A Warning of Winter

Orange leaves spread like fungus
                       across the mountainside,
Mixed with reds like the froth
                       of a killing tide.
Days still come sunny, but at night
                       they leave with a bite.

Fall is alive with the sound of
                         game seven on the air,
As the cheers of football fans ripple
                          like a chanted prayer.
Nobody notices the leaves lightly falling:
                          Somber, soundless, strangely appalling.

A rake rasps like the hand of an undead man
                            on his coffin lid,
And leaves lie rotting in their soggy humps.
                            What Spring did, Fall undid.
The end of all those brightly shimmering days?
                             Wasted trees and winter malaise.

Das Boot

Canyoneering in Zion.  It was a lot better than the previous expedition to Robber's Roost.

My Lost Weekend

I woke up in a good mood, enjoying my delusional assumption that the day was going to be a good one.  When I popped out of bed it was six AM, ten minutes before my alarm clock was set to go off.  I quietly dressed myself and slipped into the kitchen where I finished packing my backpack.  It already held a 100 foot rope, a climbing harness, a day’s worth of food, a small first aid kit and some other odds and ends.  To these items I added two frozen bottles of Sobe Life Water and three large containers of tap water.  I had about 3.5 liters of liquid to drink all together.  Plenty for a day of canyoneering.

I brought my gear outside and placed it on the sidewalk, suspecting I had forgotten something, but having no idea what that might be, and I waited about one minute for my brother Nate.  He showed up in his beautiful new four door Toyota truck with a large 4 wheeler in back.  Five minutes later we had picked up my brother Danny and were on our way.

We stopped for our traditional canyoneering breakfast of McGriddles and biscuit sandwiches at the MacDonalds in Price, and then proceeded to Robber's Roost.  When we rolled into the Roost at about 10:30 it was already hot.  The sky was a light summer blue and perfectly clear except for a few small wispy clouds on the distant horizon.

Nate dropped Danny off at the trailhead of Not Mindbender Canyon along with our gear, and then the two of us proceeded onward to the trail’s terminus.  The truck kicked up dirt as we drove down a long peninsula of flat sagebrush that dropped away on both sides into undulating canyons of white and red sandstone.  When we reached very end of this desert peninsula we had a view of the labyrinthine network of the Roost’s canyons.  Our truck was parked at the tip of nowhere.  This was where our hike would end and we would climb out.  A glimpse down the canyon wall told us it would be tough.

Then we drove the four wheeler down the back of the truck (or Nate did anyway, the thought of backing that heavy machine down that flimsy aluminum ramp terrifies me).  I climbed onto the four wheeler behind Nate and we drove back to the trailhead where Danny was waiting for us.  When we arrived there we realized that we had left the GPS in the truck.  We didn’t debate what to do.  None of us wanted to waste another half hour in making the round trip back to get it, and we were certain that this was going to be a pretty straightforward hike, so we didn’t go back.  We went forward.

It was hot.  And your backpack is always the heaviest at the beginning of a hike.  My water was heavy and I started to lighten the load by drinking it.  Before we had dropped into the slot of Not Mindbender I had almost killed my first half liter.

It was a fun canyon with problematic down climbs, knee scraping slides, and a surprising amount of water.  It was supposed to be a fairly dry canyon, so I was surprised to find myself wading in icy, dirty, stinky water up to my neck.  There were a few spots where we had to repel and the last one was a bit scary.  Some previous adventurer had set it up.  He had jammed two steel bolts into tiny cracks of sandstone and then wrapped some webbing around a VCR sized rock that was stuck into a crevice for insurance.  I didn’t like the look of any of it so I hooked myself up to the webbing as Danny went first.  I hoped the anchors would stay in place but if they didn’t I was sure my weight could keep Dan from falling to his death. 

Everything stayed together as Dan went down, and it didn’t come apart for Nate either.  Still, I couldn’t help but be a bit nervous as I slid over the edge and hung in free air as I slid down 100 feet of rope to the canyon floor. 

Nate and Danny started laughing as I began my descent.  Apparently my shorts had burst open and my rear end was hanging out the back.  Luckily my blue Fruit of the Looms had remained intact.

