruction of property, having a sense of humor, or Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights please do not read my blog.

If you dislike or have difficulty understanding satire/sarcasm, just don't even bother. Nobody likes you anyway.

Awesome blog reading discretion has been advised. Don't be mad, Boo.

Larry and I drive to Harlingen from San Antonio, picking up conversation about many things most people would find tedious and boring, but our level of enthusiasm is both awesome and totally nerdy so you'd probably get a kick out of it if only to tease me later. I miss my Dad and his straight ahead way of making a point, but like I said before: the man lives to fuck with me. And that, dear Reader, is why I kick it in Oregon.

That and the Texas heat. I mean, seriously. I was on fucking fire.

The four and a half hour drive went quickly because Larry was telling his "airplane stories". Since I was old enough to hear them (about 15 by his standards) he's been telling me these stories about his some 7000 hours of flight time in the Navy. Apparently you can get into all kinds of shit when you spend that much time in military aircraft. I've been asked not to recount any of what he did until he's dead (some of this shit makes you chew your nails and wonder how the hell we ever made it though the Cold War without a nuclear holocaust), but I can say that if you've never heard a grown man tell you how he won a farting contest in the cockpit of an airplane with 2 other grown men by eating pickled eggs and boiled hot dogs, then you have not lost control of a major sphincter because you were laughing so hard that you had to think about breathing before you could think about not shitting yourself.

Anyway, I made it to Harlingen with clean underpants (this time) and had a quick dinner that my step Mom, Irma, had ready for us when we arrived. I swear I feel like a king when I go home to Texas. The people are so different: ready to make you feel at home and pump you full of food and drink until you wonder if your colon can really handle another pound of beef (the answer is yes). I wander off to my nice, comfy guest bed and sleep at night for the first time in probably 2 years or so. I felt rested and much less cranky and now know why I don't really have a social life. I'm kind of a dick unless I sleep at night, and since I work at night........well, it's safe to say that's a lot of dick.

Dad and I spend a little time out in the back yard, having coffee and talking. It rained the night before after something like 65 days of not raining. This is only pertinent to me because I just left a place where it's uncommon for it to go 10 days with no rain, so I get sick of overcast skies and come to the dry south Texas wasteland in anticipation of clear skies........and yeah......tough shit. Oh yeah! Remember that time I went to live in Brazil for 4 months back in late 2004 and it freakin' SNOWED in south Texas for the first time in 100 freakin' years?! So not only do I miss all the cool ass shit that happens, but Mother Nature and the people on the Weather Channel be plottin' on me. You think I'm kidding, Reader? Just wait.......

On the next episode of Vacation Hard!: It's getting hot in here! So take off all your cloth---NO DAN!! You're in public!

"JUSTCOMEGETMEGODDAMNIT!!"

Vacation Hard!: Part 3 - Ex-traneous.....Ex-acerbating..........Ex-plosive!!

First a gentle reminder. If you experience any of the following:
Easily hurt and/or compromised feelings
Extreme religious and/or political opinions and mentality
Diarrhea of the mouth while suffering the above afflictions
Please do not read my blog.

If you have an aversion to cursing, violence, sex, destruction of property, having a sense of humor, or Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights please do not read my blog.

If you dislike or have difficulty understanding satire/sarcasm, just don't even bother. Nobody likes you anyway.

Awesome blog reading discretion has been advised. Don't be mad, Boo.

"It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase 'As pretty as an Airport' appear."
-- Douglas Adams

We finally land in San Antonio. "Deplaning", as it's called in the biz, is super awesome. It's where the passengers in the middle and back of the plane wait for 20 minutes for the people in the front to remember that they have luggage in the overhead bins.......oh yeah......and common sense. And if you can get them to remember both at the same time it's a magical event. Like watching whales fucking or something.

