Be Careful What You Wish For

That Crazy Little Thing Called Hugs

Maybe I'm getting to be a softie, but lately I wish I was like everybody else. Not about the walking thing - there's plenty of other people with disabilities too - but about something simpler and more basic.

I'm not a touchy-feely guy. I wasn't brought up that way. My family were not big huggers. In our working-class neighborhood I don't think most families were. Direct eye contact and a firm handshake was how you got around.

Times have changed. Guys hug guys, everybody hugs everybody. I think it's nice, but it has nothing to do with me, just like smart phones have nothing to do with me. Why? Because right before they both came in, hugs and smart phones, I done gone and got quadriplegic.

It's been years since smart phones became ubiquitous and indispensable but they're still as mysterious to me as Mr. Spock's tricorder. With hugs, I sort of tilt my head and study the way it's done, the same way I do with good dancing. (Raising hand. Terrible dancer. Still.) All the pieces seem to fold and fit together, like so. OK. Now I've got that stored away.

Your human rituals are most curious, Captain.

There are an intrepid few who try to hug me. These are sweet people, because it's hard to do. In my wheelchair I'm surrounded by a hive of switches and wires everywhere, and people don't know if they'll be hitting an ejection switch or messing me up positionwise or even hurting me. For the record, they probably won't do any of these, but what we're left with is a pantomime of awkwardness.

I give them so much credit though because at this point I go around like an iRobot. Everybody loves an iRobot. They clean up after you. They beep and squawk like R2-D2. Your cat can ride around on it. They bounce around the room like busy beavers, filling gaps in conversation. They can wear Groucho glasses like ours does. He's named Bob Roomba, after our friend, entertainer Bob Rumba, who also wears Groucho-type glasses. Me, I drive my wheelchair with a head array: My head presses on sensors in my headrest. People stare and wonder how's it moving - like an iRobot. I too run into walls. I too jerk back and forth like an iRobot, unless my headrest is in the perfect position. People stare at us in wonder, the iRobot and me, and stay the hell out of our way. Everybody loves an iRobot, but you don't hug one.

What the brave huggers are trying to do is puncture the force field around my wheelchair. There's a personal zone we all inhabit, and you just don't go traipsing into someone else's zone. I've got a big wheelchair, and it's got a big zone. My buffer is pretty large, I think it's the front-to-back length times the size of my large treaded tires raised to the power of the number of muted expletives overheard while wrangling the machine to go the way I want. I don't blame you people for keeping away. If I were in the same room with me, I'd hop on a piece of furniture.

Plus, truth be told, I was an awkward person even before the spinal column went wacko. Do you know that guy you come across on the sidewalk every five years or so who, when you go right he goes right, and when you go left he goes left, back and forth, back and forth? That was me.

Bob Roomba sees you.

In my buffer zone I observe you people with the hugs, and realize what related things I'm missing. Like goofing around with kids. Kids are the best. I get along better with them than anyone else. Kids like close contact play: chasing, hide and seek, making haunted houses, even reading to them you have to be right there with them. I do my best with what I've got, with jokes, noises, faces, but those are mind tricks and they see through those quickly. You don't form lasting bonds with mind tricks.
So for once, I wish to be like everybody else. If only for a day, a free trial.

There's a joke about a retired couple walking the beach in the morning and they find a lantern in the surf. When the husband picks it up, a genie pops out and says, "I'll give you one wish." Then the wife is horrified when she hears her husband say, "I want a wife who's 40 years younger than me." And presto, he turns 100.

Unfortunately, presto, now I am like everybody else. Nobody is hugging. And that's not the way I wanted this to go.

You can stay in the no-hug zone until the coast is clear but then I want you people out. Looks like you've got something good to look forward to.

Sunny St. Petersburg FL - murals and munchies at Love Food Café = many smiles

On a beautiful mid-February day, it was cool outside and besides we didn't have enough time to hit the beaches, but definitely wanted to see the Salvador Dali Museum and the murals all around this town. There's beaches all up and down the Sunshine State, right?

I don't know when it all started but there are dozens of murals everywhere (map) and even though I know they are everywhere around Chicago too, I simply never get tired of exuberant street art like this (another map).

