Month: August 2019

Praising Arizona

Thirty years ago, I went with my dad on a week-long trip to Arizona. It was one of the most amazing trips of my childhood. My dad is a biologist, and we focused on seeing all kinds of amazing critters – rattlesnakes, roadrunners and coyotes, oh my. It was a constant adventure and discovery after discovery.

Fast forward to today. My son has a thirst for adventure and discovery just as I did at that age. He loves going out in the woods tromping around with his Grampa, discovering new and exciting things. And, just between you and me, he was probably pretty much tired of hearing just how great that Arizona trip was three decades ago.

So when the chance to go back to Arizona and tromp again – with my dad and my son – presented itself, I immediately said, “Nah, I’ve got some shows I need to watch that week.”

I kid, of course. When I told my son we were going to go out to Arizona, he was just a smidge excited. I believe his exact response was, “WHAT? REALLY? SERIOUSLY?”

Prior to leaving, I told him there were two things we would be amazed at: the terrain and the weather. He had never been out west, so he had never seen what a desert looked like. He had also never felt that kind of heat. And yes, it’s a dry heat. So is your oven.

On our flight out, we had a layover in Dallas. About 20 minutes west of Dallas, my son was staring out the window, as the terrain turned to a barren, Martian-like view. It was awesome watching my son see a part of the earth that he knew existed but he had never seen for himself.

When we touched down in Tucson, my son started seeing Saguaro cactuses from the window of the plane. He was very excited by those. I assured him he would see more. Many more. He also experienced his first Arizona heat shortly after landing. He concurs. It’s a different kind of hot.

After several days in the desert, we had checked off a lot of bucket list boxes:

rattlesnakes, lizards, roadrunners, In-N-Out Burger. After about three days, pretty much the only thing my son hadn’t seen that was on his bucket list was a Gila monster. For those of you not familiar with a Gila monster, they are a venomous lizard and they look cool as all get out. But even if we didn’t find one, the trip had been amazing as we had found so much other stuff.

On our last night, my dad, son and I took a night hike through a canyon near us. There was enough moonlight that we could walk the rocky trail without flashlights. Occasionally during the hike, my dad and I would stop and sit on a rock as my son explored crevices looking for critters. My dad and I looked at the stars and talked about the night sky. We talked about how cowboys must have seen the terrain 200 years ago, and what their horses must have thought. If you have the chance to sit on a rock in the desert and talk about this kinda stuff with your dad, please do. I know how fortunate I am, and I don’t want anyone else to miss that chance.

Eventually, we turned our lights on. And we found a couple of rattlesnakes that were making their way, just doing their thing. At one point, I found one, and said, “I got one!” When my son came back to where I was, he said, “Dad! I thought you’d found a Gila monster!”

As we were finishing up the final 100 yards or so of our multi-mile hike, we

noticed something in the bushes, about a foot to our left. And there it was.

A Gila monster. My son took roughly a bajillon pictures of it. Another hiking group came up the trail and they were excited to get to see one, too. I stood back with my dad, watching my son, his grandson show the hiking group where the big lizard was. It was dark, but I’m pretty sure my dad had as big a smile as I did. I

wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else with my son. Or my dad. But the three of us together? Yeah, I’ll take that.

So, in short – Good trip? Nope. Great trip.

Mike Gibbons was born and raised in Aiken, S.C. A graduate of the University of Alabama, he now lives in Mt. Pleasant. You can e-mail him at scmgibbons@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @StandardMike or at www.mikeslife.us.

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Bucket list

My wife and I bought our first home in 1997. It was a wonderful home, a lovely three-bedroom with a great room that, when we first toured the home, had a big elk head mounted on the wall.

Despite the homeowner’s effort to include the elk in the sale, SOMEONE in my camp insisted the giant animal head be removed upon closing, despite the fact that I could have gotten miles out of “the rest of the elk is on the other side of the wall” joke.

When we moved into our house it was an exciting time, despite it being devoid of a giant elk head. But we didn’t have a lot of stuff. We began embarking on the exciting journey of what we would need now that we were homeowners.

We added the obvious things that you don’t have when you live in an apartment: a rake, shovel, lawnmower, and the like.

But of all the things we got for the house, we omitted one very important purchase that I recommend all new homeowners make sure they have. And current homeowners – if you do not have this item, I bet you can think of times when you wish you did. Everyone should have at least one five gallon bucket.

