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Guess Who Came Back Bearing Gifts?

Eric’s back from his trip West. He flew to Seattle, Washington in order to ride along with a friend who was driving to Anaheim, California and back for a video gamers convention. This friend, who he met on-line, is slightly older than Eric. He’s also married, but has no kids.

I’ll admit, the first thing I thought when Eric explained the trip to me was, PEDOPHILE!

I mean, why else would a married man who plays video games (aka computer games) want my little boy to drive thousands of miles with him? I told Eric what I thought. He assured me that he knew the guy pretty well (as well as you can know an on-line friend) and that he was big enough to take care of himself.

He had a point. He is, after all, almost 20. And, like 6 feet tall. Oh yeah, he probably weighs at least 250 pounds. Besides, married men playing video games isn’t as unusual as it once was.

Anyway… Eric’s back. And he brought gifts. This is where I’d post a picture of myself smiling, if I had one handy. But I don’t. So, you’ll just have to see the gifts and imagine me sitting here grinning.

Actually, while you’re imagining the grin, try to picture my shaky fingers on the keyboard. The result of drinking an entire pot of Seattle’s Best Vanilla Bean coffee.

Yum.

Okay, I didn’t drink a whole pot. Just a mug and a half. But I have a very large mug. It’s as big as my face.

He brought back some Hazelnut coffee, too. Just like I’d ordered. So they weren’t really gifts. But he did bring back a surprise bottle of wine.

Are you thinking what I thought for a millisecond? (Great, he’s traveling with a pedophile “friend” who buys him wine, too.)

Actually, I thought the wine was a nice touch. It’s to thank me for my navigation. Which is kind of a neat idea since I apparently navigated them right past the Eagle Castle Winery in Paso Robles, California. The wine is a nice 2006 Trinity (a blend of merlot, cabernet sauvingnon and syrah).

The more I think about it, the more I think I should add a picture of me, with my coffee mug, grinning. So here ya go…

I told you it was big. I even said, “As big as my face.”

The coffee was fabulous, by the way. I’ll fill you in later on the wine, which I plan to share with some visiting friends next week.

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How MOMstar Knew

A couple of folks have asked how the MOMstar Navigation service knew which would be the best part of the coast to see. After all, as the post said, it’s a big coast.

Here’s what the one company official willing to provide input told us. “It’s based a lot on personal experience coupled with good mapping skills. The latter is key, but both are important.”

The same official said, “If you’ve ever visited a place after your mother has visited that same place, you’ll know, without a doubt, which spots you should see.”

Why Big Sur? Two words sum it up nicely… dramatic scenery. Here are a couple of pics from when Hubby and I visited back in 2003.

As an aside… Hubby took all of these pics with his old Sony Mavica digital camera. I was still using film.

Big Sur is a region of the central California coast. It’s where the Santa Lucia Mountains rise sharply out of the Pacific Ocean. Any time you have mountains rising sharply, especially near water, you have beautiful scenery.

Have a few minutes to kill? Watch this nice little video I found at Flickr. It has sound, too. A very catchy little tune I’ll probably be humming all day…

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Remote Vacation Navigation

Let’s say you are 19 (almost 20). You’re with a friend, driving from Seattle to Anaheim and back. The trip down was hurried. For the trip back, you have a little bit of time to spare. You’ve been told you should drop by Yosemite National Park. Yet, the whole time you’ve been planning this trip, you and your friend have talked about seeing the California coast.

But California has a big coast. You’re 100 miles inland at a chain hotel off of I-5. How do you decide where on the coast to go and how to get there?

You dial the All-new MOMstar Navigation support system. Thanks to the wonders of cellular telephones and high-speed Internet in remote places like West Virginia, you call Mom and she’ll tell you what part of the coast she considers a must-see. She can tell you how to get there from your current location AND how long it should take to get where you are going.

The call goes something like this…

“Hi, Mom.” (Operators like to be called Mom.)

“Hi, son!” (It is company policy to treat customers as if they really are family.)

“I don’t think we have time to see Yosemite while we’re in California. We both really want to see the coast.”

“Where are you now, son?”

“Kettleman City.”

“Okay, let me do some figuring and I’ll call you back.”