We'd covered a lot of distance for a couple of days to reach St. Pete, and had another big day of driving ahead (to Labelle FL to surprise my folks), so mural-gazing made for a fun and relaxing day. All afternoon it sounded like we were watching fireworks: ooh... ahhh... what the... More often than not, the work is mind-blowingly creative. A lot of them are around the lively wheelchair-accessible tourist drag on Central Avenue, though we covered a wider area by staying in the car.

Like when you're watching fireworks, it helps to have some picnic along. Our picnic was carryout from Love Food Café, 2057 Central Avenue, St. Petersburg, FL, 727-317-2034 lured by great reviews on Yelp.

What a lunch. The reuben sandwich packed a spicy black pepper-type kick behind each bite, and came with a side of dill potato salad. Mab's fiesta salad was the daily special with avocado slices, black beans and a lot of other good stuff. It and the potato salad tasted so fresh. It was packaged in cardboard cartons. So satisfying for $10 a plate, and we showed around our blissed-out post-lunchtime grins to the rest of the murals and then to the Dali Museum. Wonderful day.

Salvador Dali Museum, St. Petersburg FL - Brilliant art & wchair access (& Janice)

1 Dali Blvd, St. Petersburg, FL, (727) 823-3767, $10-25.
Website

5/24/20 Update: Still closed due to COVID. Call first, (727) 823-3767.

First I'm going to give you a name. Janice. Now remember that and read on.

If you like art, go. Here is the largest collection of the surrealist artist's work in America. Located on the marina waterfront of a city filled with incredible street murals, this building features a twisting belt of domed windows that bring to mind blue fly's eyes, definitely strange but not very interesting or evocative of the work inside. (Although there is a cool concrete spiral staircase that rises into the domed skylight. Of course Mab had to climb it. She sent me up alone in an elevator and I met her up top. It's the simple pleasures.) The building looks better on the website but try as we might, we never saw it from such a flattering angle. Maybe it's from a boat? No matter, what's inside will set you on fire - and the staff is exceptional too, as you'll see.



The collection includes some of the most famous works, including several enormous wall-sized paintings, and offers a number of supporting resources like apps and self-guided tours. The museum was built in 2011, so it is modern and accessible. Someone with the museum followed up with us while we were parking and transferring, telling us about the museum and the half-price tickets starting at  5 p.m. on Thursdays, their late night. ($12 instead of $24 per person.)

Mab and I were in awe seeing the works we'd loved for so long, and what enhanced our experience and made it even more special was our tour guide, Janice. I've got no knocks on the other guides and I'm sure they're all sharp, but everyone, especially if you are in a wheelchair, call in advance for Janice's tour schedule. She is both a walking, talking art encyclopedia and a fairy godmother of accessibility. Not only was she incredibly knowledgeable after 22 years of doing this, even traveling with Dali's widow in Spain (this is definitely someone you'd want to buy dinner for), and renders all the background and mystery to these mindbending work. It's like experiencing The Da Vinci Code - Dali Edition. But then she also gave me in my wheelchair the prime spot of the tour. While she talked, rattling off info to the group, she would also be cueing me with her eyes, fingers, flashlight where to park for best viewing or where to maneuver on the way to the next painting. She moved the group along at my pace, or backed them off, or made room so I never got stuck at the back of the pack staring at other people's rearends. Afterwards it turned out she was parked next to us, and she explained that there was someone in her life who used a wheelchair. I don't know how she did it all but I've been in a wheelchair for 27 years now (holy crap!) and I can't tell you what how great this was and she was. How good? A couple hundred miles away we camped next to David and Nancy from Maine, totally cool people, and they're like, "If you're ever in St. Petersburg go to The Dali Museum and there's this incredible docent named Janice…"

"We know, we know!"

Disappearing Bust of Voltaire

The online collection will make for a good evening of quarantine viewing. 

Next blog, the murals of St. Pete and a sweet vegan lunch at Love Food Central.

Gatoring

The Mighty Mab is training for the Big Virtual Climb, so we've been working out together, which probably sounds funny because I'm quadriplegic. But actually she works out, and I "gator." What's gatoring? Here's what I wrote about it a while ago:

A friend wrote me about an article I published.  Reading it, she was all pumped about getting back to the gym.  You bet I was flattered, and happy she was taking care of herself.  I may have thrown on some sweats and worked up a little sympathy lather myself.