Once I was down Nate pulled the rope and we stowed all of our climbing gear.  The tough part of hike was over.  We paused for a moment to admire the beautiful alcove that we had repelled into.  It was lushly green and contained a small pond of clear water.  The steep sandstone walls on three sides of us only allowed us to see only one small strip of blue sky above us. 

Now it was time to get back to the car.

The instructions we had for hike said that it was three miles from the last repel to our exit from the canyon, the Moki Steps.  We calculated that at 20 minutes per mile we would find the exit in about an hour.  We would be home, if not in time for dinner, at least in time for dessert.

So we started trudging.  The trail was meager and frequently disappeared.  We had to push our way through brush, tiptoe across slippery mud, and slog through loose sand.  My shoes kept filling up with sand and they felt like they were two sizes too small.  It was uncomfortable, but I didn’t worry about it, we would be out of the canyon soon.

I chugged my water, I chugged my Sobes.  No sense in packing out a lot of heavy liquid when we had cold drinks waiting for us in a cooler in the truck.  As I saw it, I had no incentive to save, and every incentive to consume.  Soon we had gone three miles, but hadn’t seen anywhere we might get out of the canyon.  The wall to our left was tall and sheer.  At one point we saw an arch and it looked like we might be able to climb to it, and then under it and out of the canyon, but our directions hadn’t mentioned an arch and surely such a distinct landmark would be mentioned.

We ignored the arch and kept on going.  And going.  And going.  The laughter and conversation of the early afternoon had disappeared.  We marched like a defeated army: heads down, faces grim, slightly limping on sore feet, wondering if we should start throwing away our heavier equipment.  Danny was thirsty, he had brought less drink then me or Nate and he had been more careful with it.  There was still a bit of liquid in one of his Gatorade bottles, but the sweetness of it disgusted him now and he couldn’t bring himself to drink it.

After a while we came to a place where a big canyon merged with the one we were hiking through.  Nate recognized it and realized that we were now only a couple miles from the Dirty Devil River which meant that we must be miles from our truck.  So we turned around and started hiking back.  The only exit we had seen was the arch, now several miles in our rear.  That had to be the way out.  There wasn’t a single other crack or opening in that endless red wall.

Water was our fuel, and we were burning through it.  I was sweating but because it was so hot and dry my shirt wouldn’t stay wet.  The sweat dried up almost immediately and left white salt stains on the red cloth. 

We were no longer going to be home in time for desert, maybe we could make it back by one in the morning or so.  We were now out of water.  I had slurped down all three and a half liters I had when the day began.  I had two water purification tablets.  Each one was good for one liter of water, so we stopped at the first reasonably clean puddle we could find in the mostly dry stream bed and we filled two water bottles and dropped in the tablets.

When we arrived at the place where the arch stood the entire canyon was covered in the shadows of early evening.  There was a ramp of sand that led to the base of the arch and we slogged our way upwards, our thighs burning with every sliding step.  We climbed across a stone ledge, under the arch, and when we got to the other side we saw that we would be able to get out of the canyon from there.  We were relieved, but not at all convinced that we were in the right place.

We slowly scrambled up a series of steep sandstone slopes to the top of the canyon wall.  It was a pretty evening the sun setting behind us, but no one was in the mood to admire it.  We just wanted to get out of there.  We had our two liters of purified water but hoped we wouldn’t have to drink it.  If our car was close we would break into that cooler and wet our thirst down with something better than warm puddle water.

But when we got to the top our car was nowhere in sight.  We were in the wrong place.  I wasn’t really surprised but I still felt sick.  We would have to drink the puddle water.  The instructions on the purification tablets said to we had to wait four hours before drinking, but I couldn’t, and even through it had only been a half hour since the pills gone in I chugged down a half cup of water.  I wanted to drink a lot more but I knew it was time to ration.  Nate and Danny held off, wanting to give the tablets more time to do their job.

We knew we were in the wrong place, but we figured that if we just proceeded up the slightly sloping sagebrush plain we would eventually arrive at the road that ran along the rim of Robber’s Roost and we would be able to track that back to our car.  It was dark now.  The only light was starlight.  The moon was nowhere in sight.  There was nothing around us except for an apparently endless sea of sagebrush.  We became aware of a canyon to our right, and we veered away from it.  We pressed forward, certain that we would eventually meet the road.

Instead, at about 10:40, we ran into a deep, impassible canyon.  That was when we realized that we were well and truly lost. 