I'm walking out of the terminal keeping an eye out for my good friend Ann, who I've called "Bunny" ever since she was a baby nurse that I had to train to do all the wrong stuff (she's subsequently moved past my 'Dark Side' training style and will now tell you how awesome she is at high volume). She said she'd pick me up for lunch before I headed home with my Dad. As I walk out, she's hiding off to one side, like she was going to let me pass and then yell at me from behind and then be all butt-hurt because I didn't recognize her. Then she would have leverage (among women's favorite things to have besides "babies" and "sparklies") to be able to say things like, "HEY, remember that time that I went to pick you up at the airport and you didn't even recognize me?! Yeah, so go buy me something sparkly to assuage my grief over that shit."



After gathering my things from the "oops, we smashed your shit" conveyor belt, we walk outside. The built up heat latent in my bones and skin from all the lava daggers everybody on the plane was shooting me with their devil eyes collided with the oppressive South Texas heat and I burst into flames. Then Bunny politely informs me that she forgot where she parked. This situation sounds vaguely familiar.......



This is the story of The Journey to Find The Bunny's Car.

Day 1:

While I had packed very well for this unexpected and ardorous journey and felt I was best prepared for the worst of conditions, I would have never guessed that as we trekked across the vastness of the San Antonio International Airport parking structure (3 fucking levels, Bunny. REALLY?!) that I would be on fire. I had left all my flame retardant clothing at home.

Day 2:
She drove up behind me as I was searching the same row for the 2nd time because that tricky bitch probably knew where the car was the whole time and was doing this to me to seek revenge for us losing touch for like 5 years or whatever it was. I got in and the flames were intantly extinguished because she started talking and laughing and all the oxygen was sucked out of the car. We had a good chat on the way to lunch and we're laughing the whole time because seperately we're funny, but together our comedy is magical. Like watching two monkeys hump a football or something.



We finish up at Lorenzo's "Fo' Realz" Italian and I call my Dad for a place where we can meet. Now, talking to Larry about anything that involves a specific event to take place at a future time is never easy; the man lives to fuck with me, questioning everything, but mostly directions and spelling (I learned the NATO phonetic alphabet just so he'd never be able to screw with me about spelling: "Did you say C or D?", "CHARLIE, Dad!! Fucking CHARLIE!!"). I would share further about that interesting dynamic, but that's a whole blog unto itself and I have shit to do today, so let's skip to the part where Bunny is driving me to the Wal-Greens and I say, "You watch, my Dad's gonna give me some shit about my hair. You should ask him about the time he introduced me as his daughter to a bunch of his Navy buddies when I was in the 10th grade".

We sit waiting for him and Bunny asks if I know what he drives. I tell her that if she just watched for the shittiest piece of shit rolling into the parking lot, that'd be him. Because anybody who's got a mechanic family member or friend knows that all their customer's cars are nice and they drive shit that's just about to fall apart. So anyway he totally fooled me by rolling up in a not-so-bad (for now) Nissan Frontier. We get out of the car and I introduce Bunny to my Dad. And this man, who I haven't seen in 2 years, doesn't say, "Hello, son. How was your flight?" or any of that cordial shit normal white movie parents say to their kids. Dad says, "You gonna go with your hair like that?" So after I indignatly holler "SEE!! I freakin' TOLD YOU!!" and when Bunny stops laughing, Dad asks, "What's the name of your band again?"

"I'm not in a band."

"Oh, then I guess it's time for a fucking hair cut then, huh?"

On the next episode of Vacation Hard!:   I been workin' on a Night Train......drinkin' coffee, takin' C17H21NO4..........

".......it's safe to say that's a lot of dick."

Vacation Hard!: Part Deux. Pronounced "Doo". That's gross French people.....grow up.

First a gentle reminder. If you experience any of the following:
Easily hurt and/or compromised feelings
Extreme religious and/or political opinions and mentality
Diarrhea of the mouth while suffering the above afflictions
Please do not read my blog.

If you have an aversion to cursing, violence, sex, destruction of property, having a sense of humor, or Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights please do not read my blog.

If you dislike or have difficulty understanding satire/sarcasm, just don't even bother. Nobody likes you anyway.

Awesome blog reading discretion has been advised. Don't be mad, Boo.