A few months later, I heard from her again.  What was I thinking, she said, I'm no gym-rat.  I really tried, she said, really I did.  Maybe she'd get back to some sort of exercise, the letter continued, but thanks, at least your words were nice.

I was a little bit bummed, a little bit let down.  But also relieved: how could I tell her I'm lucky when I can get myself to exercise!  (Wicked columnist.)

I'll never set work-out records.  Even though it's good for me, even though I feel great afterward.  It's just that physical exertion, like doing the taxes or visiting the dentist, is infinitely easy to put off.  For most of us, any old excuse will do. 

But I wonder if it's how you frame it. Like, you don't have to start working out. We don't have to begin exercising every day.  We don't have to get cut and sexy like the moody underwear models are.  All we have to do is move, today, right now.  We can just have a good time.  We can even gator.

When I was a kid, we gatored.  Walking along, without warning we would drop to our backs and begin shaking and convulsing.  Sort of like the players that toppled over in the very old electric football games, remember those?  Those games with the little sponge footballs, where the entire football field vibrates?  Those fallen players you watched spasming in front of you?  They were gatoring, like I used to do. 

Remember David Byrne in the Once in a Lifetime video, cuffing himself in the forehead?  Early mass-market gatoring.

Gatoring was funny, it was unpredictable, it was fun, it was necessary.  The weirder the place, the better.  Best of all, there were no rules, you couldn't do anything wrong.  You just gatored. 

At a stoplight, sometimes it were a time fer a-gatorin'. On the sidewalk, on the lawn, on the hood of my buddy's Camaro (LIE: He would have killed me).

Wearing our black tails, we gatored at the senior prom.  God, the people there hated me.  They stopped on the dance floor and scowled, like "you freaks are ruining our prom memories." But we were making perfect memories for us.

I didn't learn gatoring technique from a book, or rent a gatoring exercise video.  I just did it, because it came naturally.

Now it's 20 years on, and we don't gator anymore.  We're too stiff and serious to gator.  That is part of the problem with maturing, you freeze up.  You become inflexible, you calcify, upstairs and down.  You get fat.  Forgetful, too.  Everything scheduled.

But I was listening to one of my favorite radio shows, called "Brain Brew."  It's about exchanging ideas between entrepreneurs, inventors and other creative types.  One of their weekly segments is called The Thirty-Second Guru, where a guest describes his philosophy in 30 ticks of the clock.  The guru who caught my attention was a Scottish fitness consultant (I can't make this stuff up, people) who spoke like he had a caffeine habit--he made Billy Connolly sound like Lurch from "The Addams Family."  But what really got my attention was that he was talking about gatoring!  Not the word gatoring (he couldn't possibly be that cool), but the concept. 

He said, Right now, start flailing.  Do it for 10 minutes, no rules, just go ballistic, kinetic.  Dive on that couch.  Flap around.  Do your best Mick Jagger, or at least Joe Cocker.  Shake your tail feather.  Windmill your arms.  Hop up and down.  Tumble.  Scream.  Squirm.  Twirl.  Spin your head, Linda Blair.  Shimmy, shake, rattle and roll.  If your spouse might yell or make derogatory comments, or you'll be embarrassed, then wait until they leave: screw 'em, they're missing out!  Do it until you are laughing, then rinse and repeat.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is gatoring.

People don't exercise because it requires this huge amount of effort every day, getting ready, getting the motivation and energy to do so, taking the shower afterward.  Myself included.  We don't need to do all that.  We just need to be active.  We just need to gator.  It is so good for you, prolonging your life and making it better, keeping the sex drive going strong, all kinds of rocking things we don't even know.  Did I say yet that it's funny?

My friend would sometimes find someone to watch the kid for 20 minutes.  Then she would pay for a carwash.  While the car was going through, she would scream her fool head off, and gator like there was no tomorrow!  She can scream, too!  If it was especially good, she might go across the street to Dunkin' Donuts for a coffee and cigarette.

That's it!  And guess what?  Gatoring is part of the new food pyramid they released this week--it's true!  So, gator, baby!  Gator for your life!

Go Mab!

Everglades National Park - Shark Valley and Gulf Islands Visitor Centers

In the morning, Shark Valley VC was crowded inside and out. Must mean it's good, right? There is a guided tram tour that I think is accessible, but the wait was a couple of hours and we nixed it. Out back leads to a boardwalk trail taking you through thick trees and swamp brush. Like the Anhinga Trail, it is solid, straight and easy-going for anyone in a chair. There was a small alcove patio where we saw a short ranger program. What can I say, I like rangers, like I like astronauts. Wholesome Wheelie.