And then, all of a sudden, I had to do a number two.  IMMEDIATELY!  I set my backpack down and hurried away from Danny and Nate and then did my business.  Afterwards, I tore off a small corner of my shirt to use as toilet paper.  Which was fine except that a few minutes later I had to do a number two again.  IMMEDIATELY!  This time I had to use more of my shirt.  Now my shirt had a sizable hole in it and a cold night was coming on.

I felt thirsty and sick to my stomach.  Then I started shivering uncontrollably as I lay on the ground.  I wasn’t shivering because of the cold, but because . . . I don’t know why, really.  Exhaustion?  Do people shiver from exhaustion?  The violent shivering stopped about five minutes later and was replaced by a numbing sense of fatigue.

So we lay down on the rocky ground and waited for daylight.  We speculated about how long it would take our wives to call search and rescue.

In some ways our ladies had it worse than us.  We knew that we were fine.  Sure, life sucked at the moment, but we knew that we weren’t going to die.  We didn’t have any broken bones and we were only a few miles away from water sources. 

Our wives, on the other hand, were starting to suspect that we were dead. 

My wife is still young and attractive enough to trade in her dead husband for a newer, better model . . . but only if she deposits all of our children in a boarding school first . . .  

The night was moonless at first, and unspoiled by any light caused by humans (except for one faint glimmer in the distance: the Hanksville airport).  This allowed us an unusual opportunity to see the stars.  The Milky Way is always drowned out by the blur of city lights, but we could see it perfectly now.  And every few minutes another falling star streaked across the sky (I would later learn that we were at the tail end of a meteor shower).  Despite our exhaustion each falling star somehow gave a positive jolt.

It was starting to get cold, and we huddled together for warmth.  Me and Nate were pretty quiet, but Danny rattled on, allowing his stream of consciousness to spill out of him without constraint.  I was laying down between my two brothers and had the warmest spot, but was still cold.  The night was perfectly cloudless and all the terrible heat of the day had vanished into the clear sky.  I was using my backpack as a pillow at first, but soon realized that it would be more useful as a blanket.  It made a poor blanket.  We were all wearing shorts, and mine were torn open.  Danny’s shirt didn’t have any sleeves and my shirt was missing about a square foot of cloth.  He was trying to use his rope as a blanket.

By three in the morning we were all rested and each of us had become sick of laying around on the uncomfortable ground.  And we were cold.  So we got up, shouldered our packs, and started going back the way we had come.  My blistered feet were killing me, but other than that I felt pretty good.  We slogged through shin high sage brush for a few miles, following four wheeler tracks that we thought might lead to a road eventually (they didn’t).  At one point Danny stepped within inches of a small coiled rattlesnake.  It didn’t strike and we didn’t crush it with a rock.  We were too tired to fight man’s endless war against rattlesnakes. 

At this point, the number one thing that we wanted was to be sitting in our air conditioned car on our way home as we chugged cold drinks from the cooler (would they still be cold after being locked in a hot car for 24 hours?).  Coming in a close second was this: we did NOT want to be rescued by Search and Rescue units.  We had to get to our car before they hiked in after us or, worse, flew a chopper out to get us.

Being rescued is a public humiliation.  Such an event might possibly make the news and then thousands of people would read a small story in the back pages of their Monday paper about how three idiots had gotten lost in the desert and had to get pulled out of there by Search and Rescuers.  Whenever I read this kind of story I mutter words like “morons” and “half-wits” under my breath.  I didn’t want to be subject to this kind of anonymous abuse. (Of course, here I am blogging about it now, but the only people who read this blog are people who know me and already know the broad outlines of this story and are aware of how big of an idiot I am in general).

And then there is the question of the cost of being rescued.  I have long been a strong proponent of people who get rescued paying the cost of that rescue . . . but now I could suddenly see a downside.

A helicopter ride would be an expensive humiliation, like a plastic surgery gone awry.  We had to get out of there, and we had to do it as quickly as possible.

When we got to the edge of the mesa we stopped and lay down again.  It was still dark and we would have to wait for daylight before scrambling down the dangerous cliffs and finding our way through the maze of sandstone dunes that led to the bottom of the canyon.

