Aug-Dec

Nothing really happened to speak of, travel-wise, when we got back from out East in mid-August. Not true...Erica did go to London for work, but apart from getting to attend the England/Switzerland international soccer match at Wembley Stadium (upon my suggestion), and a play in the West End, she mostly just worked.

In October was ¡BONGHOCHO!, i.e., Bongho 8, which had a Latin theme (margaritas, not togas). We beat USC gratifyingly, and/but James stayed home with his nana and papa.

In December, the greater Gholson clan once again headed to Puerto Rico just after Christmas.  James still likes to tell us that most of the buses, trains, and planes he sees are "going to Puerto Rico", so it apparently made a huge impression on him.  That trip will be he subject of my next post.


Grant

I know it's been awhile since I rapped at ya

You might have noticed that the last entry in this blog is nigh on a year ago, when we were in Stone Harbor.  Much has happened since that time, but/and because we are going back there in a few weeks, and I plan on covering that trip in some detail once again, I figured it was important to catch quickly all the readers (*ahem*) up on what's gone on in the interim.

To start, I found this saved on my desktop.  It's an entry that was started last trip, but never finished.

Uncle Joe is a wine buff, and drinks the good stuff.  I must have spent the better part of a few afternoons reading past issues of Wine Spectator to get caught up on all the in-goings on of the wine world, which seems to be mostly a world where vineyard financiers hold elaborate tasting balls for one another while flannel-shirted vintners do the actual work themselves (or, rather, oversee the work that Mexican laborers do).  So, pretty much like everything else, basically.  Anyway, Joe had brought a case of fine wine to the shore, owning to the fact that when Justin, Erica, and I visited him and Mary Kay in the Spring, we clearly drank more of his wine than he was expecting. [ed. note this entry just ends here.]

Here's another entry I found, from later in the trip when we went to Molly's house in Frederick, MD.  Beautiful house, by the way, and they've improved a lot on it since then, too.

State feathers!

SUPERBOSS day today..  The morning was pedestrian, but by 9am we were already on the way to Harper’s Ferry, site of an important Civil War battle won by the Confederacy (boo), as well as, more famously, the ending place of the radical abolitionist John Brown’s attempt to lead a group of freed black slaves into Maryland in 1859.  What’s cool, besides most of the things in this old town (old for America, at least), is that when you drive there from Frederick, you have to pass through a tiny sliver of Virginia on the way to West Virginia.  Erica says that doesn’t count as a new state for James, but who cares, she’s wrong.  Anyway, we ended up driving through that itty part 3 times over the course of the day, so it definitely counts.  Congrats to having been in three states today, James!

Harper’s Ferry is located where the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers crotch, with the Potomac taking the name of the newly confluenced river, before flowing down to D.C. and out then out to the ocean.  The panoramas are great, and here’s a few samplins’.

Lovely view of West Virginia's easternmost point, AND, just at the riverbank below us, the state's lowest point in elevation!

The ammunition depot where John Brown met his demise

James not too sure about this war of 1812 reenactor guy

After the ‘Ferry, we drove straight north to the battlefields of Antietam, site of the single bloodiest battles and there milled about for a bit.[...]

That's it.  That's how I finished the report for that the trip.

In the next post, I'll catch you up on what's happened since then.

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