This morning, my host here in Phoenix took me on a 3 mile hiking trip. I posted some stuff on facebook and twitter, for those of you who do those things, but here is some info for the rest of you. We got up at 5:30am (local time) and we were on the trail by 6:00, and back home around 7:30, in time to shower and head to the office, where I am now. How's that for a busy morning?
Sorry for the return of the quietness. I am going on a business trip to Phoenix next week — I leave on Sunday and won't be back until the following Saturday — and I have been up to my eyeballs drowning in work, trying to get things finished before I leave.
I do have some fun stories to share, as well as pictures from the National Zoo and Adventure Aquarium to (edit and) post… so there is stuff on the horizon. You may have also noticed that I posted a handful of (albeit, crummy iPhone) pictures from last weekend on Flickr. Part of Megan's birthday gift (yes, back in April) was a day to go shopping (and money) to buy a new pair of hiking boots, and another part was a hiking trip. We headed west to the Susquehanna River area and found a beautiful 4.5 mile trail called Kelly's Run. Perhaps I'll tell you about it some other time.
My trip to Phoenix next week will be mostly business, mixed with some after-hours pleasure. I'll be attending a DevCamp, which is sort of like a miniature conference, but more hands-on. Not only that, but I'm presenting two topics there, so I'm both excited and terrified about that. I should probably stop saying that public speaking terrifies me, because it's getting better with time and I'm sure that saying it contributes to the butterflies.
I won't bore you with the details of the presentations. Suffice it to say that their content is more suitable for my other blog. I am planning on taking the camera, and I've been instructed to bring my bathing suit and my hiking boots, so I'm sure there are some adventures in the works for after-hours. Not to mention that the friend I'll be staying with has a history of hanging with a crowd that parties pretty hard.
Come to think of it, hopefully I won't need both of those things at the same time. That does not sound like a fun adventure.
Over the weekend we went camping — our first trip with Dylan and no other adults to help spread the load of watching after an infant — at Cape Henlopen State Park. We went last year, while he was still in uetero, and although our random site selection yielded, well, let's say less than pleasing results, we scoped out the rest of the campground to ensure a return trip wouldn't suffer the same folly. This time, we secured a site with plenty of shade, pine needle ground-cover — which admittedly only sounds particularly appealing after having camped on sweltering sand — and enough space to setup camp a comfortable distance from the parking area at the mouth of the site.
And aside from some trouble provided by the weather, it was a very agreeable weekend. Setting up in the rain is never fun, not even as a Boy Scout (I would know). Doing so with an infant, with twilight setting in, proved to be more difficult — if you can imagine such a thing.
We put up our dining canopy and situated Dylan in his high-chair — a combination of a metal folding chair and portable booster seat, which I know sounds a little rickety, but in all honesty, works quite well for us — underneath it, to position him in visual range of where we were putting up his tent and our own and attempting to transfer our things from the truck to the tents without soaking them through. Dylan didn't care for this proposition and let us know through the use of tears and wails that would drive a banshee to madness.
By quarter of eight we had stowed all of our gear, fed the screaming child, scarfed down the remainders of our gourmet Wawa sandwich counter faire, and cheered said screaming child up with some play time on our air mattress. Almost an hour late, we put Dylan to bed and contemplated going to bed ourselves, being exhausted beyond any point in recent memory. We settled for a dimly lit game of cribbage — it was dark now, and one of the bulbs in our electric lantern burned out six seconds after turning it on (why do they never burn out at home?), and my flashlight's batteries were growing weak — and then talked until it was no longer embarrassingly early to go to sleep.
Sleeping proved a little difficult, what with the flesh eating parasites infesting the campground during the day. After we returned home, I counted no less than twenty bug bites — each of them maddeningly itchy in its own right — between the elbow and wrist of my left arm, which, if my calculations are correct, is roughly 50 square inches (Please don't hold me to that, it's from estimated measurements and geometry in my head. I got a C- in geometry). You're free to extrapolate that however you like, but no matter the math, the fact remains that I'm still — having been home for three days now — scratching away. The only relief I found was either to cover the skin with skin-tight fabric, like a sheet pulled tight; or to lie in the sun at the beach, an area the bugs didn't seem to care for. But as hot as it was, and as much as I like being cool while I sleep, my choices were to sweat or to suffer — essentially, to suffer or to suffer. Small choice in rotten apples.
Sleeping and evenings aside, we did have a great time. I suppose you wouldn't know it from my account up to now, so let's talk about something more pleasant. The beaches — both of them — were excellent. The daytime weather was more or less perfect. Clear skies, temperatures in the mid seventies, and the water wasn't too disturbed by the nearby storm system. We took Dylan to the bay area on the inside of the cape that Cape Henlopen takes its name from for the photo opportunities, before heading to the (traditional) beach for sunning and swimming.
Dylan absolutely loved the bay. He seemed to treat it like a giant bathtub; at least that's the closest visual I can conjure that he would be able to relate it to. A few inches of water — deeper in some places — stretching for hundreds of yards. He crawled in the water's edge, and on the sandbar, taking time to fully investigate the sand between his fingers and splash to his hearts content; and holding on to Megans fingers he walked in some of the deeper spots. He's definitely got some of his father's fish lineage.
He wasn't as fond of the water on the beach. When held, he seemed to enjoy the sound of the crashing waves and watching the water rush by mommy and daddy's feet sometimes even elicited a laugh or two; but he was not at all interested — you might say quite disinterested — in standing or sitting just inside the splash zone himself, or even on my lap. We're not positive, but he doesn't seem too impressed by sand yet, showing little to no interest in knocking down Megan's sand castles — or perhaps they were just so well fortified that he was incapable of penetrating their perimeters, we may never know — or playing with the sand toys. No, instead he preferred to crawl and climb all over his parents and flirt with nearby sunbathing women (he's quite the ladies man).
The waves were a little violent — probably a side effect of that storm out in the atlantic — but the water temperature was extremely agreeable and Megan and I took turns babysitting and spending time in the water or taking in some sun. We couldn't have had a better time at the beach if we were at the control board for the weather. We went back on Sunday morning to enjoy it a little more before heading home.
Keeping with our theme of repeating last year's escapades (why mess with a good thing?), we had dinner on Saturday night at Crabby Dicks, a quaint, if a bit risqué-ly named restaurant at the north end of Rehoboth's Rt 1 strip. We sat outside and Dylan danced in his high-chair to songs by Justin Timberlake, Yellowcard, and Tom Petty, though he didn't seem impressed by Maroon 5, and I can't say I blame him. (Sidenote: Thanks, Shazam!) Again, he was charming the waitresses and patrons at nearby tables. Atta-boy!
Every time I see pictures of myself holding Dylan, I'm taken aback by the strange contortions I seem to do in order to balance his weight with mine or for one of our comfort, or to get up close and play. I'm sure there will be health ramifications at some point, but it's impossible not to do them.
Yes. That is the explanation for what looks like — I assure you, looks can be, and often are deceiving — a beer gut in nearly every photo of me.
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