At first light we descended the canyon wall, once again climbing underneath the arch before finding the canyon floor.  There was an alcove near the arch and a spring dripped out of the rocks there.  We tried to fill our water bottles from the drips but it soon became apparent that this was hopeless.  It would take all day to fill one water bottle.  So we turned around and looked at the pool that was fed by the seep.

It was about two feet deep and insects were visible both on its surface and in its depths.  We were out of water purification tablets.  We were thirsty.  So we filtered the water as best we could through Nate’s long sleeved shirt and then we gulped it down.  It tasted fine and we hoped it wouldn’t result in vomiting and diarrhea at some point down the road.

I was wearing contact lenses I had put onto my eyeballs over twenty four hours earlier. After my blistered feet the dry contact lenses were the most painful thing about my life at the moment (now that my stomach was full to the bursting point with about a gallon of cloudy water the thirst problem was over).  I knew my ophthalmologist wouldn’t be too happy with me, and, frankly, I wasn’t too happy with myself.  But it was either itchy, painful eyes, or blindness, so the lenses stayed in.

We rested in the shade by the pool for a while, letting our bodies absorb all the water we had just taken on board.  We ate a little, though none of us was hungry.  I pounded a bag of Swedish Fish and tried, and failed, to eat a nugget of beef jerky.  Then we moved out.

We retraced out steps through clumps or brush and over drifts of loose sand.  We scanned the canyon wall to our right, searching for a breach, for a way up.  We kept saying, “the next promontory, that’s where the car has to be parked” but it wasn’t.  There was nothing but a solid sheer wall of red sandstone for several miles.  There were one or two places where it looked like we might be able to find a way with a little dangerous climbing, but we prudently passed on them.

Finally we returned to the place where we had done our final repel the day before.  We were a quarter of a mile away from it, but could clearly see the cool and welcoming alcove.  Our hearts sank.  We had hiked all the way back and had still not seen an exit.  We slumped to the ground and rested.  We made plans to hike all the way out to Hanksville (about 25 or so miles from where we sat) unless some search and rescue people found us first.  Then we dozed in the dirt under the shade of the canyon wall.  Bugs crawled on us but we didn’t care.

The sun crept up over the edge of the canyon and soon there was no shelter from it on the canyon floor.  So we picked up our packs and decided to go to the shelter of the alcove.  As we approached, it slowly became apparent that this was not the alcove we had rappelled into the day before.  This false alcove was in a small side canyon on our left, but the main canyon continued on our right.  So we hoofed it down the main canyon looking for our true entry point, hoping, once again, that we might see a way out.

It was hot now.  Very hot.  The sun was high in the sky and burning with a hellish intensity.  I felt like Alec Guiness sweltering away in the "oven" in The Bridge on the River Kwai.  Sweat was pouring out of my body.  It was as if I were a wet sponge and the sun was the palm of a giant’s hand pushing me down, squishing the moisture out of me.  My red shirt had become crusted with white salt stains.  I replaced the lost sweat with more of my dubious pond water.

Suddenly we came around a bend in the canyon and my brothers saw the glint of sunlight on a truck parked on the top of a bluff high above us.  They also saw three people standing near the truck.  (My eyesight, never sharp, had been further shrouded by a night's worth of film and eye crust, I didn’t see the truck or the people right away).  Then we noticed that the canyon wall to our right looked like it might have a spot that was climbable.  There was a steep but walkable sandstone slope for about thirty feet, and then a cliff that was about eighteen feet high.  If we could get up that we would be able to climb a steep sandstone slope up to our car (about 1,000 feet above us).

Danny, by far the most skilled rock climber of the three, free climbed the rock face and then dropped us a rope.  Then me and Nate climbed it as well.  After that we slogged towards our car, certain, at last, that we were on the right track.  The 95 degree heat was burning us from behind and radiating out of the rocks in front of us.  We were getting cooked, my blisters ached, I was tired from having wandered aimlessly for miles over the previous 24 hours and from having slept no more than a few minutes, but I felt pretty good.

We took a wrong turn and had to backtrack a bit, and then we finally arrived at a boulder strewn slope that led the last 300 yards to the car.  We paused a moment to drink more pond water and gather our strength for the last bit of the climb when we heard the voice of one of the search and rescuers above us: “we know you’re tired, but we can’t go home until you get up here, so could you hurry up?”  So we shouldered our packs with a groan one last time and slowly hoofed it up the burning boulders to the top.  It was about noon when we finally pulled ourselves out of the canyon.