After being dropped off at the airport, getting checked in and passing through TSA, I get to my gate and begin waiting. Waiting at the gate to board your plane can be pretty interesting because you can spy on the people you're going to be traveling with before you board, getting to know who you may or may not have to kill on the airplane. It's pretty early, so nobody's talking like usual, but what they do is look around to assess the fellow traveler situation. This is never good for me because I'm a very large man. Tall and wide. To give you a general idea, not a single player in the NFL weighs as much as I do (I outweigh the heaviest listed by about 15lbs.) and I can only stand up competely straight in a 747 or larger aircraft. Needless to say, it sucks to sit next to me and it's quite a source of shame. I try to make myself as accomadating as possible, but it's not easy. Asking me not to invade your space in a sardine can like airplane seat is like asking a man with the worst case of food poisoning ever to stop shitting. So some of these people, sensing the seriousness of my girth, took to lashing out in my general direction with variations of stink eye.

 

 

 

Fortuately, I had purchased the Southwest "Early Bird" boarding pass, which allowed me to be among the first to board thus ensuring I'd have enough time to get settled before people started cramming up the airplane. Southwest has the policy to allow passengers to choose their own seats which is both a blessing and a curse, because toward the end of the boarding process you'll inevitably have a family with small children who did not board right away (even the Early Bird people can't board before parents with small children and the disabled) and now they can't sit together and the flight attendants will ask that people start giving up seats. They will not allow the plane to leave until several good samaratans, in a fit of kindness (or impatience) get up and move for these people. Well, my fat ass wasn't getting up, because I almost had my seat belt on. Yes, I'm one of those sorry assholes who needs a belt extender becasue I miss being able to buckle my airplane seat belt by like this  ________  much, depending on the size of your computer screen. Because of this I refuse to eat anything on the flight, but really it's mostly because I can't lower the tray table down all the way because my knees are pressed up against the seat in front of me. God forbid the person in that seat wants to recline it at all. I had a guy once who slamed his back repeatedly into the seat thinking it was stuck and then looked at me with an "eat shit" look when I asked him to stop.

 

 

 

People would pass me in the isle and the looks I got were either in disbelief or disgust. And it's funny to me because they'd look at the empty seat next to me and then up at me and I could read them like an open book because I chose to look each one of them in the face like an open challange to "sit here and lick my elbows". I was the last person anyone on that flight sat next to. I completely understand why, but it still kinda hurts to know that I was the one that sucked the most out of a couple hundred people, but I still have nothing to blame but my intense love for ice cream and otherwise awesome genetics.

 

 

 

Finally, a woman made her way into my row to sit next to me. "Hi," I said. "Grunt," she replied and glared at me as if she was trying to make me burst into flames with the power of her mind. She plopped down into the seat with a look of obvious defeat. Turns out she's a nurse too and we talked shop for a while until I had to answer "the question": "No, I'm an LVN" being the answer. After that the conversation died down considerably, which was fine with me because she just wanted to talk about how allergic she was to everything and how badly the hospital she worked at had been treating her. Gosh lady, it must really suck to have a degree and a hospital job in a down economy.

 

 

I catch my connecting flight in Denver and board a plane with about 20 vacant seats, so this time I had a whole row to myself, but somehow still suffered a few disparaging looks from passer-bys in the isle. Why people be hatin' on big folks? You know I can literally throw you little shitheads, right?

 

 

 

 

Next time on Vacation Hard!: Ex-traneous.....Ex-acerbating..........Ex-plosive!!

 

 

"........This is the story of The Journey to Find The Bunny's Car.........Day 1......"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

VACATION HARD!! - This time it's personal with a vengency like aftertaste!!!!

First a gentle reminder. If you experience any of the following:
Easily hurt and/or compromised feelings
Extreme religious and/or political opinions and mentality
Diarrhea of the mouth while suffering the above afflictions
Please do not read my blog.

If you have an aversion to cursing, violence, sex, destruction of property, having a sense of humor, or Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights please do not read my blog.

If you dislike or have difficulty understanding satire/sarcasm, just don't even bother. Nobody likes you anyway.

Awesome blog reading discretion has been advised. Don't be mad, Boo.