Then we hit a paved trail that literally went for miles along a tiny canal with some water life to see. The highlight was a mother alligator and her nest of babies on the trailside, all clearly visible and only a few feet away. The Park Service recommends at least 10 feet distance from alligators and other wildlife, but this was right beside the path and you couldn't help but gape. There were at least a half-dozen little ones, really amazing.

Baby alligators there, I swear.

The trail itself was in decent shape and as wide as a street, with plenty of room for all the walkers, cyclists and strollers coming and going. The mother and baby alligators were one of the most memorable sights on the trip. Otherwise, without the tram tour we could have skipped Shark Valley. There were very cool things waiting elsewhere.

We drove to Gulf Islands Visitor Center at the northeast corner of the park, and only 10 miles from our campground, Trail Lakes Campground in Ochopee (more below). Yet here you drive US Highway 41,which if you take it all the way north, turns into Lake Shore Drive, so Chicago and the Everglades are on the same street. (Maybe that explains Chance the Snapper.) There's a 20-foot wide channel running most of the way. Its waters, tall grasses and mangrove trees were thick with waterbirds like ahinga and hurons and especially alligators that were visible to Mab even while she was driving. 41 runs through Big Cypress National Preserve, which looks like the grassy marshlands that we all think of as the Everglades. Mab thought it was funny that most of what we saw of the Everglades looked like prairie and forest. But you won't see but a fraction of it: It's a million-and-a-half acres. Along the way are dozens of tourist traps, gator shows and also the iconic airboats. You know I was scoping out those airboats! Most have bench seats or individuals seats that wouldn't offer the side support I'd need with weak upper-body strength. There were a couple with armrests that I might have been strapped into, but we didn't have the time to check them out.

From Gulf Islands VC, 90-minute boat tours leave every hour. They cost $40 and are wheelchair accessible. The concessionaire was surprised to learn that the one operating out of Flamingo Visitor Center doesn't offer accessibility. We got a few people to put in word about accessibility with the Park Service. Anyway, the crewmembers gave Mab and me the Leo and Kate I'm-the-king-of-the-world spot front and center. This part of the Everglades is called the Ten Thousand Islands. On a cloudy and breezy day we set out on a course between dozens of keys or small islands lining the southwestern coast of Florida.

Up ahead flew a bald eagle, the first we've ever seen in the wild. And then we found a pod of dolphins - or they found us. They were everywhere, including one that popped up right up below us. The ranger onboard said that dolphins are so smart and agile that they rarely get struck by vessels, they only like playing around. They were smaller and darker than their presence on the open seas, because they eat smaller fish and swim in murkier waters here. Ride was a blast.

The wind kicked up and the temperature dropped as we headed back. There were shivers on deck, but I was into it: I lowered my head into the wind and let it scratch my scalp which I can no longer itch. Anybody watching would be like, wheelchair boy's got a roly-poly head. If I had a hind leg like a dog it'd be kicking. Worth the cost of the ride alone!

Once ashore we hiked a little shoreline path through some woods to a timber observation tower - Mab needed to do some stairs! It turned out to be only three stories for $2, but it was fun watching her go after it. She doesn't mess around: you'd think there was a pot of gold at the top! On the way down she recited Juliet's monologue to Romeo watching down below. (They sure don't make Romeo's like they used to.)

Back on US-41 it's impossible to miss the Big Cypress National Preserve/Oasis Visitor Center. The huge deck along the front is lined with people, and since it's the Everglades you can guess why: there's gators aplenty in the canal just 10 feet below. A gangway of gators, shall we say, great big ones.

Here's where we also found out that dozens of panthers had already been killed on 41 in January and February alone. Drivers, slow down! By the way, we also drove an extra loop looking for sights just north of off US-41, and while we passed a few Panther Crossing signs that looked promising, we saw nothing and wasted an hour on the slow, rough gravel road. OK, have another gator:

We ended the day driving around Chokoloksy and Everglades City, a couple of small old seaside towns with a bit of history in them.

