Carnie Puppet TerrorizesTots

For my online blog readers (puppettrip.blogspot.com), I'm posting my world-shaking insights on Facebook until I fire up the purely-puppet blog again. Searching for "Steve Carrell Austin" should find me. Yes, you'll have to sign up for Facebook, but you don't have to create a page. Increasing numbers of COPs & WOPs (Cool or Weird Old People) are on Facebook.

One of the best things about this blog is that I implicitly promised it would end when the puppet tour did. I strung it along awhile longer, but this will be the last one about the puppet trip. Feel free to subscribe on this website -- I may drop occasional bon mots onto it. But for my email subscribers, you won't get any more emailed to you unless you subscribe. Thanks for riding along.
Captions for trip pictures: 1) Gum butt: Exactly as found on a seashore roadside. No wonder some clams are endangered (Acadia National Park, Maine). 2) I feel less rootless with my wife around (Tent Rocks park near Santa Fe). 3) Cheap motel (Palo Duro Canyon, TX). 4) Carnie Santa finds Christmas cactus (NM desert). Again @ Palo Duro: 5) This is your ancient brain coral. 6) This is your brain coral on drugs. (They're really probably calcite or other sedimentary glop.)
I can't believe there's more cornhole news. (It's like C-Span coverage. It should be reported, but nobody cares -- except maybe the invading hordes of cornhole tossers, sulkily retreating washer flingers and the breathless masses following this edge-of-your-seat epic.) In Austin, on hip north South 1st St., cornhole boards appeared at Torchy's Tacos' transformation into the South Austin Trailer Park & Eatery. What's next? Torchy's Cornhole Tacos also has room for a maypole, hopscotch but no sign of a washer pit. However, there is a cinder block wall where you can fling beer bottles, honky tonk style, instead of chunking them into the creek. Ecology-conscious Austin probably will do neither. In response to Shotege's cornhole comments to prior blogs on puppettrip.blogspot.com, I fear the cornholians moving south will now refill their broken bags with beans or crushed taco shells. I shall avoid that intradenominational rift among heated heathens squabbling over the aerodynamics and traction of vegetables.

From a package of EarPlanes earplugs: "Before inserting, pinch nose and blow to clear you rears." Makes you wonder where to put the plug. Congrats to Earplanes for a phenomenal 5 typos in 85 words of instructions.
From my email to the Riverside Ultimate yahoo group: Re my alleged nickname, "King Kong," I think my advanced age makes "Silver Back" more appropriate. The initials for "Silver Back Carrell" even phonetically and visually resemble my real initials, "SDC." After all, a "B" is just a "D" with a pot belly. 2nd choice: I also (enigmatically) favor "Gyppo Moot, the Enigma Machine" from John (Daily Show) Hodgson's list of 700 hobo names (flickr.com/photos/halcyonsnow/297160233)
Despite the accompanying recent picture of me, the old saying, "All hat, no cowboy" probably needs updating: Maybe "All cow bell, no band" or "All beard, no bin Laden" or "all grammar, no writer" or ...

My friend, Reliable Tom, reports he saw cornhole played, and called that, by people from all over the Northeast, while they were vacationing at a beach in New Jersey. Disclaimer: Tom, though reliable, owns a washer-pitching game that uses a board with several holes. This deviation is not the way I'm sure God plays it (monogamously aim at one tuna can in the ground). But Tom's excursion is nothing compared to the variations at Wikipedia Under "Variants," see the Texas version, which is a reasonably close description. And there's a picture of what would be a small cornhole board. For my still-befuddled friends, see my epic blog entry of 7/5.
It's not smart to post online on a weekend because workplace readers often overlook accumulated email on Monday, but maybe people are hunkered down at home against the hurricane, and their last wish is to read my blog just one more time. (Disclaimer: Rain predicted in Austin today & Sunday, not sure how much.)

Re my "back to school tequila" photo from the last blog, two readers commented:
"Looks like Santa Fe knows how to motivate their school kids. Wonder if the T in their TAKS tests stands for Tequila!"
"I'd be hitting that display when they were OUT of school and home, driving me nuts."

