Where were we?

Ok!  So to top our zoo day we decided to take James down to Wildwood, to the boardwalk, for an exciting morning of watching him ride the tiny kid rides, and maybe winning for him one of those gross, awkwardly manufactured stuffed neon dogs or something.  However: alas!  We had looked up the times that the rides open before we left, and Google told us 9:30am.  But that, apparently, is when the pier opens, not the rides. So the whole thing was a big 'ol waste of time.  We thus wandered among the shuttered rides of the pier in the hot sun, like the Scooby gang amid the creepy ruins of an abandoned amusement park.  The grounded flying elephants and motionless merry-go-round figurines clearly piqued the boy’s interest, but he was to be disappointed on this day. 

No, not.

The cruelty of Morey's Piers' management at play on the pathetic face my child

Pink Elephants, not on parade

As an aside, Wildwood advertises itself as the “world’s largest beach.”  Now, it is giant, comically so, in fact.  The southerly current along the Shore washes down the sand from the beaches of Seven-Mile Island (where Stone Harbor is) and deposits it in Wildwood, building a beach there that is so wide that shuttles have to ferry beachgoers 3 blocks from the boardwalk to the water’s edge.  Not a great beach on which to have forgotten your sunscreen back at the hotel room. Nevertheless, this claim is, geographically speaking, dumb.  There are obviously much wider tidal flats all over the world.  For example, have a gander at the Wadden Sea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadden_Sea), whose beaches (of sorts) just go on basically forever.  But also, do you really even want to be the largest beach?  Is that a thing to be desired?  Because it kind of sounds like exactly the hassle it actually is.
  

Anyway, while I waited for Erica to change James' diaper in the public toilet under the boardwalk, Justin and I wondered around some of the nearby arcades, which we mostly empty.  In one, I stumbled across this harrowing scene (below).  

Bruce searched his whole life for existential consummation on the Shore, but apparently missed this bodega in Wildwood

We tramped back to our car, hot and bummed, but salvaged the rest of the day hanging out at the beach and drinking down those Yuenglings.  In the evening, I lost in consecutive games of Hearts (which I enjoy playing despite my lack of history with the game.  As its been the official Walter family card game since time immemorial, I'm more or less helpless against Tom and Justin, and even Erica, who plays despite not liking to.)  

Day 3 or 4 or 5?

Saturday evening drifted by vacation-style: a family game of hearts and Trivial Pursuit and glasses of wine and beers on the deck.  Sunday, James was up at 5:30am, peering at me from over the lip of his pack n’ play and giggling my name.  I got him up and out of the house so everyone else could sleep, and we walked the mile+ downtown to wait in line for the bakery to open up so I could get some coffee.  On the way back to the house, we stopped and played for a while at a neighborhood park.  By 8:00am, it was already 83 degrees.

I managed to get a nap in late morning, and the afternoon was a strictly beach time affair for all.  I smuggled down to the beach a few bottles of Yuengling (Tom bought it; I normally abstain because of the Yuengling family’s arch-neoliberal views regarding what laborers do and don’t (mostly don’t) deserve, but the beer was bought, so who I am to blow against the wind?) and quaffed them with nary a hassle from the local beach constabulary.  I also body surfed for a bit, and then took up a session of frisbee with Jake, during which I seriously messed up my throwing shoulder.  I recognize that my athletic skills have eroded as I’ve gotten older, but apparently I’ve physiologically degenerated to a point where I can’t even perform the rudimentary movements of play. 

James loves the beach now, which is a marked difference in his attitude since even Cocoa Beach this spring.  He spent the better part of the afternoon playing in the hole in the sand I dug, springing up suddenly and running into the surf, getting scared of the waves, and running back to the hole.  There has been some sand eating, but not a ton.  Erica spent what part of the afternoon that was not devoted to James care asleep, mouth agape, in her beach chair.  James thought it was funny to tell everyone “Mommy ni-night”.