Everglades City

Trail Lakes Campground in Ochopee, FL, 239-695-2275, is a private campground, a bit rough and run down, but finding an open site this close at this time of year is something. Our site beside a tiny pond was gravel and grass, and not quite level. The Everglades mosquitoes are here in force, which makes the way you enter the toy hauler (where an entire wall flips down for a ramp) crucial. Technique: Turn out the lights for a minute or two beforehand, then drop that ramp and rocket your wheelchair inside. We were so busy and tired by the end of the day that we didn't even check for TV reception, but I think I remember a decent Verizon cell signal. (Didn't even journal it. zzzz) Nor did we make it into the Skunk Ape Museum at the camp entrance. Mr. Skunk Ape is the stanky swamp cousin of Bigfoot. There are a couple of life-sized Skunkers at the site, which I would love to have outside of my house, and there's a dinosaur too. Check-in was a little bit strange, but that was the tempo of the place. Electric, water, I don't remember if it was sewer but dump station, for the low $50's. It's not great, but the location definitely is, and here met the coolest bunch of folks of our entire trip, some of whom stay here every winter. For them we might come back.

Everglades National Park - Flamingo Campground & Visitor Center

We returned from this lifetime kind of trip around the Gulf Coast right before the coronavirus spread over the nation and our minds. I'm posting this anyway as a diversion and hopefully it will help somebody months from now. This was an odyssey filled with magic moments, and we feel so lucky to have done it when we did, and when we could have. I think everyone understands by now: do the things you want to do, don't wait. - Wheelie

Park HQ: 40001 State Rd. 9336, Homestead, FL, 305-242-7700

Website: https://www.nps.gov/ever/index.htm

Accessibility Features: https://www.nps.gov/ever/planyourvisit/accessibility.htm

Park Map: https://www.nps.gov/ever/planyourvisit/maps.htm

Flamingo Visitor Center 239-695-2945

The Everglades is a massive national park in the vein of Yellowstone, with several visitor stations spread many miles apart. For instance, from our entrance at Ernest S. Coe Visitor Center some 30 miles southwest of Miami, it took an hour's drive southwest to reach Flamingo Campground inside of the park. Most of the terrain on the way looked like tallgrass prairie, not the marshes we expected after driving this way over the coastland bayous on I-10. During our stay we learned that the Everglades was the first park established not for its physical beauty but to preserve the area's plant and animal life. Its success in that regard is argued forever but I'd wager it's good it's here.

Flamingo Campground

We spent two nights in the Everglades Flamingo Campground. Pull-through, level pad, 30 amp, with water and dump station. Ours was an ADA site and easy to get around. It came with a really cool picnic table with one side extended out so that I could drive underneath. Huge site, and surprisingly not a lot of campers considering that the rest of Florida was jampacked. The campground is ringed by trees and we saw a beautiful sunset here, but of itself not much to look at. Only a few hundred yards behind us was Florida Bay, which is basically the entire submerged tip of Florida, and a few hundred yards away from that, the Flamingo Visitor Center. It's always a delight, the air is just different, staying inside a national park. I get the night-before-Disney-World flutters in my stomach!

Flamingo Visitor Center

The next morning at Flamingo VC, five minutes away, right off the bat we made the first big mark on our checklist: a hulking crocodile lay 40 feet away across the water from the visitor center. He was so large we could not even see the whole of him in the tall grass, and of course a couple of kayakers poked their noses in until someone at the center called a warning. Then right overhead in a light fixture a family of ospreys kept their nest, with the little ones just visible. Nearby on the other side of a footbridge, a large croc floated eerilt still below. Now you're reading that right: these were crocodiles, not alligators, because at Flamingo the water is saltwater. Further north and east you'll find freshwater and the alligators that the Everglades is known for. But according to a ranger, this area of the Everglades is one of the few places you can see this type of crocodile in the lower 48.

Also at the same visitor center swim the manatees. All day people tried to glimpse these shy mammals, but at 3:30 PM they really turned out and we got to see them up close. A ranger said it happens daily. The manatees surface right up to the marina looking for food, algae. Mab was the first to see one. We wondered aloud if we might, and she looked down and she and the manatee were staring eye-to-eye! Then of course the rest of us ran over and scared it away. But now there was no shortage of sightings, near and far. The rangers said they're as friendly and shy as they look. They're definitely chill. Mab just brought me a vodka and tonic as I write this up, and the olives floating around in the bubbles remind me of how the manatees would pop up and just kind of drift down again out of sight.