I learned to identify elk poop. I just need to find a spot for that new skill on my resume, perhaps "specialist in elk, bull and other shit." I'll omit the details of elk scat because, like Colorado beers you'll never see, elk are probably scarce in your area. To confirm my suspicions (e.g., "I doubt the meadow was full of bears?"), the Internet showed me "Elk scat with classic dimple," by a guy who lays his binoculars on scat for scale. (I've flung a few cow paddies, but I have my personal limits concerning eyewear placement. So be assured: I won't try to store my eyeglasses in anyone's underwear.)
I also confirmed that a bear does in fact shit in the woods. I acquired my new scat skill at Mueller State Park near Pike's Peak in central-ish CO. Nice place, but I wouldn't go back unless it was just after elk-calving in June/July.

I'm back on Planet Austin as of last night (Sun.). End of puppet season but a couple more blogs to come.
Seen at Trader Joe's supermarket in Santa Fe, their "back to school" display, above (puppettrip.blogspot.com if you don't have html email).

In IL , I saw a store named "New and Used Antiques."
Before you make judgments, consider the store is in Greenup, which bills itself as the "Village of Porches".
Now you can judge -- personally, I didn't drink the water.

-- Steve

After the Granpa show, kids come to a window to talk to Granpa and buy DVDs. A lispy little tyke steps up and declares she wants "an STD."
Granpa manages not to laugh but can't resist repeating, on the microphone, "You want what, an STD?"
No adults laugh.
Suddenly I'm in Stranger Danger from a small child, again.
------------
This happened 3 times in 2 days:
I ask two kids standing with each other, "Are you relatives?"
"No, we're brothers."
The joke is supposed to be: "Are you relatives? (pause) I thought so. You know how I can tell? You both have a nose between your eyes. And a mouth underneath the nose. Very fine looking family."
------------
The wife and I met in Santa Fe for a couple of days. In honor of her family vacations, we touched every item in half the Jackalope store (we only caressed half because it's gotten bigger, and we spent a lot of time buying bargain geodes and other rocks). But Jackalope, like the rest of the trip, was great fun.

I finally sand-surfed North America's largest dune, on an ironing board.
We all have to be someplace, doing something.
Great Sand Dunes National Park (southern CO) is at 8,250 feet. The largest dune is approx. 720 feet above that. The 5 mile hike (round trip) took 5 hours, with not a lot of scenery staring, except during numerous rest stops (dang altitude).
Unfortunately the surfing wasn't great because the sand was too wet (though that helped walking in it). And the ironing board (a tabletop model --- I hacked off the legs and put furniture-bottom felt on top for traction) was not a prime board. I probably hit 10 mph; a board will go 35 mph. At 10 mph, I had time to glance briefly at the scenery (very Georgia O'Keefe stuff with contrasting lights and darks because of moving clouds and the dunes close against the mountains). The sand consists of darkish little mini-mountains that makes a low roaring when you slide through it.
(A faster ride usually consists of, "Wheeeee, oooooh, I'm going to diiiiieeeeeeee!" I gave up surfing standing up awhile back because I became phobic about face-planting at 35 mph. But it's still huge fun.)

In CO, I encountered a brew restaurant's Silver Mullet beer, which was (of course) tasteless.I have details about yummy CO beers encountered at a beer tasting, but I won't bore you with beers you can't get (except I see Great Divide beers in Austin sometimes).

I am truly touched and honored you spend a little time reading these epics.

-- Steve

I screwed up posting 8/16 and 8/15 blogs so I'm combining them here. First is 8/16:

I walk around the corner of my trailer and a truly tiny, knee-high 2-year-old charges me. She's armed with a big grin and outstretched arms for a hug.
I'm the one in stranger danger. "Out-of-towner grabs child at carnival" and other headlines flash through my mind.
Granpa talked to her sisters and her earlier. Does she think I'm Granpa? Which will be worse for her: Hugging a stranger or being rejected? Where are her parents? Her dad has the airbrush/tattoo booth 30 feet from me, but I don't see him or the sisters. Finally I see him, giving me the hairy Latino eyeball (but I don't stare back because I tend to accidentally get into staring contests with Latinos -- more about that some other time).
So I hunker down, act glad to see her, chat a bit (as much as you can chat with a munchkin that age), and she still insists on hugging me. But she mostly gets just my knees and elbows. And I'm still alive.