This morning Erica did the good turn, and took our little early riser out for a long walk.  I slept in until 8 (unheard of, people) and enjoyed coffee and a bowl of Kix(!) while watching joggers on the beach.  Tom, Cher, and Aunt Mary Kay then joined the three of us on a trip to the local free zoo, which was pretty good by free zoo standards.  The Cape May County Zoo and Park is built in a patch of woods just on the mainland, and consists mostly of a series of raised wooden walkways that pass through cordoned off sections of the forest, under which its animals roam freely.  Pretty efficient design.  James really enjoyed getting carried about by his Papa, but started to get a bit squirrely toward the end, and prompted our early exit.  Here are some pics from the pre-meltdown portion of the trip.

  

Goat

The first of these types of pics for the Gholson clan/probably not the last

Kind of a safari vibe to this picture; probably the hat and peasoup green shirt

The evening was again mostly just hang out time on the deck, chatting and listening to waves.  We did attempt to get some good family shots while the sun was going down, with mixed results--the best of which are below.

Roll Call: Grant, Erica, James, Tom, Cher, Justin, Mary Kay, Joe, Joseph, and Jake

The 2:40am wake up call was a bit much, but alls well that ends well, eh?  Our flight took off from Midway at 5:30, and despite the objective awfulness of the early morning/very late at night start, we managed to land in Philly, collect the rental van, nab Uncle Justin from his west coast red eye, and get to the beach, all by noon.  Not bad!  James took the plane ride in stride, chatting animatedly with his nana and papa, squirming lots, gorging on snacks, but mostly being quite the genial gordito.

Stone Harbor, where we’ve plonked down for the week, is on the Jersey Shore, but it’s not “Jersey Shore”, if the reader takes my meaning.   That Jersey Shore, the one of Springsteen fame, and, later, the show Jersey Shore, is the Shore.  This part of the shore is more like Cape Cod or Cape Hatteras, or at least Stone Harbor and its sister city, Avalon is.  Just south of here are the piers of Wildwood and 45 minutes to the north is Atlantic City, and those have quite a bit of Shore-ish charm to them; to wit: a kind sleeveless machismo that sees you putting your hand in the butt pocket of your girlfriend in public.  Here, though, it positively reeks of class, and salt water taffy and free fudge samples.  Erica’s Aunt Mary Kay and her husband Joe have had a “cottage” (read: manse) on this strip of beach since 1978 and most of Erica’s summer vacations growing up took place here.  This is James’ first time visiting (it’s my third), which means that he earns another feather in the ol’ state capper, to go alongside Illinois, Indiana, Florida, California, Delaware (car only), Oregon, Pennsylvania, and the US territory of Puerto Rico.  Not a bad haul in 16 months!

I’m still super proud that we made yesterday a vacation day rather than a travel day only, and another plus of getting into the surf on Day 1 is that everyone slept like logs due to the combination of the savagely early start and the fresh salt air.  Erica and I even managed to sneak away for a bit of a date night, quaffing a few adult beverages (me: a Cape May Brewing Co. IPA and a Dogfishead Namaste wit; Erica a Moscow Mule, ordered in haste because she couldn’t decide between the drinks on the menu and the waitress was waiting and because she forgot she loves margaritas until I mentioned it was strange to me that she hadn’t ordered one) during sundown on the deck of a rather swanky outdoor hotel bar that overlooks the gorgeous harbor.  This morning we woke up slow, drinking coffee on the porch and watching the waves roll in.  After breakfast, we set up shop on the beach and Jake, Erica’s cousin Joe’s son, dug a giant pit in the sand for James to play in.  

Justin reads a trashy novel aloud to the waning sun

(note: due to lack of internet access on vacation, these posts are being uploaded ex post facto.)

The Continuing Adventures of Daddy and James, Vol. 3

With Erica in Washington, DC on a work do, James and I drove down to Danville to check out Grandpa and Grandma's new pontoon boat(!)  James was not entirely enamored with the boat.  I'm sure he will be soon, but the combination of the irksome life jacket that kept his poor little head from looking down and the uncertain footing kept him on the crabby side.

