My nephew is getting married this weekend in North Carolina. They actually moved cross country to Charlotte right after Christmas this year. We are going on a lightning trip to be there leaving tonight and back on Sunday. Charlotte was the closest city to when we lived in South Carolina at only 30 minutes away. In some ways, it seems like our second home even though I haven’t been back since leaving our driveway in 2004.
But, we aren’t going anywhere close to Charlotte. We are going to western NC in the foothills of Appalachia. It is definitely a beautiful area but not home (#2). That’s OK because we are not going to have time to do anything fun or reminisce anyway. I have already looked at the weather and we are going to get some typical Carolina spring warm, wet and humid.
There is a chance that this will effect Altf4. Although I am very much ahead on things, there is a possibility that some kind of unforeseen situation will happen. It is also likely that I will get some good ideas from this trip so I am excited. Flying into Asheville, I expect that we will see firsthand damage from Helene as well.
I’ll be back in a couple of days. Tomorrow will be normal with my conclusion of the Fourth Turning which is already written. I have decided on how I want to handle Revelations. Week 1 will be books 1-7, including introduction. Week 2 will be books 8-20 and Week 3 will be books 21 and 22 with conclusion. I want to wrap that up around Easter, then we will be onto something new, likely Ayn Rand again.
We keep moving along. Just to make things interesting, I ran across this the other day. It is thought provoking. So, I will leave with this.
I won’t say that I grew up skiing, but I did go probably once or twice a year in the high school years. Once I got to college, I purchased my own skis and would go four or five times a year. But once we moved to South Carolina, I got rid of them and never did it again. That is, until a couple of weekends ago.
We have been to the snow a number of times over the years. Sometimes it was to take out of town family to take lessons. Sometimes it was to take our kids to take a lesson. Always, I would just stay in the lodge with my wife while they did their thing. The truth is, I was never a good skier and I was afraid that being older and out of shape was a recipe for injury.
Our exchange student loves the snow. He has been invited four or five times since he has been here. So, this was a family trip. Since my kids had very limited experience, we decided to take lessons. Good decision since it has been 25 years since I had even been on skis. My wife asked me, do I want beginner’s or advanced lessons. I think that I already know about the snow plow, so I chose advanced.
It turns out that there were eight levels of lessons. We ended up at level 4. Since my one and only lesson was a couple hours at 14, I actually learned a lot of things that I did not know. Plus, equipment rental was included in the price of the lesson. The result was that I am way more confident now than I was before we went on the trip.
There was a lot of struggle with this experience. At first, I couldn’t get my boots to buckle. After carrying everything downstairs to the rental, the tech just undid the buckle. Then, as I was testing the boot fit, one of the instructors told me that the boots were too big. It was not easy to get my feet in the boot, I was already sweating profusely just trying to test fit.
The new equipment does seem to be better than it used to be. The one and only time I fell was getting on the chairlift with my boys when they did not leave enough room for me to sit down on the chair. During our lessons, we practiced control, skiing back and forth across the mountain. This technique took a lot of physical effort. Rather than carving swiftly down the mountain, we were inching our way down. Runs were taking 30 minutes.
By the time the lesson was over, I was definitely ready for a break. My knee was hurting a little bit and my thighs were burning. There were periods of total sweating from the exertion of control. After we had lunch, I decided to sit it out while the kids went off.
After an extra half an hour, I went out alone. By this time the mountain was getting a lot busier with new people all over the easier slopes, I do mean all over. This meant that I had to practice my controlled descent even more intensely. By the time I got to the bottom, my physical reserve was gone. I didn’t want to risk tweaking my knee or eating it a bunch of times.
The reality is that I didn’t get my money’s worth from a lift ticket and rental standpoint. I was only skiing about two and a half hours. But I definitely got my workout’s worth. The next day, I could hardly walk up the stairs, my thighs were still burning and I was out of breath going up and down to my office. Having not skied in so long I had no idea what muscles were going to hurt. I feel good about what I got from the lessons and my confidence has improved tremendously.
End Your Programming Routine: I stand by my decision to quit early. I could feel my body fatigue on the last run was at the edge of empty. It was definitely more fun than sitting in the lodge all day but it doesn’t make me want to run out and buy skis again. I still think cross country skiing might be a better fit for me now. After a good long hike the day before, I was bushed for several days afterward. That sounds like good cross training for me.
I remember the days that comedy was king. It was staying up late to watch Saturday Night Live, sitcoms were the top shows on TV and slapstick comedies were the most popular movies. Now, I was a kid and taste’s change in me as well as the culture.
I can list off movie after movie that you had to see if you wanted to be in the in crowd like Airplane, Caddy Shack, Police Academy, Vacation, Revenge of the Nerds, Ghostbusters and many, many more. Some were more risque than others but yet still very popular amongst my grade school peers like Porky’s and Sixteen Candles. Nevertheless, comedies were everywhere.
I had a friend in middle school that gave me a cassette tape of the Dr. Demento show. It was a radio show that played all kinds of wacky songs and comedy bits on a weekly radio show. My brother and I listened to it several times and laughed and laughed. I don’t remember the time slot or station but it seems like it was on too late or a station that we didn’t get very well.
It’s always the friends. We weren’t permitted to stay up to watch Saturday Night Live mostly because we were committed to church Sunday mornings. I now occasionally watch it here and there and mostly find it disappointing rather than catching a good night’s sleep. But, it was pretty common to hear all about it on Monday morning at school.
My parents were interesting. They were very strict about how much TV we watched or movies we could rent. But, we could listen to the radio or read almost anything. But, if they heard somebody they respected say something, it was lights out. One time our Scoutmaster said that we were banned from listening to Guns n’ Roses because of their drunken behavior on an awards show. That then followed through to my household as well.
Of course we disobeyed. I really liked their music (still do) and that was really hard to enforce. I look back on a lot of this stuff now and I think that it is pretty tame compared to what access to things kids these days have. I have even asked myself, would I try to prevent my kids from watching or listening to this or that? My bias says no.
It is hard for me to remember whether Dr. Demento got banned or not. I kind of think yes. After listening to this YouTube throwback, I have to say that it does not appeal to my now either. But, to be twelve again, in a more innocent age this was entertainment. Some of those songs are still stuck in my head from that tape all those years ago.
This kind of humor seems pretty innocuous. A lot of it wouldn’t pass the DEI filters of today. I think that the root of humor has to be laughing at yourself first. How else would you have a parody song with the ‘Yoopers’ stereotyping themselves. Funny thing is that a lot of these songs would make it occasionally on popular radio. Dr Demento was just a show of all these kinds of songs strung together.
End Your Programming Routine: Just like last year, I am not big on pulling pranks. Listening to this kind of takes me back to the days of Mad magazine. Not everything in there was funny either. Some of it I didn’t get until much later in life like the parody lyrics to Born in the USA changed to Porn in the USA. All of a sudden, I felt like I was back to my youth.
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