Sometimes kids holler at Granpa onstage (they think he's real and don't mind interrupting or maybe they're just like the adults who talk to tv and movie screens). After one tiny cherubic voice kept yelling something, I stopped and asked what, which was "You've got poop on your head."
The latest variation on the "holler-at-Granpa" heckler is "Excuse me, Excuse me ..... Shut up!" That little sociopath is obviously smart.
Inept hecklers are hilarious --- like a mosquito that just bit a drunk guy and then keeps buzzing you but can't quite hit the target.
I would ignore most persistent yells, but I have to pay some attention because one time they were yellilng, "Granpa your eyeball fell out!"

The true angels are mildly mentally impaired adults. (Let's face it, they're retarded. It's an accurate medical term.) They'll laugh at everything, including my jokes. A couple of them in the audience can fire up the whole crowd. And now you my level of humor. Although I do get a few laughs mentioning everything from truthiness to existential philosophy, e.g.:
"Are you real?" the kid says (these are always 9-year-olds who obviously watch too much tv).
"I'm a real puppet. Are you a real person?"
"Er, yes."
"Oh yeah, prove it. And what is reality? (pause) Yes, folks. It's Granpa Cratchet, the existential puppet. (pause) Don't worry, parents. A few years of therapy and he'll recover from this encounter." (I also use the "few years of therapy" line when adults insist on just standing there with a bewildered non-verbal toddler.)

-- the 8/15 blog:
Yes, I am alive. (See the penultimate [No, Frisbee fans, that doesn't mean writing about Ultimate] paragraph for travel details.)
Somewhere in Pennsylvania, I spotted the Shiny Sky Ball. Check the national news. I'm sure there will be details about this rare phenomenon. Not sure what the shiny ball was, after 16 days of rain in various forms and intensities (see Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams for descriptions, by the rain god, of the 237 various forms of precipitation). But I know the bright ball made the handsome, slick shine on the roadways disappear. The ball's heat and light scare me. Must find clouds.
And yes, I'm saved. Daily thunderstorms in New Mexico, preceded by hurtling masses of red dirt, occur, although briefly.
Extraneous: Hurtling into the 21st Century, I got myself a Facebook page, mainly for still-jelling showbiz reasons. (Nothing much on the page that you don't know.) The next day one of my friend's sons unbiddingly (yes, that's a word, at least for now it is) added me as a friend. Brave lad.
I'm about to vanish offline again for a bit. My travel/excuses for not blogging thus far: 3.5 days of driving from Bangor to New Mexico, toss in 2.5 days off, roughly 3 days of truck fixing (nothing gigantic, but iI did have nails in three trailer tires when I arrived in NM, but no flats. Thank you, God). Oh, and I too easily find myself zoning, e.g., women's Olympic handball online late-night.
To come: cherubs, would-be demons and I'm in reverse stranger-danger from a 3-year-old.

My first experience with homemade wine was a mere sip of Dunn's Dung, an off-pink substance "aged" on the closet floor of a guy in high school. (The same guy, on a trampoline, could be commanded, "Dismount." And he would fling himself headfirst onto the ground.)
So I was mentally prepared for the wine competition/tasting at a county fair in rural Iowa, where they ferment what they can get, e.g., raspberries, rhubarb and apparently pancake syrup – luckily no one made corn or soy wine. Several reviews could start with, "Redolent with a strong undercurrent of Karo, this wine caused several diabetics to pass out when they just walked by the bottle."
Some wines left a lingering, subtle sting, but a few decent wines appeared. The People's Choice Award went to a bottle emptied (or spilled) by the crowd before the judges could taste it.
I sat by an ornamental scarecrow in a bucket of sand. After I subtly discarded a few samples in the sand, the scarecrow was leaning more than the woman who drank no more than a half-glass – of at least10 wines. After awhile, she gave up the pretense of looking at the labels.
At county fairs, they enter everything for judging -- so I possibly killed the sand bucket's chance for a ribbon.)
One judge joked with a wine maker, "I hear you mashed these wild grapes with a 2x4. I assume it was oak, but was the oak 2x4 toasted to add additional flavor?" The judge should have asked, "Is the unique flavor due to wolmanized wood?"