We managed to get over to the Boat Club for a nice evening where everyone mooned over James.  We rode to dinner in style across the lake in the aforementioned boat.  I gotta say that my mom and dad have some sweet setup going on down there.  The latest addition to their fleet is a golf car they use to drive up and down the hill to the lake.  Mom kept calling it "Grandma's Car", clearly hoping that would strike a chord with James (I'm not sure what that makes the white Hyundai Elantra filling up the right half of the garage).  James seemed to take to riding in the cart, which I'm completely sure is totally safe.

Post-life vest boondoggle 

"Grandma's" "Car"

Mom and Dad were very kind to take James for the day while I went to the Public Library to wrestle some more with chapter 3 of my dissertation.  It's one of those chapters that's mostly an in-depth treatment of a single book (Iris Marion Young's Justice and the Politics of Difference, if you're curious), so the footnotes appear as an endless series of "Ibid"s.  These days, James just wants to be outside all the time (making me all the more wish we lived someplace where we could be outside year round).  He'll often just start whining "siiide" after his morning bottle of milk until we take him out so he can pick up and put down different sticks for as long as we'll allow him.  He loved the back deck of my parents house because it's "outside", and I liked the fact that he's basically hemmed in up there and can't really go anywhere.

He also got in a good amount of sprinkler time.  It's always amusing to watch him try to drink sprinkler water right out of the air.  

The Continuing Adventures of Daddy and James, Vol. 2

With temps in the 90s, Wednesday was a good day to get wet.  James and I went downtown with Erica after checking out yet another child care center for next year.  After dropping Erica off at work, we headed straight to the incomparable Maggie Daley Park at the north east edge of Grant Park.  James is probably a teeny bit too young to really get it all; in another year he'll be the perfect age for the park.  But he loved watching the big kids run around and, of course, the sprinklers.

We needed to get back to Erica's workplace, about a mile from the park, so we had to kind of push past a few of the things I'd have rather spent more time with.  It's not like any of its going anywhere, and James has the still has the long-term memory of a guppy, so I'm sure we'll be back here in a future installment!  Anyway, to this installment:

We made a bee-line to the Bean, aka Cloud Gate, which has to be in the running for least-likely-to-be, but-which-has-somehow-become-a tourist destination in the United States. It is pretty cool, even if itis kind of just a big bent mirror (and King Lear is just English words strung together, I suppose).

I then made James' day by taking him by the Crown Fountain, aka, the huge water-spitting towers (you can kind of make out the giant face spitting water on kids in the background left of the first photo).  Quite tall, the fountain's falling water was a bit intense for the little guy.  He never went all the way under, but he did creep steadily closer as he grew accustomed to the spray.  After about 5 minutes, I had to ask two little kids to take him by the hand and lead him back to me (I didn't want to get soaked...).  He was furious with me, but shivering cold, and I ended up having to change his whole outfit in a nearby patch of grass.

Closer...

By the time, we got back to Erica's office, James had dried off somewhat, and James got to meet some of Erica's co-workers.

You can actually see St. Ignatius from this window

Afterwards, it was off to lunch with our real estate agent (yikes!), where we openly pined for an hour about owning a home, despite the fact that doing so would essentially raise our housing costs about a $1,000/mo.  "Everyone else does it" seems to be the going rationale, but that's a lot of cheese to bite off at once.  And no, this isn't a Millennial, "I can't commit to anything" kind of deal, it's more of a "even the complete dumps are north of $300,000" one.  

We left Erica at work an headed home, where James continued his water ways in the completely awesome water table that Grandpa and Grandma Gholson bought for him, as well as the $12 plastic "pool" I bought for him.  

In heaven

The Continuing Adventures of Daddy and James, Vol. 1

G'day.  This summer, The Big Pigs blog is happy to be hosting a new summer series, The Continuing Adventures of Daddy and James.  It's a departure from our normal fare, but it's the same people, so whatever.