We apologized to the three search and rescue guys who were waiting by our truck.  I'm sure they didn't want to get dragged out of their comfortable homes on the 24th of July.  They said that they had called off other searchers who were about to do Not Mindbender, and that the helicopter had also been called off (thank goodness for that!).  We had not been rescued and our little drama had turned out to be thoroughly un-newsworthy.  They had also informed our wives that we were not dead.  Once they had filled out some paperwork and made sure our truck was working they drove off.

Best of all, the drinks in our cooler were still cold.

It was over.  Amazingly, we somehow were getting some pretty decent cellphone reception out there and I called my wife.  She was a bit emotional and my prediction that she would already have replaced me by the time I got home turned out to not be true.  I guess my kids were a harder sell than I had assumed.

The next day my daughter, Allison, said the following to her gymnastics instructor: "listen to this story: my dad went hiking, and a rock fell, and he had to cut the rock and then he had to cut his arm."  Make of that what you will.

A Photo From the Belly of the Beast

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

The Disney Revolution

I spent a day last week at Disneyland.  In other words, I spent hundreds of dollars to have an awful experience.  But I can hold my head high in the knowledge that I did everything in my power to avoid going.  In short, I started a rebellion.

A couple days before we left for California, on an evening when my wife wasn't around, I pulled my kids together and said "Kids, I'll give you a choice.  We can either go to Disneyland or I'll give each of you a hundred dollars."  My proposal had two benefits: 1) I would save money, and 2) I wouldn't have to go to Mickey's Hellish Dungeon.

I knew Truman would immediately agree, and he did.  But my concern was the two girls.  They're too young to know what $100 means (while Truman is at the age where the value of $100 is hugely inflated).  They both resisted the idea at first, until Truman explained to them what $100 meant in terms of Zhu Zhu Pets (you can get ten of them).  This immediately swung them into my camp.

Now that I had the rabble on my side, all that was left was to conduct a peaceful demonstration.  So I concocted a protest song.  It was two verses long, but that was too much,  so I pruned it down to the chorus: "I hate Disneyland, I hate Disneyland/ I want a hundred dollars."  Then when Mary Ann got home we lined up and sang it together three times with the dance moves we'd come up with (singing and dancing really won the girls over to my side.)

But our benevolent dictator looked on without saying a word.  The protest's results were Tienanmen Squarish and two days later we all went to Disneyland.

The kids had a good time.  And I have to admit that I enjoyed the two minutes I spent on the Matterhorn with Audrey.  Still, all in all it blew chunks.

Why Disneyland is the Worst Place on Earth

People always act surprised when they discover (usually through angry growling on my part) that I hate Disneyland.  But why should they be surprised?  What, exactly, is there to like about the place?   The long lines?  The insane prices?  The boring rides (have you ever been on It's a Small World)?  The long distances I must traverse to get there?  Why am I the strange old curmudgeon and not the revered prophet speaking truth?

A day at Disneyland begins with finding a parking space in the park's enormous and unsightly parking structure and then taking an onerous shuttle ride with a herd of fools to Disneyland's entrance.  Once you get there you are financially abused.  It costs hundreds of dollars for a family of five to spend a day at Disneyland.  Three hundred and fifty six dollars to be precise. And that's just to get in.  Once you're there you have to lay out a lot more cash to feed the gang.  You want to eat breakfast with the princesses?  That will be $34.99 per adult and $18.99 per child.  That's $127 for a family of five.  And it isn't just the expense I don't like.  It's the humiliation of knowing I have just been blatantly ripped off and that the con man who did it to me is going to be grinning back at me all day long in the guise of Mickey Mouse and Goofy.  You shouldn't be shocked that I hate Disneyland.  You should be shocked that my rage has never turned homicidal.

And what do I get for this enormous sum of cash I've just tucked into Uncle Walt's underpants?  The right to wait in long, long lines.  Because apparently I'm not the only sucker in the world.

Now, I'll admit that there is some fun to be had.  The Matterhorn is a thrill, and it's nice to see the children you love smile on the Tea Cups.  But how is it worth it?  How are the combined eight hours you spend in lines worth the combined 30 minutes you actually spend on rides?