Vowel Movement
All the vowels migrated from Maine to the South, where we use all those "extriy wuins" when we talk so slow. Mainers (Maniacs, Mainians?) delete vowels and sometimes entire syllables at the end of words ("whited" is "whitd," said very quickly). I'd talk that way too if I risked freezing my tongue when I opened my mouth. They also say, "I'm going to a potty" (probably "party" but I don't ask).

Derainged
I drove 717 miles in 12 hours – 10 of those hours in the rain. My favorites were the giant rooster tails from trucks in the opposite lane, and the uphill lanes that turned into streams. The next day, I had to stop myself from constantly checking peripheral vision and mirrors for info such as, "Where's the edge of the road?" Normal driving was boring.
I then spent a day in a mechanic's lobby because the pump on my 3rd fuel tank died. I don't need the excitement of constantly thinking about diesel for my 10 mpg truck. After a logical mistake and unanticipated hills, all tanks were on empty when I found a truck stop in rural NY.
I've gotten 2 new cell phones (hurrah for the final one, the Samsung Instinct, Sprint's iphone clone). Life overall is fine , though I did drop a speaker the size of a man's chest onto my face – I am not fond of balancing the speakers a full arm's length overhead while I thread brackets onto hooks, especially into the wind. Luckily I don't have to do that at every location.
(Broken promise: Due to good locations and technical difficulties with my memory, there will be no news of flooding or spam-eating mulleteers.)

Man vs. Melon
I ate a watermelon with a small Swiss army knife. (No, the melon did not have the knife – I took it away from him.)
My motel room's desk looked like I'd sacrificed a goat.
And the maid had to pick up unidentifiably red towels.

Roadside Dirt Dining
I thought dirt roads in rural Iowa had solved my food budget because they smelled sort of yummy. The fair sprays the roads with (used?) brown vegetable oil to restrain dust (or to promote the fried-food booths?). And there's a bonus: iridescent puddles.
A dirt dinner is not a big stretch. In 2005, I ate "white dirt" in Columbus, GA, where convenience stores sell packaged chunks of kaolin clay (Kaopectate's main ingredient). It's dry and tasteless, unless you get the red-speckled (iron?) variety, which has a taste, not bad, just a taste.
It's also an affordable but unappreciated art form? Eat too much clay and you're constipated, ultimately, if you're lucky, producing an object of interest (only if you step in it) that's been formed and fired in a tubular kiln heated to 98 degrees.
For more info on dirt eating, see http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2669, http://www.newhouse.com/archive/story1c012502.html and http://www.whitedirt.com/ .

Names
* Bong Recreation Area (Wisconsin).
* Dead River Company (Maine) – do their tanker trucks kill rivers or just collect nasty river water? (It's actually a propane truck. So my first question still applies.)

BTW
Reading this on a laptop on AOL, the type is really tiny. It looks better on Firefox, God's browser, and the Antichrist, Explorer.

This blog entry has nothing to do with my summer job manhandling puppets in several states. This is just blatantly self-indulgent because of 2 special occasions.

1) Music Video: My son's band, Hey La La, has a new video. It's below, but you should view the Youtube link because it boosts their ratings. You also should view it because it's good (Did I send you his 5th grade art we tacked to the fridge? No. But you're getting this info because the music & video are good.) If you comment on the website, rate the video and/or call it a favorite, it's even better.

Luke wrote the song, sings it and plays bass & keyboards. (The band didn't do the video. They're just smart enough to get someone good to do it.)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=tiqIYhSRHsk (this is correct)

Their myspace site = http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=151502540

The band plays electro indie pop: Electro = lots of electronic instruments and effects. Indie has lyrics like "If you take the make-up off the vampire, they will die" (which isn't his band's lyric, but it's great). "Pop" these days is lots of bright, often a little bouncy music (that's the definition from an old guy, me).