Flamingo VC

A big disappointment was the charter boat run by a concessionaire that was not wheelchair accessible. We never got an explanation why, but another concessionaire at Gulf Islands Visitor Center the next day was mighty surprised to hear - because they do offer accessible boat tours at Gulf Islands. At Gulf Islands there are concerns about the tide and the weather affecting the boarding of the vessel. Think you crossing a ramp between the peer and the boat, which is what this is, and the angle has to be doable. But at Gulf Islands, most of the time they get it done. We and the Gulf Islands concessionaire let park officials know our feelings.

Accessible trail along Florida Bay

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Florida Bay

Also at Flamingo we heard a talk by a ranger about gators and manatees. We could pick his brain about finding manatees and flamingos (Mrazek, below). We also enjoyed a traveling exhibit table with skull and wood specimens, as well as the knowledge and people skills of the parks worker (I don't think she was a ranger) who not only spooled out her expertise but also handled a couple of rude characters and still left smiles on everyone's faces. She just impressed me and was fun to talk to, which is a common experience with NPS staff.

Mrazek Pond

To reach Mrazek Pond was a half-hour drive. Mrazek is a unique site, the pond lined with birds, scores of them, probably hundreds, including ibises, pelicans, anhingas, egrets, turkey vultures and roseate spoonbills (flamingos). The sights and sounds filled us, and the dozen or so birders who were there in full kit (outdoor wear and chairs, photographic equipment, telescopes, video, computers, etc.), with a thrill that we did not want to end. But the afternoon was getting late.

We learned late in the day about the Anhinga Trail. It was must-see. The daylight was ticking away.

Anhinga Trail

Turns out that the trail is part of Royal Palm Visitor Center, which is all the way back a couple of miles from the park entrance at Ernest S. Coe VC. It was spontaneous: we were making this up as we went along. The drive did not seem that long, but yes, by the time we arrived it was the last minutes before dark. In that light, Royal Palm and its parking lot with spacious ADA slots looked like new, but we headed straight back to the trail, which also was in outstanding shape.

Anhinga really is must-see, especially from a wheelchair. It was a joy taking this thing, a boardwalk built just above a grassy swamp, smooth and straight and flush, with high railings for folks to lean on safely as you look all around you. When we were there the rapidly fading daylight severely compromised what we could see, so we were taking this thing pretty darned fast yet I felt nothing but secure. With the sounds and smells and sensations, it felt like we were in nature here. There were things splashing out there, animals calling, insects waking up to do the night shift. On the next night was a scheduled nighttime flashlight trail program with a ranger to show you exactly what's out there. Wish we could have done it. But we couldn't and we didn't care, we loved it anyway. Anyway, the boardwalk looked and felt new and sturdy and seemed to be built with almost a CCC-type quality, if you know what I mean. Definitely do this during the daytime though.

By the way, Off! repellent totally works. We'd heard there were mosquitos here, and that's no lie. Duh, swamp, right? Anhinga Trail was maybe the second time in my life I'd ever asked for Off! It's hard for me to wash it off, and the critters usually don't fool with me too much: if they do, they get MS. Bah! But on the Anhinga Trail at night, no, mosquitos are another kind of crazy. At least three were eating my face when Mab sprayed me. Saved! It was strange feeling them everywhere around me even if they weren't sinking their fangs. At one point Mab flicked on the mini-flashlight so we could read a sign, and we both gasped. Swirling around my head like a halo was a constellation of frenzied skeeters, trying to break through the force-field. Wow, the things we do in the dark.

And get this: as we were leaving, a minivan was unloading. It was two elderly couples, with both guys in push wheelchairs. They told us it was their second time to Anhinga, it was so good. But they didn't bring bug spray! What?

Anyway, we let them use ours, and then we drove to the camper in the dark. We were going to sleep hard. It was a great day.

Next, Shark Valley and the Ten Thousand Islands.

Live Your Someday Now

Having a good time following this family of full-time RVers. He's paraplegic and the whole family and their trip reports are very can-do and fun. They have a couple of YouTube channels. This is a man to talk to.

Meanwhile I'm writing up our latest odyssey. Just got back and we're digging out from the unfinished business while we were away. You should have seen the bundle from the post office. Hut-hut, HIKE!

But we'll get this routine down. We got to, because we're already itching to go.