Of course, everyone has their Disneyland schemes for finding shorter lines.  "Well if you go the third Tuesday after winter solstice the lines are usually pretty short."  "You need to get fast passes."  "What you do is, you get one of your children to wear a helmet and pretend they're retarded all day . . ."  But I feel like if I have paid $350 dollars I shouldn't have to do any of this crap.  $350 should be enough to buy me a good experience.  I shouldn't have to act like a Soviet peasant looking for ways to con the system so he can increase his meager bread allowance.

People tell me, "well, you can't put a price on the memories."  Why not?  The Disney Corporation has, and the price is too high.  And, by the way, the memories aren't worth squat.  I don't have any pleasant memories about my last trip to Disneyland a couple years ago.  Not one.  But I do remember the camping trip I took with Truman and Audrey to Temple Mountain at around the same time.  I remember how they loved cooking hot dogs on the fire, how they were fascinated by the mines I wouldn't let them go into.  I remember their enthusiasm as they ran up Little Wild Horse Canyon and played with sticks as guns everywhere they went.  Good memories, all of them inexpensive.  Disneyland on the other hand is a loud, miserable, gaudy blur.  My only clear memories are shock at the ticket price and relief when Truman started crying and saying he wanted to go home.

And, by the way, is there any cartoon charachter more stupid or boring than Mickey Mouse? Why is he up on some kind of cartoon pedestal?  He's awful.  Name any other cartoon characther (barring the bland monstrosities created by Hanna Barbera) and you'll be naming a superior creation.  Just blurt out the first cartoon charachter that comes to your mind:

Plankton!  Shake!  Tom! Jerry!  Bugs Bunny!  Homer Simpson!  Patrick!  Donald Duck! WALL-E!  The Iron Giant!  Cartman!  Comicbook Guy!  Ren! 

You could do this for days before you found a charachter half as boring as Mickey Mouse.

Baptist Draw

Tight Squeeze

Inspecting the old webbing

The fall wouldn't have killed him.  But it would have been extreemly unpleasant to drop into that freezing water on a cold day.

Danny's the anchor.  If Nate had fallen would he have taken Danny with him?  You be the judge.

Recent rains left a couple miles of sloppy mud on the canyon floor.

Day 1, London

We arrived at Heathrow early in the morning and shuffled through customs.  The man in the line ahead of us had the most obscene plumber’s crack I have ever seen.  There were at least four visible inches of bum when he bent over to adjust his luggage.  I don’t think it’s possible to show that much rear cleavage and not be aware of it.  He must have been an exhibitionist.

A couple hours later we had left our luggage behind and taken to tube to our first London sight: St Paul’sCathedral. It’s a magnificent building, and because it was Sunday the bells were thundering.

From there we trudged our way across the millennium bridge, past the Golden Hind and a WWII era battle ship and over to Tower Bridge. I surprised my wife by asking an Eastern European smelling couple to take a picture of us. This shocked my wife, who knows that Bryson men hate asking strangers for even the smallest favors.

Then over the bridge and off to Tower Hill.  Tower Hill is a thick slice of history.  It’s probably most famous as a resting point for rich and famous people who were on their way to the block.  Maybe the most famous of these was Anne Boleyn who was sent to the tower by her husband Henry VIII on charges of infidelity.  People dispute to this day whether there was any truth in the charges, but there’s no disputing the fact that Anne took her fate like a man.  Hours before her execution she was joking about how she knew it would be over quickly because she’d heard the executioner was very good and she had such a tiny neck.  As it turned out the executioner was good, and he lopped her head off with a single swing of his sword.

Henry VIII is one of history’s great dirt bags.  You only need to take one look at his lewd armor to know what he thought of himself.

We also saw the bit of the tower where the Princes were held captive, and eventually murdered, by the orders their uncle King Richard III.  Or, if you believe the conspiracy theorists, where they were murdered by Henry VII.  Either way, things ended badly for the two.  And finally, we saw the crown jewels.  To which I say:  Who cares?  For whatever reason I cannot rouse any enthusiasm for the crown jewels, or for any jewelry for that matter.  I can’t tell the difference between the cheapest glass knockoffs and the most expensive gems of Africa (and fortunately, neither can my wife, nod, nod, wink, wink . . . I hope she never gets that wedding ring appraised).  The Jet Lag was threatening to consume us completely by the time we left the Tower.  So we went straight back to our hotel, fell asleep at 6:00 PM and didn't get up until exactly 12 hours later.