2) I'm newly 55, and still alive. An artificial milestone, but I'm glad to acknowledge it. You too are old enough to know people who didn't make it (e.g., my friend Glenda who died in her late 20s from a type of Hodgkins disease which has an approximate 95% cure rate). Or you know folks who are laid up some major way. Aside from my mental irregularities, I only have a small collection of minor physical stuff to whine about (old cars just don't run as well as new cars). So I am officially thankful to God, relatives and friends for their support and tolerance for over half a century.

Happiness is not funny. Charles Schulz said that's why Charlie Brown never got to kick the football. That's one reason I haven't been posting to this blog. Also, the puppet gig is over, probably until next summer. I may launch an at-home blog later. If so, I promise it won't chronicle my mundane grind in inexorable detail. (Now you could write in your blog, "Today I read a blog discussing blogs about someone's mundane grind ...")
But no, not this post. It's a flashback wrap-up of the odd world of demolition derbies. I've seen 10+ derbies at fairs (maybe it puts my wrecks in perspective, not necessarily a good one, but a perspective more reassuring than reality). Here are demolition derby delicacies:
* Picture, right: "Git 'R Done" inadvertently proclaims it "R Done."
* Finally, a car repair tool I could wield well: the sledgehammer. It's handy for getting your car unwrinkled for the second round. For delicate work, they use a cutting torch.
* In the battle zone, the organizers often wet the ground to induce slower speeds. (A driver on a dry track might wet something else, for a trickle-down effect.) Peeling out and no room to build up speed = cars making lots of polite-looking nudges. Much better: At one dry-track derby, a couple of cars briefly tipped on their sides when they were hit. One hitter's car rose along with his victim. Everyone fell back to earth unharmed.
* The pit area gives a real feel for the "sport." In the dusty semi-darkness, I monitor (360-degree owl-like) to make sure a vehicle isn't about to make me a hood ornament, and I catch mini-moments: A small child "driving" the car while dad performs frantic antics to get it running again. In the cold, I walk toward men huddling around a campfire that turns out to be a cutting torch flaring as it cuts a wheel. Small, uneasy knots of men pay off bets, with just enough illumination to make sure the money is counted correctly. I see a horribly mangled car up close and think, "Somebody should have died in that." But it's the result of 15 impacts, not just one (and drivers rear-end each other a lot to save their engines from impact).
*Picture, right: It re-started but now it's on fire.
(* Granpa (driving around in his puppetmobile) sometimes says, "I'm holding my own demolition derby soon -- out in the parking lot. Where are you parked?" Maybe a couple of adults snicker. But I like the joke.)
* Picture, below: All 3 cars ready for another heat.

Back home long-term, I find deep joy reuniting with my wife and son, and contentment at the onslaught of normalcy. I also find the 10,000 little things to do and small irritations I hadn't fully experienced in 2 months. Thankfully, my wife reduced the list from 15,000 to 10,000, and she handled some big household crises like the water heater attacking our house.

Life on the road was simpler. Only 5,000 minor irritations, but a similarly reduced pool of general contentment. At least now there's no subterranean undercurrent of loneliness rumbling along, , occasionally surfacing, making a muddy, messy puddle in the path.

I'm still getting used to being back. Mexican food and barbecue have helped. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone I can.

-------------------
Iraq casket has surprising impact

It's a flag-painted white casket, just sitting on the end of a plane's luggage conveyor. I see it after I notice people staring out the waiting room widow at DFW airport.

Statistically, it's one of many 6-foot freight boxes at gigantic DFW, but this box brings bustling activity to a prolonged halt in one corner. It's riveting, it commands attention, it looks so out of context. Very colorful and very still at a point of action, the end of a luggage conveyor.

A woman says, "It's Patricia somebody from Fort Worth."

I'm sure her family knows, and cares. Suddenly, unexpectedly, I care, too. This isn't just a statistic or a short article in the newspaper. This is a dead young woman, 50 yards away, in a white box in the sun. I feel surprisingly impacted, like something's wrong, like the flu coming on.

There are 2 flashing police cars, a hearse, several baggage handlers standing around, and 10 military members chatting, mildly rehearsing whatever they're going to do. This static scene lasts a half hour, with the casket just sitting in the sun, waiting. She's in no hurry.

