ROAD TRIP!!!!!!!!!!!

Leg 1... Overland Park to Colorado Springs (550 miles, 8 hours)

We are off and running (or driving, as the case may be)...

After talking on the phone, eating, and masterbating --- taking a photo of yourself is the most dangerous thing you can do while driving. But hey, at this point I was alone, bored, and there was no one else to take it... so here we go.

And speaking of the road trip; timess the are achangin'... I remember earlier days... AND NOT JUST THOSE WITH MY DAD, WHOSE IDEA OF A "FAMILY VACATION" WAS SEVEN DAYS OF TRYING TO SEE HOW MANY MILES HE COULD PUT ON THE CAR --- WITH NO DISCERNABLE DESTINATION IN MIND... while in the military, I once drove from Carmel, Cali to Orlando ... there was nothing but AM/FM radio and the wind... Today?!?!?! Well, it's no freakin' wonder EVERYONE has A.D.D. --- I have in the car:

-- AM/FM Stereo

-- Six Disc CD Changer

-- Ipod Adapter (w/80GB Ipod)

-- DVD Player

-- XM Stereo (Where I can listen to 20 MLB ball games, news, sports, music, comedy, yadda yadda, yadda)

-- and my Web enabled phone, on which I can send and recieve email...

WOW... how did we ever survive.

Anyhoo... I finally arrived in Colorado... and Chris and I go out for a bit... stopping Sam's, the WORLDS SMALLEST BAR (as attested to by Guiness --- the record place, not the beer)...

I think that may be all for now... look for, from the road, tomorrow... although, I gotta tell ya... I am a little nervous about the size of this trailer...

How to make a Pokemon-Obsessed nine year-old's day...

OK... so I do the laundry here. It's not that I like to... it just that I am rather, um... "particular" about how I like things. So it is just easier for me to do it than to have anyone else do it, and obsess about it not being right (that is my version of right).

Anyway, I have a couple of rules...

• 1. if it comes to me wrong-side-out, it gets washed, dried, folded, and returned that way
• 2. if I find money -- it's mine
• 3. I don't check pockets

Well, Zander has a habit of taking his favorite (best) Poke*Mon cards to school to play with his friends. Unfortuantely, he left several of his highest point cards in his pants pocket one day, and I washed them. Needless to say, they didn't fare very well (better than the two phones I have washed, but that is a note for another day).

Upon me informing him of this, he was crushed --- while he stopped short of crying, he did say something to the effect of "Dad, other than watching TV, my PokeMon cards are the only things I really love to do." Now (notwithstanding the social commentary about TV), that kind of broke my heart. I bought him a couple new packs of cards, but -- like Forrest says, it's like a box of chocolates -- I can't simply replace the lost cards. You buy the pack, and get what you get.

Now... back to the story... Zander and his buddies actually play the Pokemon game (which I like, cuz it is better than some creepy 30-year old dude collecting these cards and living in his mom's basement). Each card has a point value -- the lowest being 10, the highest any of Zander and his friends had ever seen was 180. But there was a rumor of a 200 point card! VERY RARE...

So with a little help from Ebay, I began the task of redemption...

Step 1: Find the card, and order it :

Wait a week... and get it...

Next, run to your local Target to buy a new pack of PokeMon cards, an Xacto-knife, and super glue...

Begin the careful operation of extracting the pack of cards from the exterior blister pack (why the hell are these things packed twice???) -- then opening the pack of cards. Note, these are so tightly packed, I had to remove a card from the pack to replace it with Wailord (the 200 pointer):And finally glue everything back together...

Looks like new again...

And finally give it to him (he eventually figured out the ruse... but it took a bit of time)