Several minutes go by, giving you just enough time to use the bathroom, flip through about 37 cable stations, and tell your friend not to worry, “Mom” always comes through. Then the phone rings.

“Okay, son, here’s what you do. Head slightly south and over to the coast on SR-41. That will bring you to Highway 1. Turn right and head north. That will take you through Big Sur and past Monterey. Then you can go into San Francisco and drive across the Golden Gate bridge. Will that work?”

You ask Mom to hold while you consult your friend. Seconds later, you say, “That’ll be cool. Thanks, Mom.”

She gives you turn-by-turn directions, telling you that, once you hit Highway 101, to follow it through the city of San Francisco to the Golden Gate bridge. Just before you hang up, you think you hear a man in the background, who oddly enough sounds just like Dad, say, “They’ll get lost in San Francisco.”

All is well, until several hours later when driving through San Francisco, you miss a turn and end up off course. So you call Mom again.

“That’s okay, Son. Highway 101 isn’t such an easy-to-follow highway once in the city,” she assures you. She asks where you are and gets you back on course. Not only that, minutes later she calls back and asks, “Did you cross the bridge yet?”

“We’re working on it,” you tell her, kind of annoyed that she called back so soon. How could you even have gotten to the bridge that quickly?

“Okay, as soon as you do, get off at the second exit for a quick stop at the Marin Headlands. You’ll get a great view of the bridge and San Francisco from there.”

She’s been right so far, so you follow her advice. And you’re rewarded with the ultimate San Francisco vista.


You call back.

“We made it, Mom.”

“Good,” she replies. “So, is it safe for me to go to bed now?”

“Yes, thank you,” you say, since the call center is on the East Coast and it’s after 10:00 PM there.

Right before signing off, you remember to throw in, “I love you, Mom.”

“I love you, too, son,” she replies.

Just like the reviews you’d read told you, overall, using MOMstar is a good experience. A little touchy-feely, perhaps, and even a bit hokey. But it sure is convenient. And you did get to see a great view.

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You Know You’re Old When…

You take your baby to the airport. You haven’t bought his ticket. Not only did you not provide funds for the ticket, you didn’t book the flight or even lend him your credit card to make the purchase. You didn’t make a little name tag, complete with address, to safety-pin to his backpack. You gave him ZERO cash. And, the next to last thing you said when dropping him off is, “Bring me coffee!”

I’ll get to the coffee in a sec. Most of you have seen Eric in the last few years and know he’s no baby. Not only will he be 20 in October—OMG, no more teenager!—he’s a big boy.

Here’s a photo taken by my sister-in-law, Sharen, shortly after I delivered my parents to the anniversary party. That’s me in the middle, wearing the brightly colored shirt. That’s my “baby” on the far left. The perspective makes him look only slightly bigger than he really is. I haven’t measured lately, but I am thinking he’s at least 6 feet. My nephew, Josh—the one wearing pink—is only 13. We grow them tall in this family!

As for the coffee comment… let me just start by saying I am no coffee connoisseur. I can’t tell you why I like a particular coffee. I also cannot describe the flavor in proper coffee terms, e.g., bold, bright, roasty, acrid, malty, etc. I just know what coffee I like.

I am very brand-loyal, too. Know what it is?

Seattle’s Best. That is, hands down, my favorite brand of coffee. How much do I like it? So much that I remember the very first time I tasted it. (Now, as much as I love a good Java Chip Frappuccino, I cannot tell you the first time I had one of Starbucks’ infamous frappuccinos.)

Anyway, I think it was 2000 when Hubby, Eric and I visited Washington state. Our first stop was Seattle. We didn’t spend a lot of time there, but we did go to the Space Needle. Oddly enough, I have a picture from that day. Hubby scanned it at some point and saved it for me. Eric was 10 at the time. We all look so young!

After the Space Needle and before hitting the Cascade Loop Scenic Highway, we stopped at McDonald’s for breakfast. It was there that I had my first taste of Seattle’s Best.

It wasn’t until recently that Seattle’s Best became available in grocery stores here on the East Coast. I was thrilled. I was even more thrilled when I got a taste of their Vanilla Bean and Hazelnut varieties.