Today marked the first real day of summer vacation.  Veronica, our wonderful nanny of a year, said good-bye to her "Gordito" on Friday, and come this morning, I shifted into full-on Daddy Mode.  Our first father-son outing found us visiting the Shedd Aquarium.

Not much of a shedd

Today was a Free Day for Illinois residents at the Shedd, so James and I elbowed our way through the thronging Lumpenproletariat to get look at a bunch of different types of fish.  When you're one, there's really only so much of this sort of thing you can take, even if you're a pretty good little buddy.  James did spend a good 10 minutes banging on the glass tanks and shrieking something approximating "fssssshhh".  He liked the turtles and stingrays, too.

Loser of the staring contest (right)

Really, though, the day belonged to the out of doors.  It was a sunny 81 and the lake was calm.  And unlike indoors, out there you can run around free and easy, and not go slamming into people's shins, or sprinting away from your parent into crowds of strangers and causing all manner of stroller pile-ups.

James an I enjoyed a healthy stroll around the north lawn of the nearby Field Museum and then out toward the Adler Planetarium, to get the "tourist shot" that everybody takes when they're in Chicago.  However, since we're not tourists, but genuine residents, that made these definitely more authentic.

Unimpressed by Olmec head. VERY impressed by found stick.

Data Dump

It's not that we haven't been having a blast down here in good old Cape Canaveral again.  It's just that the days have blended and mixed themselves up into one indistinguishable lump of downtime, and all of a sudden it's the end of the week and I have to write something.

Let's see...we got here Holy Thursday around 6 and opened up the condo, whose air conditioner wasn't working.  But then that got fixed on Friday, which was spent mostly lying around by the pool and drinking beer, and then a quick trip to the beach.  Or was that what we did on Saturday?   Anyway, one of those days, Erica's cousin Lisa and her family drove up from West Palm Beach.  We colored Easter eggs with the kids, and I wrestled a bunch with their lumbering 9 year-old, Jonathan, whose girth is apparent even in this picture with Uncle Tom.

On Easter Sunday, we just  barely made it to church as it was starting, so we had to sit in the very back with the other stragglers, and the unfortunate SRO crowd.  You could tell the ushers were having a bad day; they would have been overwhelmed by the sheer number of bodies anyway, but with so many unchurched about--not knowing when to genuflect, for example, and so people kept bowling over others at the pew entrances--they were finding it difficult to disguise their frustration (I don't really blame them, btw).  The fact that they were to-a-man wearing Florida retiree, 80s-style flephorvescent suit coats of lurid burgundies and teals provided a funny little contrast.  The sermon was quintessentially Easterish: it gently stressed the importance of coming to Church without making everybody feel like they were being bludgeoned with the guilt-crozier.

On Monday, Erica and I left James with his grandparents, rented a car, and headed to Universal Studios in Orlando for two days.  It was kind of weird not having James in tow, but we enjoyed getting to spend time with just the two of us and also walk around someplace without carrying bags and cups and toys and snacks, and wheeling a stroller with other bags stowed in it.   While Universal does have some good coasters, its focus is really on developing hybrid real motion/3D rides based on their movies.  We each sprang for the Express Passes for a day, which cost us a total of $200 on top of the $300 we spend for two days worth of entrance fees, but it was kind of worth it.  This week is second only to last week in park busyness all year long, and whereas most of the wait times for the rides exceeded an hour (and some were 110 minutes!), as very important Express Pass holders, our average wait time was about 10 minutes.  There is a deeper, more insidious, logic at play, however, to these Express Passes, which the Harvard social philosopher Michael Sandel revealed in this latest book, What Money Can't Buy.  Namely, they represent just one more expression of how the wealth gap in this country works to prevent the havers from having to participate with the dirty masses in civic events (in the case, waiting in line for rides) that used to belong to the common patrimony of all people. It would have been anathema in a previous age for something like an Express Pass to be offered on top on an admission fee, but now it's a de rigueur concession to the demands of Capital.  All of that didn't stop us from buying them of course, because I temporarily pretended not to remember that I knew Sandel's thesis just long enough to purchase them online, although I do admit to feeling a bit guilty breezing past the tired, huddled masses of humanity pent up and sweating in their endless switchbacking be-guardrailed rows.

