Happy Birthday, Michael!

November 21, 2015rjpugh

Today is Michael Vincent’s third birthday. That means he is now out of the terrible twos, and into the terrorizing threes. He’s had a big year! He’s finally starting to communicate, mostly by pointing and by using pictures. He even started preschool in August!

Here are some images of My Son the Cyborg, from 2015.

From my birthday dinner at the Park Lane Tavern in Fredericksburg, back in February.

Playing at Yowell Meadow Park, in March.

Hanging out at Mountain Run Lake Park, in April.

At the Fireman’s Carnival, in May.

Being a boxtroll, in June.

Strolling down the road near our house, in early July.

During the Chicago trip, in July.

Hanging out with the family at Lenn Park, near Culpeper, in September. His mom and grandparents are in the background.

Two views from a school field trip to Round Hill Farm, in early October.

Halloween, 2015, as Captain America!

Caitlin, meanwhile, was Black Widow. Avengers assemble!

Remembering those who served

November 11, 2015rjpugh 1 Comment

This is a story my brother likes to relay on Veteran’s Day.

Our maternal grandfather, Joseph Habecker, at the age of 18, was drafted into the United States army in Lawrence, Massachusetts.

As he headed to the draft board on the assigned day, he saw his friends running back from the board excited and shouting “The war is over!” My grandfather and his friends threw their draft cards into the Merrimack River.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the Germans had just surrendered to the Allies. An armistice was arranged such that all hostilities would cease on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918. Why all the elevens? So no one would forget the sacrifices of the last war we would ever have.

Sadly, other wars came, and Armistice Day became Veterans Day.

This leads me to stories of some other Veterans from another era. Our maternal grandmother (“Memere”) had one sister and nine brothers, three of which saw combat during World War II.

Leo Langlais served with the US Marines during the “island hopping” campaign in the Pacific theater. He even fought at the battle of Guadalcanal. As some point he contracted malaria, and was moved to a medical facility away from the front lines. When he was strong enough to return to duty, the military sent him to the machine shops that worked on the tanks and jeeps used by the ground troops. There he worked as a machinist until VJ Day. As he once put it, “they took away my rifle and gave me a tool box.” He died in the early 1980’s at his home in Salem, New Hampshire.

Donald Langlais served in the US Navy, first on destroyers and then on a submarine, both in the Pacific theater. According to family legend, he had two ships shot out from under him, and witnessed the destruction of at least a dozen others (both American and Japanese). I know very little about Donald, as he died before I was born. From what I’ve been told, he had what is sometimes called “a bad war,” and he never fully recovered from the experiences he had. The nightmares and visions plagued him until the very end. Today, we call this Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Back then it was called “shell shock” or “battle fatigue,” but it’s the same thing, and it’s a very real and debilitating condition. Donald died in the late 1950’s, if I recall correctly.

Roland Langlais was with the US Army, and unlike his brothers, was in the European theater. He served under General Patton, as a mechanic and heavy equipment operator with the Red Ball Express. The Red Ball convoy moved tons of supplies from bases in Normandy to the front lines of the Allied invasion forces, as they slowly but surely crept toward Berlin. Roland himself, if I remember correctly, initially worked with the heavy equipment that helped build and maintain the highways through the French countryside. Later, when the truck convoys were replaced with railroads, he was among those who maintained and repaired the rail lines and equipment. Roland died at his home in Tilton, New Hampshire, in the 1990’s.

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I’m probably off with many of the specifics, but I do know that all three of them served with distinction – each of them came home with a Purple Heart – and they were all proud to have served their country in it’s time of need.

At 11:11am, on November 11, please stop what you’re doing and pause to remember all the veterans of all the wars. Those who, like the Langlais brothers, served with distinction, and gave the full measure so that people like Joseph Habecker wouldn’t have to.

Ohio wild life

October 23, 2015rjpugh

Trumpeter swans

Operation Bandicoot, Day 11, July 20.

Our final stop for this road trip was the famous Columbus Zoo, in Columbus, Ohio. This is one of the better zoos in North America, and may be best known for being the home base of Jack Hanna, host of the syndicated television show Jack Hannah’s Wild Countdown. This zoo is located in Powell, Ohio, just a short drive from Dublin. We managed to get an early start this time, and arrived at the zoo around 9:30AM.

As with other galleries, I’m only scratching the surface of this great zoo. But I think I managed to get a good sample of the menagerie of animals this place has.

In hindsight, it was interesting to see so many cold weather creatures that day, given that it was hot as hell!

African lion

Spotted hyena

Cheetah

Wildebeest, Thomson’s gazelles, and some other savanna creatures that I can’t make out.

Giraffe. There are actually two species of giraffe, and this zoo has both. I can’t tell which one I have here.

Vervet monkey

Common (savannah) Warthogs

Malaysian giant fruit bat, also known as the flying fox.

Red panda, one of my favorites animals.

Pallas’s cat

Markhor antelope. Dang, these guys have presence!

Bengal (Indian) tiger

Amur (Siberian) tiger

Caitlin posing on a live-size bronze statue of an Amur tiger. It’s not until you see one of these statues that you realize just how big a tiger can be!

I think this is an Eastern Hellbender, a type of giant North American salamander. I thought it’s face reminded me of Toothless.