Then it inexplicably starts. The military marches up and performs very slow, sharp, robotic moves for more than 5 minutes to unfold a flag for the casket. Really, they act robotic, except less fluid. Then they put her in the hearse.

In the airport waiting area, 50 people watch. Two men have hands over their hearts. I take a picture of the tarmac scene, and suddenly 15 people have cameras out. A woman explains to her daughter, "It's a soldier who died. We don't really think of this as real, until we see something like this …" Her explanation trails off.

I know we're all immune to tragedies and death in the news. Pain is just a picture, a bunch of words. War is an abstract concept unless you've been in battle. But this is a real body in a real box not far away from me. Even reading about this scene, you don't get all the impact. I wouldn't. But maybe you get the general idea.

After seeing pain in the news, sometimes we ask, "How does this affect me?" Do you feel proud the woman was protecting somebody's freedom, or at least our oil flow, when she died in Iraq? Or do you resolve to help stop the steady stream of dead Americans that will flow home for years?

The idea of injury and death in this war first became more disquietingly real when Cohen, my son's friend, put himself in harm's way by joining the Army. Recently in Afghanistan, a 50-caliber shell shattered his wrist. It's an occupational hazard. Construction workers fall off buildings. Soldiers get shot (though many of today's fighters joined the National Guard and various Reserves thinking their repeated, prolonged risk of blood and death weren't really part of the job). Cohen's injury is still sad. I can't even imagine Cohen in that box. My defenses go up to make it an abstract concept.

But seeing a real box containing a real body is not an abstract concept.

Coming soon to people you know: They'll get a body in a box. Or they'll get someone home who has a body or psyche shattered by shells. And, now or later, you'll have to decide how you'll deal with the reality of this war.

An ephemeral ode to my return: I'm back. Still wack. After the wife and I hit the sack and slack, I'm in circulation. The puppet touring season has ended. Overall, all went well, though, after not shaving for 6 weeks, my electric razor, which apparently has a lawnmower blade, chewed up my face.

More blog entries to come? Oh, yes. At DFW, I saw an Iraq casket coming off the plane. And there's more.

Logan, OH, the last fair of the season for me: I see literally 4 times more cognitively deficient people than anywhere else on the trip. You're not supposed to say "retarded"? It's a medical term, why not? Let's just say these folks have the full range of mental ability, just not a lot of it. For instance, one really sweet kid, age 13 going on 8, draws sour looks from his peers because he's often just slightly socially inappropriate. But he gives me a present every time he sees me. A small stuffed bear and a poster he won at carnival games; a plastic rosary from a church booth. Stuff like that.

The really obviously slow folks are all ages, from 8 – 50. They're benignly pleasant. Or a kid will just stare, hollow-eyed, when Granpa talks to him. (Of course there are some kid psychos attacking the puppetmobile, but not more attackers than other places.)

What's the deal with Logan, OH (roughly an hour southeast of Columbus)? Don't know. "Home of the Slow" is not in their advertising. It's a small town that does use the word "Appalachia" in some city promotions, though it doesn't look close to the Appalachians. A declining town that awhile back lost a big chunk of industry (bricks, glassware), along with the rest of the region. And lots of kids are with their cousins.

Okay, I know. Genetically that's not a problem. But I couldn't pass up the joke. Besides, in really tightly inbred populations, apparently it may be a problem (e.g., hemophiliacs in Russian aristocracy; also see Pulitzer-winning "Middlesex." It's a novel, but it's in print so it must be true.).

After several fairs with only nice, not-needy kids, I experience the full range of behavior in Logan. Kids constantly pounding on the trailer, demanding that Granpa appear. The puppet punchers. Numerous kids just wanting to visit with me, repeatedly, after shows. Truly unusual: an epidemic of gifts to me breaks out after kids see Granpa/me says nice things to the giver.

I could repel most puppetmobile riders with a request, or my second weapon: "I must have turned on my idiot magnet. It makes idiots stick all over my truck." Or stuff like: "Oh yeah, punch a puppet and ride on a garbage truck (the puppetmobile's current incarnation). You can brag about that to your friends."

Such remarks break my plan to kill my foes with niceness, but after several fairs awash with niceness, I'm caught off-guard and rely on my natural defenses. Most, but not all, the kids aren't so psycho that such tactics aren't effective.