Our main interest was of course on the Harry Potter World side of things, and we reveled in the painstaking detail of Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley.  The reproduction (or, I should say production, since this is in fact fictional stuff we're dealing with that never existed in the first place) closely followed the movie version of these places, which makes sense considering that even ardent fans of the books have had their imaginations colored and expectations tempered by the ways things looked in the movies, and also of course because Universal made the movies and already had a lot of that stuff.  Both of the main rides, Harry Potter and The Forbidden Journey and Harry Potter and the Escape from Gingotts were excellent, although the former kind of lumped in a bunch of mostly unrelated subplots from the books into the plot of the ride.  Most of the rides at Universal do have "plots" of sorts to them, which usually involve some crisis that's about to go down and that you're the only one that can save them/Western civilization/the Earth/ET's home planet (a particularly ludicrous premise), etc.  And the way you resolve the plot (i.e., save the day) is to ride the ride.  As for myself, I mostly just like them for the falling sensations you get, but I admit that I did get a feeling of pride from having stymied Voldemort on that last one.  To the pictures!

Diagon Alley, cum dragon

Weasley's Wizzarding Wheezes

Hogsmeade

The Hogs Head Pub. I had the Witches Brew (a surprisingly sophisticated sweet stout), Erica had a cider w/ a shot of "Firewhiskey" in it (basically a cinnamon bourbon). 

Hogwarts Castle

We came back on Tuesday night to a delighted James, who was pronounced an "absolute angel" by Nana and Papa.  That night, Tom and Erica and I went to an Irish bar in town to watch Notre Dame play UCONN for the national title in womens' basketball, and we lost.  And yesterday, Erica and I took the boy to the beach, while Tom and Cher spent the afternoon on the gambling boat, and Tom won $180!

A kindly man in an Alabama hat took this, and I said nothing about his school's use and abuse of its student-athletes

Later that evening, we had (some truly awful) drinks and apps at the bar on the Cocoa Beach Pier before strolling along the surf to one of our local favorites, the tacky and unimaginatively-named Sandbar Grill for fish tacos.

Strollering on the beach. The Cocoa Beach Pier is in the background.

We leave this afternoon for Philadelphia, where we'll spend a few days with Erica's Aunt Mary Kay before heading home on Saturday.  More to come.

Finishing Up and Coming Home

When we got back to Chicago on Sunday morning around 1:30 am (having been delayed interminably in Philadelphia for no discernible reason), the weather was unkind, but not cruel.  The next day the temperature dropped 25 degrees, and now, already several days later, it remains squatting at the 0 mark.  Why do we live here?

New Year's Day was a laid-back kind of time, spent primarily at the pools and at the beach.  Poor Uncle Mike watched his FSU Seminoles be dismantled by Oregon in the National Semifinal game.  It's hard at this point to remember much else, which indicates that we did New Year's Day the way it should be done, i.e., by doing little.

The next day, everyone but mom and James hopped a catamaran to Vieques, one of the two "Spanish Virgin Islands" that just sit off Puerto Rico's eastern coast all day (incidentally, only recently have Vieques and Culebra begun going by the name "Spanish Virgin Islands", which as I understand it was chosen for marketing reasons.)  The first half of the hour outbound ride was rough; several among the party of middle-aged lesbians with whom we shared the charter barfed their guts out.  Silva and Claire chirped happily through for the first 10 minutes or so (Claire: "This is better than a roller coaster!"), but afterwards fell suspiciously silent as bigger and bigger waves pounded our boat.  When we did anchor on a deserted beach, the water was quite murky.  Nevertheless, we had fun; Erica and I did see some interesting fish and eels, and even got to swim with a big sea turtle for awhile (not pictured), while Dad spotted a sting ray (not pictured).

