Ahoy hoy,

Been on vacation in Colorado for the past week. Pictures forthcoming, nearly all of which feature Athena in her first hiking gig west of the Mississippi. She did extremely well for a sixteen-month old puppy, especially in the stupifyingly boring, sixteen-hour drive from Madison to Denver.

In case you didn’t know, Motel 6 has a “one pet per room” policy that worked out great for us. Athena is a very well-mannered dog although does get a bit barky at times, especially when confronted with new and unusual situations. She’s gentle and Amy thinks she would never hurt a fly, but I think if provoked or if she thought we were in danger she would happily rip a roll of carpet off your arm, preferably with the arm still in it. The first night in the hotel she kept nosing under the curtain to get a better look at the rif-raff making noise in the nearby parking lot and didn’t sleep very well. But the thought of her chewing on furniture or relieving herself in the room is as abhorrent to her as it is to us. Two steps outside the room is another matter completely and she has, tragically, let fly in the foyer of my brother’s Chicago condo. Nobody’s perfect. There’s also the small matter of having all the Motel 6’s in Des Moines being fully booked at midnight and being stuck without another hotel that accepts dogs and thereby being forced to drive on late into the night feeling so tired that the car seems to float during lane changes and having to constantly rake your tongue against your teeth and pinch your face to stay awake, but that only happened one night out of ten.

Audio books enjoyed on the trip included, in the order of listening pleasure:

• To Conquer the Air is about the Wilbur Wright and Orville Redenbacher’s discovery of human flight. I found the experiments’ progressions and the bros’ adherence to the scientific process fascinating but Amy found it dull, dull, dull. You never much hear about the guys who were close to making the discover but, for whatever reason, got beaten to the punch by folks who become household names. I had no idea the race to be the first man in flight was so competitive and ruthlessly cutthroat. My favorite audio book of the trip.
• Endurance is the story of Ernest Shakleton and his aborted trip to travel across the Antarctic continent. The glow of this fascinating tale was diminished somewhat as we saw an extraordinary photographic exhibit from the Endurance’s (that’s the ship’s name) chief picture snapper. In many cases, a picture is worth a thousand words and there’s no substitute for actually seeing an enormous, ocean-worthy craft seized and eventually pulverized by an ocean of ice. The story is incredible though especially considering the crew was stranded on ice floes eating seal meat for sixteen months before [spoiler warning] Ernie et al beat all the odds sailing a thousand miles in a bathtub to find a rescue ship, and recover all the crew members without a single fatality.[/spoiler]
• Finally, Arcanum was the last and least of the bunch. It already had a strike against it as it’s a book on tape instead of CD. It’s about European porcelain. I would love to write a spoiler but there isn’t one. Here’s the plot. A goofball guy lands himself in hot water by faking he can turn lead into gold using a sleight-of-hand trick. The king thinks that’s pretty neat and captures the guy, saying “turn lots of lead into gold or die for being a charlatan.” The guy ends up making a pretty good replication of Oriental porcelain instead. Who knew the 18th-century Europeans were so bonzo over porcelain? Not me. But I do know now. Boy, do I know now. When I popped in the last tape (six hours of the history of European porcelain, by the way) the infinitely-bored Amy asked me if I was studying for my porcelain boards. ‘Nuff said.

In other, sadder news, my wife’s Aunt Judy unexpectedly passed away last week. We all loved Aunt Judy dearly and we will miss her tremendously. She was only 56 years old. Her obituary can be found here.