Although it’s not quite Paris in the spring, Reno in the summer is definitely a place to visit. The mountains are beautiful, the air is clean, the buffets are reasonably priced, and they even have showgirls! But, all that aside, I think I’ve discovered the best keep secret of Reno - it is only a short drive away to some of the best 4×4 trails in the west Now, this was my first trip out “Jeepin’” or “off-roading” or “4×4′ing,” but it will definitely not be my last.

I had spent the last year or so listening to Darrol and Todd, my friends from Reno, go on and on about how much fun these trips are. How great the scenery is How clean the air is How blue the water is. How…well, manly it is to go bounding over rocks and other terrain that no sane person would consider walking over let alone driving over.

Suffice to say, I was a wee bit skeptical. Come on, what was the lure here?

It was the pictures that did me in. Shots of their Jeeps twisted at strange angles on rocks the size of small filling cabinets. Shots of their Jeeps up to the door frames in water. Shots of their Jeeps parked in front of the bluest lake I’ve ever seen.

I think they could tell. Conversation now included the different modifications they made to their Jeeps - it seemed that they were welding something to them every other week. Then they started bandying about names of the trails they had “run” when I talked to them - “Deer Valley Trail,” “Fordyce Creek,” and the “Rubicon”. Hell, even I - from the decidedly more geographically boring state of Ohio had heard of that one!

By this point, I was ready to go. Over the next few conversations, I nonchalantly inquired if they would mind if I tagged along on a trip. Well, in all honesty, it could actually have been better stated as “begged” and “pleaded,” but the other way sounds much more masculine.

In a strange reversal of the way things normally work out, it happened that a work visit to Reno to install and configure some new server equipment coincided with a weekend they were planning on heading out to do a trail run. I had originally planned on returning from my trip on Friday, but with a bit more of that “begging” and “pleading” bit from above (although this time aimed in the direction of my wife) I was able to extend my trip out through Sunday.

Which left all day Saturday for my introductory “rock crawl” with the boys.

To be continued…..

Last Saturday Alex and I went up to NASA Glenn Research Center with a good friend of mine and his daughter for NASA’s “Public Open House” event. I’m a big fan of NASA, but to be honest with you I have been burnt one time too many by NASA events that have all the excitement of watching paint dry. Which, as a side note, is something that I really never understood. How is it that you can make space exploration sound so dull?

But that was not the case this time - NASA seems to have become quite a bit better at catering to the non-geek demographic at some point in time. Oh sure, you did have your occasional exhibit showing you some very esoteric techniques for de-icing a plane wing at 42,000 feet - but on the whole, there were plenty of interesting things for the kids to do. And, as there usually is, there were quite a bit of free things - maps, pins, buttons, stickers, booklets, etc.

Alex’s day was made when he met and received and autograph from Michael Foreman , who is scheduled to fly on STS-120, a shuttle flight slated to help finish the ISS (Internation Space Station) Core. This flight has been put on hold following the Columbia disaster and has yet to be rescheduled. Alex walked right up to Captain Foreman and told him that “I’m going to be an astronaut when I grow up!” He’s cute like that, sometimes.

The “Sinking Feeling” award I modestly give to myself for this week. One of the last things we did during our day at NASA was to attend a small program on Mars Exploration that was being carried live by NASA TV. During one point of the presentation, they conducted a Q&A session with the audience. I wasn’t really paying that much attention to what was going on until I realized that my son was holding the microphone and preparing to ask a question. Or at least what I hoped was going to be a question, and not him providing a few Spongebob Squarepants quotes, or commentary on his butt.
Well, I need not have been concerned - my son had some hard questions for the NASA engineers on the use of airbags for the landers. Specifically, the all important question of “what happens of the airbags don’t have air in them.” He seemed relatively satisfied with the answer (the lander goes “splat”), but you never know with him. I’m afraid he’ll be filing for the release of test data under the Freedom of Information Act at some point….

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Alex is fascinated with all things Harry Potter - there is something in J.K. Rowlings’ world that just gets him. OK, it gets me too. And Beth. And Steven. And Malinda. And probably about several hundred million other people around the world as well.

As one of those “Daddy/Son” things we like to do, we’ve just now started reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. We’ve already read the first three books together, but this one is probably going to take us a bit longer to finish since I just noticed that it weighs in at around a thousand or so pages.

This whole process of reading the book before the film is something we’ve started recently. Previously (Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets) we would see the movie and then read the book. But that caused us some problems. You see, we ran into some issues with Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets when Alex was confronted by several - to him at least - key differences between the screenplay and the book. To say it caused a bit of cognitive dissonance would be an understatement. Just think of a 6 year old yelling, “but that’s not how it happened in the movie” over and over and over. And over. Then think of trying to explain why the movie is different from the book. And then cycle back to the yelling bit above.

That’s why we read the book first now.

At this point, we are about 4 pages into the novel and my son has probably come up with about twice that number of questions about what we’ve read so far. At some point in time, I forsee myself suggesting he email the author. But, my fear is that he will. He’s quite the inquisitive - and impulsive - little guy at times.
Just like his dad.

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Alex Schmidt (RF) of the Manchester Indians had a breakout game against the Coventry Indians in a 12 to 7 loss last evening at Lockhart Field. After being mired in a slump for the last few weeks, the powerhitting outfielder broke out of it with a vengeance - his 3 for 3 performance included a double, a run scored, and an RBI.

Alex’s first hit - a seeing eye single past the pitcher - came in the second inning. But with bases loaded, the Indian’s attack faltered and Alex was stranded at third.

In the fourth inning, Alex slapped a single to the second baseman and was able to beat out the throw to first. However, once again the stellar defense of the Coventry Indians short-circuited the Manchester rally.

The real excitement came in the 6th Inning. Alex lead off the inning with a standup double, and was able to move to third on Will Morris’ fielder’s choice to the pitcher. A defensive mix-up by the Coventry team enabled the fleet Schmidt to take home on a bang-bang play at the plate.

However, despite Schmidt’s fireworks the Manchester Tribe was unable to overcome the Coventry lead.

The Manchester Indians have two remaining games - this Wednesday and next Monday.

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You know, on one hand he was a pain in the ass - a big fat cat that would always manage to get stuck under your feet. And get into everything - it got so bad that we would need to make sure that anything remotely edible was thrown away in the trash can outside instead of the one inside. Otherwise you were liable to find that item stashed downstairs, or in a corner, or under a cabinet……because Guru figured out how to open the (supposedly) child-proof door behind which the trash can lives in the kitchen.

Oh, and the hair. Don’t get me started on the cat hair. Stephen Hawkings (you know - the wheelchair guy?) and a team of theoretical physicists would have a field day with Guru. “Sir, strangely enough the amount of cat hair that has sloughed off Guru today actually weighs more than the cat itself”.

But I guess the one thing that set Guru apart from the other cats (in addition to his enormous girth and amazing ability to be the first cat present at dinner time no matter where in the house he was located) was his personality. In the famous words of Samuel L. Jackson, “personality goes a long way….” Whether it was playing fetch better than the dog could ever do it, or walking up to you and slapping you with his paw, or jumping up and trying to scare the Oscar in the fishtank it was always done with a degree of panache. A certain air of “Guru de vivre” (or would that be “joire de Guru”? Who knows…) , so to speak.

Maybe that’s why it was so tough to carry him up the stairs for the last time. To dig his grave. And to slowly lower him into it. And to pet him that final time.

By popular demand: Click here for Guru’s best selling 2004 video “Fat”.