Dad (pictured)

Uncle Mike's mask hickey

El Capitan con sus hijas en las Islas Virgenes de los Espanoles

Mate con wenches

Rezagados

The next day was a depressing return to reality.  James was crabby on the long flight to Philadelphia.  It is cold here, which isn't cool.  But it was an amazing trip, one we have plans to do over again next Christmas; if not in Puerto Rico, then some other warm place.

Saying goodbye to 2014

It has been an amazing year for this little clan.  Mostly, of course, that's down to James, who came into our lives at the least probable moment, and has been just such a good-natured, sweet baby (not that we would love him any less if he wasn't, mind you.)  It's been the best year of my life, anyway.

The last day of the year was a pretty good capper.  After the usual morning routine, I left with Mike, Julia, Dad, Molly, Mark, Silva, and Claire for the ancient Taino capital of Caguas.  Modern Caguas is fairly impoverished, but the old, decaying historic district still serves up some charm.  The main plaza is flanked on opposite ends by the cathedral and the municipal building.  The cathedral (Dolce Nombre de Jesus) boasts little in the way of ornamentation, but does feature the tomb of Blessed Carlos ("Charli") Manuel Rodriguez Santiago, who remains the only lay American beatified to this date.  I bought the girls a crucifix apiece at the little shop next to the shrine, and a sticker commemorating his beatification in 2001 by JPII, who never met a case of beatification he didn't like (not to take anything away from Charli, of course).

Cathedral facade

View of the Plaza

Big "Flower Clock", whatever that means

Tomb of Blessed Charli

Ol' Caguas must not get a ton of tourist traffic, because the old men lounging in the plaza, drinking coffee in the shade, watched us with interest, and we didn't see any other Anglos all day.  We soon turned our attention to the weed-lined promenade leading off of the plaza, where endless bodegas aggressively marketed cheaply made clothing to locals.  Here, Mike and I scored some pretty sweet pork pie hats.

Mike (and his hat) not pictured

We ate lunch at the restaurant recommended by Molly's Rough Guide to Puerto Rico book, and it did not disappoint.  Most of the food in PR is deep fried or starchy or both (usually both).  But we put down some mean smoked chicken and pork on this afternoon, and followed it with a local brew by the F.O.K. brewery, which actually had both color and flavor!

Erica had a much more relaxing beach-type day.  She and James went on a little mommy/baby jaunt to the beach bar, where she quaffed a few tasty mojitos by the sea while James snoozed in his stroller...Not much to report on their front, other than Erica loved her day.

The most eventful part of the day

Julia had earlier in the week managed to finagle an invite to the annual, mostly-locals New Year's Eve party at the beach bar put on by the bar's owner.  The BYOB affair (since the bar's license does not extend past 10pm) was mobbed by...townies, I suppose...who brought with them an impressive array of booze, fireworks, and hooched-out pantalones.  A flashy guitar duo played Soca music, and even did a rendition of Auld Lange Syne (but they didn't know the words, so they just sang "La la la la" to the melody).  Out on the sand, drunks lit off giant fireworks dangerously close to the crowd.  It was pretty chaotic, but that's the party.

Just before midnight

The New Yearsers

On the way back to our condo, we stopped through the party being thrown in at our own development, which despite being sparsely attended, was pumping out dance music at extreme volumes.  There was, however, a raging private party in the unit below ours, and they were shooting off their own little arsenal of fireworks straight up into the airspace immediate perpendicular to James' window. Nevertheless, James snored straight through all of the noise like he was trying to win a bet.  Way to go, buddy!

Here's to a great 2015!  

Thorn: James' first mosquito bite

Rose: best New Year's Eve Party eva

Bud: just a sleepy beach day