Mia: "They said something about God."
Us: "What did they say?"
Mia: "He made stuff."

We had a really fun and interesting day today; it was the kind of day where things happen that you don't expect and weren't really planning for, but it ends up being really cool and you're glad you decided to roll with it.

The plan was to head down to a friend's house on the south side of Richmond to pick up their old bike trailer that they weren't using anymore. This would be the kind of trailer that your kids can ride around in. For a couple of weeks now, we've had visions of doing family bike rides, and last weekend I got our bikes out and fixed them up.

After that, we were going to meet some friends and head to the folk festival. Then we were going to go home and start getting ready for our trip to Texas next week.

We went down and loaded up the trailer; they also hooked us up with a bike they weren't using anymore. Which is awesome, because it turned out that my old bike needs more work than I thought - the front shifter is missing, and the chain broke on my first ride out. So now I have something to ride until I get the other one fixed.

By the time we got the bike lashed to the top of our car, my daughter was having a blast playing with a couple of other girls. They were all going to a harvest festival at Riverside Outfitters. Our other friends hadn't called yet, so we decided to go over there with them.

The festival turned out to be pretty awesome; there were lots of kids there, and some interesting activities; Riverside Outfitters does tree climbing camps, and they were set up for people to climb an enormous pine tree, probably fifty or sixty feet. It was incredible; at the top, I could see the Carillon, and my arms are still burning from working the rope.

Also, I got to check out our friend's new espresso cart; he bought it on eBay, and he's going to build up a coffee cart business. He brought it out there and set it up. The coffee was excellent, and the cart was really cool - completely self-contained, fully equipped.

We had a great time meeting various people and hanging out. The guy who belayed me during my climb talked with us about how he wanted to offer their climbing programs to more underprivileged kids. We stayed for five hours. It was nothing at all like what we were planning, but it ended up being really outstanding. You have to abandon your plan sometimes…

… this morning …

… felt: little splashes all over my back …

… heard: "i tryin to wake him up wif my bubbles, but it not workin" …

… and later …

… "the dark is all away, it got morning! …

Last week we headed out for a vacation up in Ontario's Georgian Bay area. My mom has a summer cottage up there; it's a beautiful region, with thousands of rocky islands covered in evergreen forest. Like most Georgian Bay cottages, ours is accessible only by water; you have to drive a couple of hours north of Toronto to a marina and transfer to a boat to get there.

Last year, we flew into Toronto and rented a car to get us to the marina. It was a good plan on paper, but our luggage missed our connection and had to take a later flight. When it arrived it had to be located and cleared through customs, and by the time we reached the marina, it was getting dark. This was a pretty serious problem because you have to navigate pretty carefully - there are a lot of rocks and shallow places that are hard to see, even in the daytime. My stepdad, who is a pretty accomplished boater, had never taken the trip out to the cottage at night - there's just typically no need to do so.

So last year's trip out to the island was taken at a slow crawl through absolute darkness, with me perching on the bow of the boat sweeping a battery-powered spotlight back and forth and marking the locations of any rocks I saw. My mom relayed instructions back and forth and peered over a navigational chart. It was nerve-wracking, but we made it.

And it wasn't just that trip, either; the last few trips we've taken by air have been disasters - connections missed, hours lingering in unfamiliar airports (try this with a grumpy toddler), luggage misplaced, etc. We've completely lost faith in air travel and its ability to get us there on time with all our stuff.

So this year, we opted to drive the whole way from Richmond. It would mean taking a couple of extra days of vacation, but we wanted to visit my dad in Buffalo and go to Farm Sanctuary and the Baltimore aquarium. Since we have two kids in carseats now, and we'd be picking up my grandparents at the Buffalo airport for the trip, we rented a minivan.

Well, I put 1,651 miles on that Grand Caravan and I'm here to tell you: minivans are the best form of road transportation ever invented.

Yeah, they have a reputation for being uncool. In my opinion, they have overcome it. They're like rolling family battle platforms. The doors open by remote control. There's storage in the floor, much like the Millenium Falcon, and also in the roof and console. The rear seats fold up like Transformers. There's a digital compass/trip meter/gastankometer. There are climate zones, which basically means that Chewbacca can run the A/C so his nose doesn't dry out, while Han can run the heater to banish the unpleasant memory of the carbonite. And it can travel across most of the galaxy without refueling, which helps you avoid potential trouble spots like Mos Eisley. (Seriously, I bought gas in Hamilton, Ontario, and then again somewhere near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I mean, this baby has range.)

Ours didn't even have the fancy stuff like GPS navigation or a DVD system, which would have been even better. I understand that these days, you can pop a DVD into the dash and the kids can listen to it on headphones. This allows you to (gasp!) have an adult conversation, or listen to music that isn't about talking animals.

All in all it was a pretty great trip - the kids handled it well, despite the long hours of driving, and it was a hell of a lot more pleasant than air travel. And it's good to know that we like minivans; if we have another kid, we'll have no choice anyway (other than a large SUV, which isn't appealing at all to us). We were sorry to turn it back in. There'll even be a hybrid Sienna at some point, so that would soothe our liberal guilt further (although we got a respectable 26 mpg, according to the tankometer). Yeah, sign me up.

Apparently I got old while I wasn't paying attention. Observe:

• It's been more than ten years since I graduated from high school.
• I am now older than every single college basketball player in the country.
• Yesterday, my wife asked me if my hair was turning gray (it's not, at least I think it's not).
• Also yesterday, my back was sore after dancing around with my daughter on my shoulders. My back has never been sore before.
• The baby on the the cover of Nevermind, which was released when I was in middle school and essentially defined my high school existence, is now in high school.
• It's recently become clear to me that I have fathered two entire people and am partially responsible for maintaining their well-being.
• I was born closer to Jimi Hendrix's death than my daughter was to Kurt Cobain's death.

Another ominous sign is that the long-standing magical equilibrium between my eating habits (lots) and my natural metabolism (adequate) appears to be slipping. Things are rounder than they used to be. My wife and my mother were in the same room together recently and convinced me to start exercising. So instead of rolling out of bed to check Reddit or tag Flickr photos, I am now on day three of taking the dog for a morning walk.

I actually kind of like it. I don't have to get up any earlier because I had already allowed time for geeky stuff before work. The morning is a nice time to be out - nice temperature, no people, no bumping into things. This morning I saw three stray cats, including one cute little tabby kitten.

I don't think I'm getting much exercise, though. Right now I'm focusing on the will power part of things. Maybe once I've established the habit I'll actually try to get the heart rate up a bit.

Lately I've been trying to force myself to do things that I know are good for me but that I don't like or that haven't been important to me, such as blogging (which I like) and listening to my voice mail when I get it (which I fucking hate, by the way. Email me. I have two in my box right now from Monday, so that's not going very well).

It's not that I feel like I should act a certain way now that I'm old. I enjoy a challenge, and lately I've actually been interested in self-improvement, which hasn't always been the case. I'm running out of computer languages to learn (at least, languages I might actually use, ever - apologies to Haskell, Erlang, Lisp, Smalltalk, C/C++, and the rest of them; I'm sure you're very nice, but I've pretty much got it covered, thanks). As a matter of fact, I think I still managed to avoid being dignified nearly all the time.

Life's too short to be dignified.

Lucas Gray Gambone was born at 10:45 last night at St. Francis in Richmond. 7lbs, 9oz, 19" long. Baby and mom are happy and healthy. And of course I'm the happiest guy in the world.

Pictures on Flickr and below.

While reading a children's book, my daughter just pointed to the driver of a train and said, "He a good driver. He a man."