I don’t know what you will need it for. I don’t know when you will need it. But you will. And it can be for a wide array of uses. Among the many ways I have put bucket to use over the past two decades:

Collecting water from a leak, giving me time to focus my panic on why water was coming out of our ceiling without being distracted with panicking about it pooling on the floor
Helping me out while changing out the …. the … um …. toilet thingee inside the tank that makes the flush happen. Oh, like all of you know what’s called.
Emergency possum storage. I admit this may be a rather small percentage of homeowners.
Step stool for changing a light I could almost reach.
Drum. Admittedly, this is one of my least favorite uses of the bucket.
Covering a spider that my wife really didn’t want to kill, because hey, spiders are great pest control. But she’d REALLY like it to go do its job outside and so let’s just put this bucket over it until someone gets home who is cool with relocating it.

When we bought our second home in 2001, we had a pool, so we had several buckets. We would buy chlorine for the pool, and it often came in five gallon buckets. There does come a point where you can have far more buckets than you need. When we moved to our new house, I decided that the ideal bucket number is three. I stand by that proclamation. On a side note, I was really glad to have had a pool. My kids were 13 and 11 when we moved to a non-pool location, and they are great swimmers who spent many of their childhood summers splashing around in the pool. That said, I am glad I have not had to clean a pool in five years, in particular in the middle of a super cold storm that is dumping tons of leaves in your pool all the while Mother Nature is laughing maniacally at your futile efforts to keep up.

I keep my buckets in strategic locations where they are always accessible. Well, I try to do that. They often get relocated when my son liberates one to go fishing or pitching his cast net. But as long as it makes it home, it is ready to be deployed at a moment’s notice. Theoretically, I could use it to get a little closer and clean our elk head. If we had one.

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Plane patience

I recently sat on a plane with a child – maybe three – who cried for the duration of our two hour flight to Dallas.

And I mean wailed. Hollered as if she were caught in a bear trap. At the top of her lungs. Relentless.

Before you get any preconceived notions about the nature of this column, this is not about the child.

It’s about having been there. And about the gentleman sitting next to this crying child.

More than a decade ago, my wife and I were flying out of Fort Lauderdale. Our kids were three and six at the time. As we sat on the tarmac waiting to depart, an enormously unsettling thump hit the plan. Apparently, we got struck by lightning. All of the power on the plane went out, and that included whatever magical creation keeps air circulation on a big metal tube sitting on asphalt in the summer in South Florida.

We were told that we had to stay put, as they were seeking a replacement part. I am not an airline mechanic, but I was a little skeptical, as I don’t think there is a part to cure “Yeah, everything’s broke…”

My wife and daughter were a few rows back from my son and me. My son was in a car seat at the time, and so I did my best to keep him occupied. That lasted about 11 minutes.

After a while of sitting there trying to jiggle giant plastic keys and read books – all the while the very still air temperature inside the plane was slowly climbing – I decided to free him.

I plopped him on the floor and I wedged myself down with him so we could play some games. What games, you may ask. Answer? I was making it all up on the fly. Nothing in the parenting classes my wife and I attended prepared me for any of this.

I did my best, but after a while, he had had enough. And he started wailing. Bear trap wailing. I tried to comfort him. I tried to distract him. I even considered swooping him up and delivering him to his mom, but then I remembered she was on the same mission with a six year old, and I opted to stay married and solve it myself.

But the guy next to me was not having it. He huffed. He sighed. He rolled his eyes. I tried to make eye contact and offer him a shrug and apology, but he was busy having his eyes stuck at the top of his skull.

The dude next to me eventually pressed the button to call for the flight attendant. I’m not sure what he was aiming for, but if his goal was to get my son and me booted off the plane – trust me – I would have gladly taken that.

He told her that he could not deal with the noise on the plane. She smiled, said she understood, and then handed the man some of the airline earphones they used to sell many moons ago. She said they were on the house, and then turned to me and said, “It’s OK. Ignore him.”

Bless you, ma’am.

Fast forward to my recent flight.

The gentleman sitting next to the crying child was not with the child. Mom was doing what she could at 38,000 feet. But let’s be honest – options are limited. And the man sat there and just stared forward. He occasionally closed his eyes, maybe dozing off. I don’t know. But he never showed any signs of exasperation or loathing. He just dealt with it.

I know it’s not fun to be next to a crying child. It wasn’t fun on this flight. (Yay, earbuds!) But it’s not fun for mom either. And losing your cool over it isn’t going to help the situation. I want to channel that guy’s inner-zen at all things in life. When the plane landed and we started to leave, the child was no longer crying. She was laughing, actually, at who knows what. The gentleman stood up, turned to another passenger in the row behind us, gave a smile, and said, “I’ll see you at the meeting tomorrow, Robert.”

Robert, I don’t know you or what you do. But at the meeting, I hope you sat next to that dude and got in on some of his sweet chill karma.