Day 2, Canterbury

The next day we took the train to Canterbury.  I’d always wanted to see Canterbury and its historic cathedral. 

It’s the site of one of the most dramatic events in England’s history: the murder of Thomas Beckett, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The archbishop and Henry II had been fighting over just who was boss of the English branch of the Catholic Church (an issue that would vex numerous English monarchs). Henry got sick of Becket (who had once been his best friend) and while discussing his how much the archbishop irritated him, Henry is said to have bellowed something to the effect of “who will rid me of this turbulent priest”. Four of the knights present took this as an order and went off to Canterbury. They found the archbishop in the Cathedral and after some words they killed him. Unfortunately, they did not do as good a job as Anne Boleyn’s executioner had. Instead of lopping his head neatly off at the neck they hacked it somewhere in the forehead area and dashed his brains all over the place. By all accounts, it was a huge mess.

Henry ended up taking a lot of guff over the murder and in the end he allowed himself to be publicly whipped in atonement for his crime.  Beckett was canonized and a shrine was built to him in the cathedral, but this shrine was eventually destroyed by Henry VIII who decided to rid himself of all turbulent priests once and for all.

Despite all the tourists milling about Canterbury Cathedral commands reverence.  It’s easy to see how such a building would have awed the peasants who worshipped there for hundreds of years.  I was awed by it myself, even with all the scaffolding.

Here I am posing next to the remains of The Black Prince.  Not only did he have one of the coolest names in English history, he also won some of England’s most resounding victories against the French.  Of course, by today’s standards he would be considered a war criminal (the modern man is a bit squeamish about the deliberate slaughter of women and children).

Unfortunately we could not see St. Augustine’s Abbey which is near the cathedral, as it was Monday as the abbey’s ruins are closed Monday.  But we did walk over to St. Martin’s church, the oldest church in England and a relic of the good Old Saxon days.

And we had time to see Trafalgar Square, a fitting tribute to one of the truly great heroes of history.

Day 3, Dover

I’d always wanted to see Canterbury, but my desire to see Dover was relatively new. In fact, it had never occurred to me to visit Dover until I read a travel book called “Day Trips from London” about three months before actually going to London.


Of course I knew about the white cliffs and had a mild interest in seeing them, but what really put me over the top was finding out about Dover Castle, an ancient site with many layers of history dating from Roman Times through the Second World War (and even the Cold War).

There is a Roman Lighthouse that’s about 1,800 years old,

A Saxon Church (extensively restored, as you can see, in the 1800's),

A Norman Castle built by Henry II,

And a hole down which kings once pooped.

As a bonus, here are two pictures of me being an idiot with artillery

Who says England is never warm?  Look at my forehead glisten with sweat.

And not only is there a lot of stuff to see, it’s a lot of majestically beautiful stuff in a beautiful setting. And all in the company of my super hot wife.

Also, we had some fish and chips there, and even though we ate them in a skeezy looking tourist trappy kind of place, they were delicious.

Day 4, London

We spent our fourth day in London again.  The Day began with a walk around Westminster.

We loved Westminster Abbey.  History is thicker at Westminster Abbey than any place else in England.  Harold, the unfortunate final Saxon king of England (he died with a Norman arrow in his eye) was crowned there as were almost all of the kings and queens from Norman times to the present day; many of them are also buried there.  Edward the Confessor’s Tomb has pride of place in the abbey, but many other notables also have their final resting place there: Elisabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, Bloody Mary, Henry V, Edward III, Chaucer, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, the list goes on and on.  You can also see the spot where Oliver Cromwell was buried before the Stuarts came back to power, dug him up, and chucked him out.   

Then off to Buckingham Palace where we found a local who gave us tips on where we could find one of those soldiers in a tall furry hat and how we might best incite him to violence.

Then the British Museum.  We saw as much of it as we could in three hours, but, obviously, that’s not much.  Still, we were able to see the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon Marbles, and this bust of Pericles.  Pericles always liked to be depicted with his helmet on because it hid the fact that he had an abnormally long head.

