It's Better in Wyoming.

so I intended to head home this weekend (my childhood home, I mean), and then on to Rapid City for a friend's birthday party. Except the new auto I bought earlier in the day gave me the evil warning light, and I stayed home and waited for the car dealership to tell me that the sensor- jiggy was dead. Now it's all better. I hope. Instead of me heading north, my dad came down to Laramie to hang out with me and we hiked Medicine Bow Peak. This is the first time I've attempted and not completed the hike. Not because we ran out of energy, but because the clouds overhead threatened ominously. Like: "We are thunderheads of doom. All ye who continue upward shall be struck down. You have been warned." Or, as my dad said: "It's not the 'getting wet' that bothers me--it's the sudden drying out that I don't like." Which makes me wonder: would getting hit by lightning really dry you and your clothes out as it passed on through? Anyway,

Frontier Airlines offers a choice of Sun Chips or Doritos on their flights. No pretzels. On the flight from San Diego back to Denver, I'd say Sun Chips was the top selection by about 5 to 1. According to the flight attendant, this is not always true. (For the record, I chose Sun Chips.) She says that kids always choose Doritos, that California is firmly Sun Chips, and that flights to the Midwest--especially Texas--are typically weighted towards Doritos. (For the record: Texas is the fattest state in the nation; home of five of the ten fattest US cities. This may be coincidental.)

So I'm now going to post a bit about the DEMOLITION DERBY, which actually happened the weekend before my trip out here to CA. Backing up even further: in the few days leading up to the DEMOLITION DERBY, it rained pretty heavily, even producing a bit of flooding. This was bad news for the derby: the cars had a tough, tough time getting much traction in 10 inches of mud. The result: a not very demolishing derby. Slo-mo derby. Cars that were disqualified not because they were intentionally trying to stay out of the action but because they were axle-deep in mud and couldn't make a hit. Lame-oh: nowhere near the fun of DEMOLITION DERBY 2005. I had promised several people that DERBY '07 would be barrels of fun. Instead, we left early. Here's a pic that Kaijsa took of the contestants, though: Annalee said she didn't make it to the derby because of the big rains in the days leading up to the derby. The current of run-off was strong enough, as she was driving home, to rip of

So I'm not actually on the beach right now. But I was, yesterday morning, walking in my bare feet down the coast with my Uncle Rich, watching dogs running down the beach and kids playing the sand and a couple of dudes playing what looked to be "beach bocce." Right now I'm sitting in the E Street Cafe in Encinitas, trying to capture what it is that I've done and seen and learned on this quick trip. The highlights include: *taking the South Harbor tour and learning that the USNS Mercy is the largest hospital ship in the world, with the capacity for 1000 beds. *realizing that I could actually WANT to live in a place like this, a place so different that Laramie and Wyoming and seasons and rural-ness and mountains. * seeing Rembrandts and Monets and Manets with my aunt, an artist, who actually helped me appreciate some of the art I was looking at instead of just responding to it on a purely emotional level. Real artworks are cool. I'm trying to lay claim to a paint