Part 1:

Nothing ever goes as planned on vacation. EVER. Overestimated possibility for fun and recreation. Underestimated financial cost and potential for physical and/or emotional injury. This is the tale of my super-duper awesome vacation. All events depicted herein are mostly true, except for the parts where I'm having fun. Also I didn't change any body's names cause they're all guilty as shit.




Ellie & The Plan



I love Ellie. She's my travel agent. That's right, I said travel agent.....who's your travel agent? Captain Kirk? Yeah, that's what I thought.

 

Ellie is a serious travel pimp. She won't even talk to me about places she's never been, unlike most travel agents who'll blow sunshine up your ass about cruises and third world countries they've never been to. Ellie's been on a real vacation in nearly every major US and European city. Who goes to Buffalo, N.Y. on vacation? Travel pimps, that's who.



She handled the details of my slightly complicated travel plans with pimp like smoothness: multi-destination flights for me, round trip flight for my folks, hotel stay in D.C., and a two day D.C. tour, not to mention fielding all my stupid questions, which is a feat in itself:



Dan: "Thank you so much for getting all this taken care of, Ellie. I think next year I want to go on a trip to Japan."

Ellie: "That's nice"

Dan: "Aren't you going to tell me about your package to Japan?"

Ellie: "I don't have one and I really don't think you should go there."

Dan: "Why not?!"

Ellie: "Daniel.......they've had a nuclear reactor explode very near most of the hot tourist destinations and something like five major earthquakes in the last six months. I'd hold off for a couple of years."

Dan: "But Pat Robertson hasn't said anything about them making deals with the devil, so it would totally be ok for me to visit, right?"

Ellie: "I don't recommend you go to Haiti either."

Dan: "I guess I'll just have to stick with Guatemala and Southern Mexico."

Ellie: "Why do you want to die so badly?"

Dan: "For kick ass pictures, of course."

Ellie: "Let me tell you about traveler's insurance........."

Vacation: Day 1



Getting all your crap ready for travel can be a daunting task if you let it be. Personally, for this trip, I didn't even buy my luggage until the day before I left and packed everything in about a half an hour because I'm not a fancy lady. Initially I had planned on carrying everything on the plane so things would go more smoothly, but in reading the TSA's short novel of compiled lists of shit you can't bring on an airplane, "Camera Tripod" was one of those things that was on the fence, so I decided that I'd be checking it, knowing full well that it'd be a miracle if it or anything in that bag even functioned when it came back into my possession (IF it came back into my possession).




I went to bed early so I could wake up around 0330 for a flight that didn't leave until after 0700. I do this because I'm paranoid about my ride to the airport. This is why I rarely enlist the help of friends to get me to the airport on time, because why should they have to suffer my horrible attitude and timeliness issues? I can yell at a shitty cab driver, though.

The cabbie shows up 10 whole minutes early and calls me: "Uh, so you're cab is here. I been sitting out here for like 5 minutes." Calm and ever polite I say "Oh, thank you. I'll be right out." - but really I won't because......I mean......mind your tone, asshole. So I did what my mother often referred to as "dilly-dally". I triple checked some things and went pee, even though I didn't really need to go, just so I could make that shit can wait a little longer. Then I go out and get loaded up and hop in the front seat and find the real source of his irritation: "Who goes to the airport at four in the fucking morning, dude?"

 

 

My normal response here would be, "Your Mom", but I was more concerned with making sure I got where I needed to go on time and that all depended on Mr. Tudy-Pants cab driver, and I know how crafty some of these fuckers can be about getting you anywhere in a timely manner, so I just kept my trap shut and gave him a look that said either, "If I wanted to go to your Mom's vagina at four in the morning, you're gonna take me, cause I'm paying you, dicklicker," or "I have a large fecal mass occupying the majority of my lower intestine and if we don't get the FUCK ON OUT, I'm going to evacuate it inside of your cab."

 

 

And that seemed to get things moving.

 

 

On the next episode of Vacation Hard!: Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis?!

 

 

".......sit here and lick my elbows."

