Chuck’s Corner
News From Around the Block and Around the World
by C.H.Bueker III
 

    So, I am writing this rather than doing what I’m supposed to be doing, which is packing for a family vacation.  We leave tomorrow morning, yet I feel no great sense of urgency.  We’re going to San Diego, for heaven’s sake, and if I forget anything important I can just pick up one whatever it is over there!  Why haul stuff you only might need from state to state?!?

    It’s not like we were going camping.  Andrew and I went hiking and camping recently in the Grand Canyon, and on that trip if you didn’t bring it, you just plain didn’t have it (with the possible exceptions of water and insects).  It was a great adventure, by the way, and I was glad to have gone and will forever cherish the time spent with my son.  I’m also glad that we rented part of a horse to haul in (and especially out!) most of the junk we thought we needed to survive.

    Now, contrast the above with the legendary Bueker trip to the Canyon, circa 1965.  Barbara Bueker allowed the kids all of about what, five or ten minutes out of the car?  I think I blew half my time there looking for a place to pee!  ANY time spent packing for that trip was a total waste!!

    I am looking forward to the beach, though.  One of the best things about these trips is that they allow me to briefly rejoin with my family’s wake/sleep schedule.  During most of the summer, with everyone else out of school and living on a bizarre schedule appropriate maybe for vampires, I often feel like the commander of the Jupiter mission in the movie 2001, A Space Odyssey.  I go about my daily business while the rest of the crew rest comfortably in a state of suspended animation, curled up in their cyro-tubes.  "Please open the garage bay doors, HAL."

    But after only a few days of living in cramped quarters with these people, exhausting ourselves (and my bank account) with joyous family activities and enforced tribal meals, our rhythms begin to synchronize.  It’s almost as if the crew was allowed to defrost for a few hours each day, allowing moments of actual human contact!  Such joy!

    All too soon, the trip is over and it’s a quick whiplash back to the staggered summer schedule. 

    Guess I’d better get packing…

 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________JDA

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