Then, off to Les Miserables.  Mary Ann had to drag me to it.  I hate musicals as a general rule, but I found myself liking Les Mis a great deal.  It’s really just a musical Cliff Notes of the novel, and it uses all sorts of cheap tricks to manipulate your emotions, but somehow it works.  I liked it despite myself and may have to add it to the tiny list of musicals I like (Singin’ in the Rain and My Fair lady are the only other two productions on the list).

Day 5, Bath

Like Canterbury, I had always wanted to see Bath. I’m a huge Anglophile, but I am also a big Romanophile, so at Bath I could enjoy my two great historical loves together in one delicious hot tub.

I knew the Roman baths would be interesting, but what surprised me was how beautiful the city of Bath was. It’s a gorgeous town, set amidst wooded hills, with nary an ugly building in view.

And the baths themselves were fascinating. We took a guided audio tour and learned all sorts of interesting tidbits, like how the Roman’s used to write curses on lead sheets, roll them up, and then throw them into the sacred hot water spring so that the goddess could wreak vengeance on the malefactors who had wronged them. Here’s the curse from one tablet:

Docilianus...to the most holy goddess Sulis. I curse him who has stolen my hooded cloak, whether man or woman, whether slave or free, that...the goddess Sulis inflict death upon...and not allow him sleep or children now and in the future, until he has brought my hooded cloak to the temple of her divinity.

I don’t know who this Docilianus was, but I don’t think you want to mess with him. Steal his hoodie and he wishes you death, or at least insomnia. I think he would have appreciated Black Adder's curse: “May the Lord hate thee and thine, may your skin turn orange in hue, and may your head fall off at an awkward moment.”

Back in 1700’s the well heeled of the English aristocracy would head to Bath to “take the waters”.  Some of them had doctors who prescribed drinking a gallon of it every day before breakfast.   It tastes terrible.  One of the surest proofs of the benevolence of a Divine Providence is the fact that the placebo effect is real, and that a lot of those silly fools in powdered wigs who chugged down this terrible tasting warm water every day did actually receive some relief from whatever it was that ailed them.  Me and Mary Ann each drank some, but neither of us could finish our cup.  It certainly didn’t make me feel any healthier. 

But those silly old fools in powdered wigs built a beautiful city with one lovely Georgian house after another.

Day 6, Stonehenge

I didn’t really want to see Stonehenge, but somehow I felt like I had to.  I was in England, Stonehenge was close by, and I just had to go.  How could I avoid such a famous prehistoric site?  Stonehenge really is strangely underwhelming.  It’s smaller than it always looks on television, there is a freeway running right next to it, and the tourists are as thick there as flies on a horse carcass.  Still, on the bucket list I can put a check next to Stonehenge.

Stonehenge is near the town of Salisbury, which has a number of interesting sights to see, including the ruins of Old Sarum, a hilltop city dating from Saxon times,

A beautiful cathedral that holds one of the four remaining original copies of the Magna Carta,

And this lovely old house that you may have seen in a Jane Austin film adaptation.

Day 7, Paris

As I mentioned earlier, I am an Anglophile. My love of all things English began when, at the age of 12 or so, I saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail for the first time. Over the years my Anglophelia grew as I discovered English writers. To this day George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh and P.G. Wodehouse are my three favorite novelists. I love English movies as well: The Ealing Comedies, Carol Reed, Hitchcock. And then there’s Napoleonic War naval fiction. Horatio Hornblower and Jack Aubrey are real people to me, and I love them. What magnificent history! Conquest by the Romans, the rebellion of Boudicca . . . all the way up to Churchill leading them all against the monstrosity of Nazi Germany. And then you add Led Zeppelin and the rest of the English accented rock & rollers . . . I could go on and on.

I’ve never been a France hater, but next to my Britain Love my France Love was a paltry thing. My knowledge of French history is sketchy, with big gaps between Charlamaign and The French Revolution (and, frankly, a lot of big gaps after the revolution as well . . . and, if I'm being honest, during the revolution). As an American I’m grateful that the French helped us out when the Brits were being such jerks. But I’ve never been steeped in French culture like I have British.

Paris is relentlessly beautiful

Notre Dame

Are there any obelisks left in Egypt?  You can's swing a dead cat in Europe without hitting one.