The Great Train...Erm, Koala

We're trying to take advantage of the last few gorgeous warm days of fall, and we got it into our heads to drive up to Jon's old campus in search of the fabled Burrito Buggy. We usually try to hit that mecca of all things burrito at least once a year, but this year, our attempts have not met with success. We simply haven't been able to cross paths. This time was no exception. What we were able to do was give poor Josh a series of Linda Blair moments on the way up. The Roo has picked up the joy of motion sickness...and the roads we took had more curves in them than a Rockette review. I can always tell when it's going to happen...his eyes get this odd, watery look to them, and his face gets sort of puffy, and his cheeks start to droop. Then, the poor thing gets the award for best fountain effects this side of an Esther Williams movie. The good news/bad news about this process is that once it's done, he is a perfect traveling companion with no further incident. We've learned to prepare for these travels by stocking the car with an extra stash of wipes, towels, trashbags, and Febreeze -- and we try not to let him eat or drink much before a road trip. My main mistake was that I kept putting him in his really cute outfits when we first start out...and of course thirty minutes later, the really cute outfit is a moot point. I should have just stashed him in a onesie when we first set out, but I didn't think about it at the time. (A few days after this trip, I discovered that Seaband makes motion sickness wristbands for little kids, and while we considered that keeping wristbands on a toddler would be a running joke, Josh has been really good about keeping them on him. We tell him they are magic wristbands, and sing a little song -- a variation of the Golden Helmet of Mambrino song from Man of La Mancha -- and he wears them every time he's in the car. They work on pressure points in his wrists, like acupuncture, and he hasn't been ill one time since we've had them.)


After the requisite clean up, we continued on to the campus and Josh bounded through the leaves and chased the black and gray squirrels. It's a place of steep cobbled hills and serious ivy-covered brick buildings, and it has always struck me as very peaceful and orderly...which may be something of a running joke (at least to me)...or at least a good disguise. Jon's often regaled me with stories of the Day-light-savings-time riots (because the bars would close early) ...of how he and his friends would grab themselves some lunch, pick a spot on the green, and watch a particular fellow try to rile the students. This guy actually seemed to make a living out of getting people mad enough to slug him, and then suing them. Very few people took him seriously -- truthfully, most of them just laughed him off or egged him on. Even so, I doubt the guy got a payday every time he showed up. Jon's campus may not have been the ultimate party college, but from what he's told me, it could hold its own. I keep trying to imagine my noble "boyscout" surrounded by the continually inebriated...and somehow, the image just doesn't stick.


Josh was enraptured. Squirrels were magical things and he was determined to pet them all. Magical or not, they weren't inclined to be social, and for each step-hop Josh took toward them, they would bound further away, flaunting their tales in saucy retreat. The hussies!

The day was young, the weather was warm, and we weren't done with our adventures. Another road trip took us to our destination for the day. Josh's first train ride. We shuffled into the crowded station, and purchased tickets for the two-hour ride. We were shown to our seats in one of the open cars. Initially, I was a little concerned about the open cars...but when I found out about all of the troubles of the enclosed cars, I felt better. In those cars, the windows were prone to falling on the heads of passengers, and couldn't be counted on to stay in their angled positions....and that's IF you could even get them open -- and you wanted to, because none of those cars were air conditioned. We had open air, and the occasional bug-in-the-eye, but we couldn't have asked for a more gorgeous day. Even with the wind whipping past us, we weren't the least bit uncomfortable...well, maybe that's not completely true. We pulled out of the station, and the train must have had to charge up a grade, so our cars rocked and swayed violently as we took the first two hundred yards. Josh was intrigued, but a little disconcerted...and he had not really napped at all that day. He spent the entire ride clutching Jon with his head snuggled against his daddy's shoulder...he looked like a sick Koala.

Our trip ended with a brief sojourn to a working pioneer village hosted by a local college. If you took out the telephone poles, and the parking lot full of cars, it was very easy to imagine that you were stepping back two hundred years in time.


We finished our journey with an unexpected surprise. When I was ten years old, my dad had taken me on my first and only Great Trip West, and one of my fondest memories was having Souix City Sarsaparilla in the saloon where Wild Bill Hickock played his last hand. Imagine my delight in finding a small stash of this fabulous elixir in the "General Store" -- especially as I could never find it anywhere else... On our way back to the station, the three of us downed our Sarsaparillas with relish. Even Josh, who normally isn't allowed to have pop, was given a taste of our rare find (and didn't Tim tease me nonstop because I backed down on my own rule -- but you know, it was special occasion, so there!).

Our day ended with a really tuckered boy and two really tuckered parents, but I wouldn't have traded it for the world.