 

Vacation Blog Prologue

 

First a gentle reminder. If you experience any of the following:
Easily hurt and/or compromised feelings
Extreme religious and/or political opinions and mentality
Diarrhea of the mouth while suffering the above afflictions
Please do not read my blog.

If you have an aversion to cursing, violence, sex, destruction of property, having a sense of humor, or Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights please do not read my blog.

If you dislike or have difficulty understanding satire/sarcasm, just don't even bother. Nobody likes you anyway.

Awesome blog reading discretion has been advised. Don't be mad, Boo.

Vacationing is always an iffy thing for me. People think I'm crazy when I get nervous about going on vacation, but nearly every vacation I've ever been on results in either serious personal issues or injury. Not kidding. Here is a short list of absolutely true events that occurred during my vacations:

1) September 1996: A naive 19 y/o Dan is commissioned to help a good friend and his Mother move from my hometown, Kingsville, Texas to their hometown, Baltimore, Maryland. We drove a U-Haul van all the way up and had a pretty fun time from my recollection, but what sucked was Hurricane Edouard was on its way up to that area and there was a cold front coming in from the west at the same time. All that change in weather caused a serious head cold, which I carried with me when I flew out, which played hell with my sinuses and destroyed one ear drum, causing mild permanent hearing loss and what looked like miscarried alien babies coming from my nostrils for a couple of weeks. Rotting on the inside while you aren't able to hear people tell you how horrible you look was never in the vacation plan.

 

 

2) October 2002: I took a trip up to Peoria, Illinois to see my girlfriend at the time, who was completing an internship at a hospital in the area. I stayed in the male dorms the first night I was there to help keep the cost of vacation down. I also bathed in the communal shower there (which made me feel like I was in prison) with a polite young Indian man who apparently had FUCKING CHICKEN POX......which I never had as a child, growing up mostly over seas where people don't get sick very often (one of the few advantages of living in the tropics). I spent the next four days alternating between laying in a bath tub full of aveno and oozing pus all over my nice hotel bed. I had fucking chicken pox lesions in my ears and on my nutsack, for fuck sake. What fun.

 

 

 

 

3) November 2006: My good friend Laura was graduating dive school and I went down to Houston to watch her graduation and see my Dad and second family. At the time my marriage wasn't doing so well and in August of that year I had made the incredibly ignorant decision to reply to a post on Craigslist of a woman who seemed interesting to me, because my lapses in judgement may be few and far between, but they're pretty fucking legendary. Needless to say it was a totally dumb and I regretted it immediately, but moved on. The night Laura graduated I got a call from my wife telling me she'd found that email in my outbox (there was no reply by the woman) and so pretty much nailed the coffin shut on our already failing marriage. Certainly not a shining moment in the history of vacation or fidelity.

 

 

 

 

4) September 2009: After my Dad and his wife Irma were up to visit the beautiful (and at the time dry) Pacific Northwest, I was helping my then girlfriend move into my apartment. As I was coming down the stairs with my billionth load of stuff, I tripped and fell down about four steps, spraining both ankles and tearing ligaments in both feet (interesting how you can actually hear a popping sound when that happens). I landed on my elbows and knees and cried like a little girl, mostly cause I knew I was fucked with both of my ankles sprained. I was out of work for an extra five days and layed around feeling sorry for myself and wondering what the fuck it was about vacation that bad shit always seemed to happen. Aside from the 2006 vacation, none of it was really my fault. I'm just as careful and aware as any other time during the year, so I don't really get it. Maybe my negative karma comes due only during vacation, or something more sinister is working behind the scenes to ensure I never actually have fun during a time when fun is the only thing on the agenda. Whatever it is, I'm very leery about taking vacation and now you see why.

 

 

 

 

In 2010 into early 2011 my Dad, Larry, was having serious health problems which I won't elaborate on because he's going to read this some day and call me up to tell me "all those people don't need to know my business". Anyway, I think these problems finally gave him a sense of mortality, because he finally agreed to stop his "busy life" and come with me on vacation.  Washington D.C. was where he wanted to go and that's where we went........

 

 

 

 

Hilarity fucking ensues. I guess I never learn.......