Vanilla Bean is impossible to find locally. I only had it once, having purchased it on sale at Target after Christmas a couple of years ago. The Hazelnut, on the other hand, has been my coffee of choice for several years now. But it is getting harder and harder to find.

So, knowing Eric would be in Seattle, I told him to bring me some coffee.

Yes, I could but it online, but it ain’t cheap. If he can get it for less there, he’ll have to buy me multiple bags. At the very least, he’d better come home with some Vanilla Bean.

His trip to Seattle isn’t the only reason I have coffee on the brain. I just used the very last of my Hazelnut coffee. I’ll have to go to Food Lion today, the only local grocer I know who sells it, to see if I can get more. I hope I can.

Starting a work day, especially a day like today that I KNOW will be busy, just wouldn’t be the same without it.

Maybe I’ll get lucky and some very cool person from the Seattle’s Best company (which was acquired by Starbucks in 2003, by the way) will read my Blog and send me some freebies.

I could be the East Coast Ambassador for Seattle’s Best Coffee. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

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Where in the World?

Which of these four things do you think Hubby and I did yesterday?

a) Visit Paris
b) See the War Correspondents’ Arch
c) Walk the Appalachian Trail
d) Ride an automobile ferry
e) all of the above

Come on, give it some thought. We couldn’t go to WV because Hubby flew off to Chi-town this morning for a work thing.

Give up? You’ll never guess.

We did all of the above!

Our trip to Paris, Virginia was brief. So brief, in fact, that I didn’t take any pictures. But here’s a good one that someone else shot.

We were exploring Northern Virginia, between Leesburg and Winchester, for a possible relocation destination. Any move would be quite a ways down the road.

Since we love back roads, and I love cool, quirky stuff, Hubby plotted a route that took us across the Potomac River at White’s Ferry.

This is near Poolesville, Maryland, at mile 35.5 along the C&O Canal. There used to be around 100 ferries facilitating river crossings on the Potomac, but this is the last.

It is used by a variety of vehicles. We’ve been across it before, twice I think, on our motorcycles.

We passed a gazillion bicyclists yesterday (not one was chubby!). That’s our green car in the foreground. Hubby is behind the wheel, but you can’t see him because of the glare.

I think the ferry can hold about 21 cars.

It is actually quite efficient. I had just enough time to hit the potty and snap some quick pics before we boarded.

Notice the horse trailer? I told you it carries a variety of stuff.

Here come some bikers. It was a gorgeous, summer day. Too bad my bike is at the WV place.

This is the Virginia side of the river. It’s just outside of Leesburg.

This is a view of the river, from the ferry, looking northwest.

The area around Paris was gorgeous. East of there, towards Leesburg, is horse country. Lots of very large horse farms. West of there is the Shenandoah River. It’s sort of mountainous there, too.

On the way home, after crossing back over the Potomac at Harper’s Ferry (no longer a ferry), I saw a sign for Gathland State Park. It’s a Maryland state park I have never seen, and have always wanted to, so I said to Hubby, “Turn there!”

Of course he listened. He’s pretty good about humoring me.

This is the War Correspondents’ Arch. This is why there’s a Gathland State Park. If you really want to know more, follow the link. I don’t feel like recounting the history here.

I was sort of excited to see that the Appalachian Trail goes right through the park.

Since I’m sort of fascinated by the trail and anxious to hike on it (not the entire 2,000+ mile length!), I just had to walk on the trail.

We didn’t go far. It was sort of hot and VERY gnatty (as in bugs). But I did get Hubby to agree to return later in the year for a 12-mile hike! (Remember what I said about him humoring me.)

The arch is sort of cool, I guess. Again, one of those odd, quirky things. I suppose if we were Civil War buffs, which we aren’t, it would’ve been more interesting.

There were some picturesque buildings there (the remains of the summer home of the guy that built the arch). I like stone buildings.

Since I didn’t get to take any pictures in Paris, at least there was something interesting to capture images of to share with my blog audience.

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No Idea What This Means…

…but it sure is colorful.

And definitely fun.

Maybe it is just art for art’s sake. Click on the image for a better view.

If you dare. Or care.