Giant Galapagos tortoise

Bonobo. This is one of the few zoos that has these elusive – and endangered – great apes in captivity. They generally don’t do well in captivity, but this zoo has managed to keep several, and even has a breeding program.

Red River hogs

Mandrills, both an adult and a baby. It was hard to get a picture of these guys.

Okapi, another creature not often seen in zoos. These relatives of the giraffe are highly endangered because of habitat loss.

A camera-shy orangutan.

Caitlin and I posing with a bronze statue of a lowland gorilla.

Komodo dragon

Red kangaroo. There is a small section of the zoo where the kangaroos and the humans are in the same space. Under the right circumstances, you could probably touch the creatures! Though I’m not sure I would recommend doing that, given their frequently bad temper.

Koala, also camera shy.

Florida manatee

Ridley’s sea turtle

Michael and Caitlin posing with a bronze statue of a manatee, the final photo of the trip.

This zoo is amazing. I strongly recommend it, though I’m not sure July was the best time to go. It was very hot and the humidity was oppressive. When we were finished, we limped our way to a shopping mall to have some dinner. The mall also had a play area where Caitlin and Michael were able to burn off some of their remaining energy.

I do remember deciding, however, that the next time we travel during the summer, I would try to find hotels with swimming pools.

Day 12, July 21.
We were also so tired that we slept very well the previous night. Even Michael went to sleep early. We left Dublin around 9am and started for home. We had considered making a couple of photo stops along the way, but never did. Truth be told, we were now all so tired that we weren’t in the mood for much of anything. We almost stopped for dinner at a pizza place we like in Front Royal, but since Michael was asleep, and none of us were very interested, we passed on that. We arrived home a little before 7pm. Recall again that the drive over the Appalachian ridge is perhaps the worst part of this entire route. We all went to bed early, and I had a lot of trouble getting out of bed for work the next day.

And with that, Operation Bandicoot, a highly successful family road trip, came to a peaceful conclusion.

I’m already jotting down ideas for the next family road trip.

Operation Bandicoot

Hopelessly Midwestern

October 22, 2015rjpugh

Operation Bandicoot, Day 10, July 19.

Now if you’re favorite stretch of highway is flat and straight…

With the Chicagoland portion of our trip complete, this road trip was winding down. But we still had one major stop to make. So, we said our good-byes and left Crystal Lake around 9AM. Our goal for this day was Dublin, Ohio.

Our travel route followed a more direct northern route than the trip out. The side trip to Dayton took us slightly further south than a direct route would have, especially in Indiana. The GPS package was putting us on what looked liked secondary roads for much of this leg of the trip. I was a little concerned about that until I looked at satellite images. Most of them were US highways with two lanes of near Interstate quality, so my worries were groundless.

The travel itself was easy and smooth. At least it was when it wasn’t raining! Somewhere between Gary and Fort Wayne, we found ourselves in the middle of a thunderstorm that rivaled the ones I’ve seen in Louisiana or Florida! For some reason, the Midwest tends to get nasty thunderstorms during the early to mid afternoon during the summer months. Lisa refuses to book airline flights that depart or land during summer afternoons because these frequent storms translate into frequent delays and cancellations. She and Caitlin once got stuck in Charlotte (North Carolina) for almost two days because of this.

It was along US-30 that we saw row after row of huge, wind turbines. Apparently wind power generates a lot of electricity for this region. Does it generate enough to power every house and business in central and eastern Indiana? Unlikely, but I’m sure it helps. Some people find these huge turbines a serious eyesore, and don’t like them. Personally, I didn’t find them any worse than the massive grain elevators that peppered the landscape. And besides, renewable energy sources are a good thing. Right?

The photo above is very similar to what we saw. This particular photograph was actually snagged from Google Maps. According to them, it was taken by a one Chad Elly, in May of 2015. These turbines are along US-30, near Townley, Indiana, just a stone’s throw from the Ohio state line. Mr. Elly had far better weather than we did. When we went through it was overcast and drizzly, thanks to the recent deluge. But these are the same turbines, and the same cornfields, that we saw in July.

And speaking of cornfields, I was reminded of a passage I overheard in an audio book Lisa got from the library. It involved a faerie, or some other supernatural type of man, who was teleporting around this very area, trying to avoid capture. That’s all I remember of the scenario, having not listened to the entire book. But the passage went something like this:

“Cornfield. Shift. Railroad track. Shift. Grocery store. Keep moving. Shift. Roof of a house. Shift. Cornfield. Shift. Church steeple. Ouch. Shift. Cornfield. Shift. Cornfield. Shift. Cornfield. Damn the Midwest! Shift.”

Until this day, I didn’t fully appreciate the joke.

Anyway, we reached Dublin around five in the afternoon, had a quiet dinner, and settled into our hotel for the night. Once again Michael was more interested in exploring the hotel than sleeping, but such is the way of things. Fortunately we all got some good sleep, because the next day was bound to be a busy one.

Next: Ohio wild life

The opening quote is a line from the Joel Mabus song, Hopelessly Midwestern.

The paraphrase from the audio book is from a novel by Karen Marie Moning, though I don’t recall which one, and since Lisa is asleep I can’t ask her right now.

Operation Bandicoot

cyberbard.net

Web site for the Pugh family of Culpeper, Virginia

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Happy Birthday, Michael!

Remembering those who served

Ohio wild life

Hopelessly Midwestern