With a headline like that, why bother writing the rest of the blog. Nothing could live up to that potential. But here it is:

Oops: Last email, I wrote the wrong web address. It should be puppettrip.blogspot.com for a peek at the hallowed Doc Rock. And I posted the same blog 3 times (curse you, blogspot).

Sex: Actually it's much more than sex. It's something I've avoided for the whole trip, mostly by ignoring it. The lonesomes.
Sneaks up at odd times. And I usually combat it by busily doing something, even if it's busily watching TV. But it sneaks up even when I'm physically and mentally occupied Like in Ricketts Glen State Park, where there's an amazing outbreak of waterfalls. And I'm wishing the wife is along to share the experience and just be there.
Then to make it worse, there's a guy and girl ambling around the base of one really great waterfall. The girl (who has not been beaten with an ugly stick) sees me, turns, walks over to her boyfriend and plants a big tongue-tangling kiss on him.
After a couple of seconds, I'm reasonably certain they're not going to drown in each other's saliva, so I move on.
Then to make the worse even worse, that night a couple in the next campsite, 40 yards away, has noisy sex. Or maybe it's rhythmic wife abuse.
(Whatever it is, it must scare off bears. Even clothed, I see no bears, again. Then I remember I snore. That probably makes the bears think there's a grumpy grizzly already in the territory.)

Truck: I've really tried to spiff up my language lately, but there's just no other word for it: It's a BAT (big-ass truck). About 6 feet longer than a long-bed, crew cab pickup. With 4 feet of oddly shaped, differing-height rear I can't even remotely see. It has the turning radius of a Boeing 747. And it's wide. My mini-SUV driving habits have long gone. I drive the BAT like an old lady would. Ambling along, backing up extra careful.
But I still get in tight spots. Like on a really dark interstate entry and exit, side by side, where the only thing that lights up is the "Wrong Way" sign suddenly in my headlights. So I make the truck and 16-foot trailer do a minuet backing up, forth and back (two nice cars block the oncoming lanes for me), until I make an actual O turn to wind up entering the correct lane.

You know the theory about a roomful of monkeys eventually typing Hamlet …

I found a small rock that says "Doc." Scratched on the surface during a small avalanche.

Actually, it says "Doc" with the numbers "1 & 2" vertically underneath. See photo. (Okay, maybe it says "Poc." But my divine interpretation is "Doc.")

The rock was face-down, but it has a "handle" on the back, like a rubber stamp.

The Doc Rock clearly is a sign.

Suggestions already include:

1) It's a sign that not everything is a sign.

2) I found a message depot from an international spy ring.

3) Graffiti by ancient astronauts.

4) A message that I should buy land in Waco and form a cult.

And your ideas are …. (email me or comment on the blog).

Here's the rock pile. Spotted it yet? (left center, but don't bother).

Consider the enormity of this occurrence:

350,000,000 years that rocks have been sliding down the Allegheny Mountains, while
10,000,000 springs, seeps and creeks cause fresh landslides, but only for
14,000 years, have people paused by the waters. It's been just
200+ years since English speakers appeared on the land. But eventually
1 person pauses below
1 cliffside seep, and sits on
1 pile of rocks where he finds
1 rock: the Doc Rock.

--------------------------- Gravy Update
It's yellowish. Gelatinous. Quivers when I poked the plate. Chicken-flavored, which was not surprising since 2/3 of the menu involved chicken or ham.

But this is on country-fried steak (probably a pre-fab patty). But it's good. Go figure.

Self-portrait: Notice the similarity between the Granpa puppet, left, and me (but he has more hair). Different color sleeves are "puppet arms"; I have a different puppet on the other arm at different times. In back, CO2 cylinder makes"steam" blast when machine eats Granpa.

Stage, below: The stage area with the Super Veggie Juice Machine that eats Granpa. Spongebob undies (center) pop out when "removed" as he travels through the machine.

Trees hanging from cliff: Grow where you're planted. Dying but still trying (aren't we all).

Last two pics: Waterfalls (from among 21 on 1 trail @ Ricketts Glen State Park (PA).