To be angry or envious...I couldn't decide....

For most of the last two weeks in northern Virginia, it has rained just about every day. So, yesterday, when the sun emerged just as we picked up the kids from daycare, Cherie and I decided to take the entire family out to eat at one of the many restaurants with outdoor seating at the Kingstowne shopping center.

Kingstowne is usually swamped with teenagers. Apparently, loitering at the outdoor shopping center has replaced loitering at the indoor mall as a rite of passage for teenagers in this country.

Yesterday was no different. They were everywhere, and as we drove by the movie theater toward the parking garage, I noticed several couples engaged in one form of PDA or another.

Not long after pulling into the parking garage, we spied an empty parking spot just across from the elevator that led to the movie theater and a number of restaurants. We immediately pulled into it. I got out and began to turn toward the back of the car to get Audrey out of her car seat.

It was as I turned that I noticed that a young man was seated in the driver's seat of the SUV next to us -- possibly Indian, but definitely of some South Asian origin. And then I noticed, hey, there's someone -- a girl -- stretched across from the front passenger's seat -- and hey -- her head is bobbing up and down over his lap. Hey, wait, she's -- she's -- oh my god, she's giving him a BJ right there in the front seat of the SUV 2 feet from me!!

I simultaneouly registered two opposing thoughts:

First: hey, this is terrible, this is disgusting, I have my kids here, they don't need to see that, why don't you two find some other less trafficked locale for this kind of action ?!

Second: damn, that is one lucky bastard. I remember those days, and they're too long past.

2004 World Series Champions*

*Cheaters.

Vacation, Day 3

I took this picture of Pike's Peak in Pike National Forest at the Crowe Gulch scenic overlook/ picnic area, elevation approximately 9000 feet. I scrambled up to the top of a jumble of granite boulders above the picnic area and had this view as a reward.

It was a cloudless day, and I had just descended from near the summit of the peak. Couldn't get all the way up, because a massive snowstorm shut down both the last few miles of the highway and the last mile or so of the cog train. So, instead of summiting at 14,000+ feet, I settled for about 13,600 feet. Still the highest I've ever been, with the Olympic Mts. and Mount Fuji both earning honorable mention.

It also turned out to be fortuitous that I traveled to Pike's Peak and the Pike National Forest...because today, the entire region was beset by thick fog. Cherie and I tried to go back so she could see the Peak (she was conferencing all day yesterday), and instead, we saw nothing. The fog was so thick at 9,000 feet that had I tried to take the same picture a day later, it would have looked like I took a picture of nothing. Couldn't see 5 feet in front of us -- it got so bad, we turned around at about 10,000 feet, because it you couldn't even see headlights coming at you from a few feet away -- it was just too dangerous, so we drove back down and stopped at Phantom Canyon Brewing Company for some libations. Yum.