My Favorite Panamanian and I woke up
yesterday and started comparing our upcoming calendars. We realized we had
forgotten to schedule one of our favorite activities of the year, our annual
leaf peeping day. Each year, usually on Columbus Day, we take a day to drive
through New England admiring the foliage and generally just wandering the back
roads. I made the snap decision that we weren’t going to miss it, told her to
pack her gear, and off we went. I was about an hour into the drive when I realized
I had made a huge error. Earlier this year, I had promised Great Aunt we would
take her along for the trip. This amounted to a huge “whoops” and was only
compounded a few minutes later when my Favorite Panamanian reminded me of the
promise made. In my defense, I am getting older and if memory serves me
correctly (poor choice of standard there) beer was involved when I made the promise.
Next year, I pledge.
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| My Traveling Partner and I Yesterday Atop Greylock |
Each year I try to take a different route
while still hitting some of our favorite spots. I set a destination of Mount
Greylock in Western Massachusetts as our initial objective. The GPS system was
getting irritated with me as it kept trying to coax me onto the major highways
instead of the small byways I followed. It was a beautiful trip through some
places in Massachusetts I had never heard of, much less traveled through. It
resembled Appalachia in some places more than Massachusetts. I have a character
defect where I genuinely enjoy being places I’ve never been before and
yesterday qualified. The drive to the mountain took a lot longer than if I had
used the major highways but I engaged the Robert Frost mode, taking that less
traveled way, and it made a difference.
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| Some Views from Those Back Roads |
We hadn’t been to Greylock in years and
the drive up the mountain remains a true delight. My Favorite Panamanian was a little
fearful of the walk up to the summit from the car, but her knee passed the test
with flying colors. It was a beautiful day on top of the mountain and we could
clearly see Mount Monadnock in the distance. Since it as a non-holiday, weekday
there wasn’t much of a crowd either. I was able to climb the narrow staircase in
the summit tower without issue. My wife was practicing some new photo posing
recommendations she found while surfing the internet during her convalescence. I
was mystified as to their efficacy, but she assured me it was the way to go.
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| View From Greylock |
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| Trying to Up My Selfie Game |
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| Wifely Posing |
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| Me In front of the Tower |
Our next stop was one of those aforementioned
favorite spots, the Golden Eagle Restaurant. It sits at the famous hairpin turn
on Route 20 above North Adams. It offers spectacular views extending into both
New York and Vermont. We were late in arriving and had the entire balcony
seating area to ourselves. We couldn’t decide if the colors were up to their
usual standard. It seemed in some places it was past peak while others were
still green. I heard an ominous report recently on the news. The weather lady
said that the forests of New England are transitioning to mid-Atlantic versions
as the weather gradually warms up and that in a few decades we won’t have the
same fabulous foliage. That’s kind of scary and yet another reason to enjoy
what we have while we have it.
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| Overlooking North Adams from Greylock |
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| Tower from the Other Side |
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| Some More Posing |
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| Wife Said there were Too Many Photos of Her Being Taken |
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| She is Much More Photogenic Though |
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| Exhibit A |
After our late lunch, we snuck up into Vermont
which seemed almost deserted. We were on some of those back roads again. We wandered
into Wilmington and then followed Route 9 to the overlook at the Hogback
Mountain Gift Shop. Another of those special places, this is where we spread
the ashes of my mother, a proud Vermonter, born and bred, despite all her years
of New Hampshire residency. There was a lot of nostalgia in play because this
was on the route we always took when traveling between Keene and my grandmother’s
house in New York when I was growing up. We never stopped at the overlook
though. We should have, it is spectacular. After the obligatory shopping this
stop entails (I was with my wife, remember), we set out for home. I used the major
roads now, as the sun was setting, obscuring whatever foliage was about. It was
still a fun day hanging out with the gal I’m married to. It still surprises me
we actually enjoy hanging out with each other. Although, she did throw away my favorite
slippers without informing me.
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| View from Hogback |
Earlier in the week, on a much more mundane
level, I finally tackled a procrastinated task that had been sitting at my feet
in the Man Cave office. I’m honest when I say I remove movies from the library
if they don’t pass muster in the A-Z review. I had a box under the desk that I was
shoving them into. The box became two and finally five without any kind of organization.
My Favorite Panamanian, under spousal agreement, has no authority to mandate
changes in this one area of the house, but she had been looking at the eyesore
it represented each time she walked in. It is a wifely tactic, and it finally
worked. It took a lot longer than I anticipated as I’ll eventually sell them but
they’re now in three Coors Lite boxes, packed orderly and out of the way, while
a new box awaits further ejections.
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| The Initial Mess |
In granddaughter news, the BRS is
thriving in First Grade. My son says that she now reads to him each night
instead of the other way around. The FBR recently had an adventure in
Baltimore. She and Wingman went down there to visit her other grandpa and took
in the world famous National Aquarium while there. The FBR has become quite a
fan of sharks after seeing the ubiquitous specials bandied about. She says her favorite
is the Mako. Her fandom went so far as to tell her abuela she wanted a shark themed
birthday cake instead of the earlier choice of Taylor Swift. I’m sure it will
change a couple more times before the actual day, which is approaching all too
quickly. That damnable calendar again. I’ll say it again. No one warned me
about how much faster time passes when you get old.
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| FBR Loose in Baltimore |
Four movies fell in the A-Z watch, all keepers:
The Martian, absolutely love this movie, best one Damon has ever made; Mary
Poppins, a true classic, still makes you smile; M*A*S*H*, one of best and
funniest anti-war movies ever made; The Mask, Carrey with a perfect vehicle for
his zaniness and debut role for Cameron Diaz, so sexy.
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RECURRING CHARACTERS:
ABFA – Amazing Best Family
Athlete - my daughter
in law; BR3 – Blog Reader #3 – granddaughter
#3; BRS - Blog Reader the Sequel -
second granddaughter; Cantankerous Friend – friend since grade school who likes to argue
about everything, poses as radical leftist to attract women; CRC - Connecticut
Riverboat Captain – another close friend from high school, renowned sailor
of the big river; Curbside Girls – close
friends of my daughter acquired during her single days in Brooklyn; Deckzilla – our backyard deck which
grew to monstrous dimensions once my wife got involved in planning; Favorite Panamanian - the wife (of
course); FBR - First Blog Reader -
first granddaughter; First Friday –
celebrations to mark the First Friday of the Week; Great Aunt - my elder sister; Keene
Friends 1 & 2 – friends since high school from my home town of Keene,
NH; Kindergarten Friend – friend
since kindergarten whom I reunited with after many years; Maine and Virginia Musqueteras – two close friends of my wife –
her US sisters, my wife is the 3rd Musquetera (musketeer); Namesake Nephew –
son of Great Aunt and Soxfather named after me; Neighborhood Mafioso - wife's close friend and Panamanian mafia
member; PanaGals – female relatives
/friends of my wife from Panama; Panamanian/Latin
Mafia – inevitable group of Latino friends my wife accumulates wherever we
have lived & their spouses; PCR - Pittsburgh College Roommate – high school friend, also a “Minor
Celebrity” in Pittsburgh; PCR+1 - Pittsburgh College Roommate’s wife; Riggins - also known as the Grandpuppy, son's dog; Seis Amigos
- two couples from our condo complex and my wife and I; Soxfather – my brother-in-law (whom I miss more than I can ever
explain); Tia Loca – wife’s younger sister; Wingman – my son in law; Wingmom – Wingman’s mom, of course
