The Greatest Show on Earth??

Last Sunday we took the kids (Evan, Sophie, and Logan) to see the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. I've never been to the circus before, and neither has Logan, so this was a good opportunity. We all met up early and took the MAX train to the rose quarter from Lloyd center, the kids enjoyed the train ride. We made sure to get to the Rose Garden early so we could see the pre-show activities. However the most memorable pre-show activity was pretty unpleasant. The Rose Garden doors didn't open until Noon. Many families with small kids sat around the nearby fountain patiently waiting for opening time. Kids ranging from infants to mid teens, most however were 3-10 years old. 30 mins before opening time a clown, holding a large sign and a megaphone walks up. All the kids eyes light up as they see him, thinking that the circus is going to provide some line entertainment. The clown walks within 10 feet of the waiting line and starts yelling into his megaphone (with the output volume maxed out). The noise was ear piercing! After listening to the clown for a couple mins and reading his sign (stating something about 19 Dead Elephants), everyone realizes that it's a radical PETA protester. No one was excited to see this guy, but what can you do? It's a free country and everyone is entitled to their own opinion. If this guy wants to show up and say a few words about animal abuse, so be it. Everyone just tries their best to ignore him. However after a few mins he starts to GRAPHICALLY explain some elephant abuse scenarios. Everyone becomes irate. It's just not okay to say that type of stuff in front of small children. The fun didn't stop there, he then starts to explain the criminal backgrounds of a few employees of the circus from over the years. Graphically detailing some of the accusations (child porn, sexual molestation, public masturbation, ...). That is just too much. And with the megaphone blasting in your ear 10 feet away, it was nearly impossible to ignore the guy. I'm surprised he wasn't evicted due to public disturbance or noise violation. At this point I even wanted to go kick some sense into this guy. Some people yelled at him to quit scaring the children, or to quiet it down. At one point a couple large guys walked up to him and tried to get in his face. However the Rose Garden security pulled them aside and asked that they not. Seems like they've dealt with this guy before. Mean while this guy's female friend is walking around handing out propaganda coloring books to the children. She's got everyone fooled into thinking she's some nice lady handing out some circus freebies. I saw her walk up with the clown, so I knew better. Some ladies were even bringing their kids up to her asking for a coloring book. Darci picked one up on accident from her. It was stating stuff like "Bears don't like to ride motorcycles, they like to be free in the woods". That really pushed the line in my book. You don't directly put your message out to children. The guy in front of me had four little kids with him, he gave the lady an ear full. Telling her "you should be ashamed for what you're doing here, there are kids present". Her only come back was "Well it's horrible what they do to these elephants". I really wanted to smack her for being so ignorant. I think the only thing saving these two from a full on beat down was that there where children present, and no one wanted to subject their kids to a blood bath. Having never been to the circus before, I don't know what kind of abuse any of the animals are put through. Maybe I'll do some reading now and see what the whole story is. However these two really handled the situation poorly. There are a hundred better methods of getting the message out then to lower themselves and abuse children in the manner they did. That doesn't make them any better then the elephant torturers they profess to hate. They could have setup a booth, walked around silently with a sign and handed out leaflets to anyone interested, held an organized protest downtown, made a documentary special air it on OPB, etc ...

Eventually noon rolled around and we were all able to enter the building and put those assholes behind us. Found our seats and enjoyed the pre-show, which consisted of some small clown comedy acts, unicyclists, jugglers, acrobat acts, etc. I really have to commend the circus performers for one act of kindness. Somehow it was brought to the attention of the performers on the floor that a small boy had become lost. I don't know if he wandered up and told them, or if someone found him lost and brought it to their attention. Regardless, they brought him out into the open performance area and asked him his name, and who he came to the show with. Then they had one of the camera men display the boys face up on the large display screen on the wall of the Rose Garden. They announced on the loud speaker the boys name, that he was lost, that he was looking for his Aunt, Uncle, and Cousin, and for them to please come down to the floor and claim him. They kept his face displayed on the big screen, while giving the boy extra attention (including him in their comedy act, playing with him a little). This lasted for about 5 mins and then the kids Aunt came down and claimed him. This really helped reunite the family. Having been lost myself many times at large scale events when I was little, I know how scary that is, and it can take quite a while to find your family and meanwhile everyone is freaked out. Before the main show started I went to the concession stand to get a drink. I knew the prices where going to be high, but I didn't expect the robbery that was going to take place. $12 for an elephant cup snow cone, $5 for a 24 oz. Coke, and $5 for a pretzel. Geez... I stopped briefly at the souvenir counter, and quickly walked away after seeing a stuffed elephant for $30, and the fun lighted toys for $15-25. Dang!! Logan was quite upset that he didn't get a light up sword. But heck, the toys where more expensive then the admission tickets. The main show was very entertaining. They had lots of clown comedy acts, classic & Chinese acrobatics, trained cats & dogs, the classic strong man, some elephant tricks, Russian horsemen stunts, and even a seven motorcycle globe of death. It was all pretty entertaining, but far from the "Greatest Show on Earth", it might have been that back in the early 1900's when there wasn't much professional level entertainment accessible to the average joe. Today however the show is pretty subpar. I'm much more impressed by the performance and showmanship of the Cirque du Soleil. However the circus is deeply ingrained in the history of America. It's provided us with entertainment for generations, showed us the oddities of the world, and provided employment and home to the outcasts freaks and midgets for over a century. :P It would be a shame to see it disappear like so many other beloved venues.

Review: Big Al's Bowling Alley

After work one day last week Darci and I were trying to think of somewhere new to go eat dinner. Darci remembered that the new Big Al's bowling alley was now open, I immediately made an executive decision to go there. I was amazed by the size of the place, the large vaulted ceilings really made the place feel inviting. A big difference from the traditional low ceiling bowling alley that makes you feel claustrophobic as soon as you walk in the door. I marveled at the site of 30 brand new bowling lanes. I've never played on a brand new lane before, all the lanes I've bowled were at least 20 years old. There was even 12 separate luxury lanes in a separate area that featured plus couches instead of the standard table/chair design of the other lanes. This is my type of bowling!

I toured the arcade section next. I marveled at the selection of brand new arcades, some of which I had only seen in development before: Rockin' Bowl-O-Rama, NASCAR & World Poker Tour pinball, Time Crisis 4, House of the Dead 4, a bank of The Fast and the Furious, Super Bikes, Mario Kart Grand Prix racing arcades, and a myriad of ticket redemption games. All of the machines run off a prepaid credits card, that is purchased from a nearby machine. This is a great option as it allows parents to prepay for their kids arcade time and takes out the hassle and risk of kids carrying around pockets of quarters.

Next we heading out in search of their large sports bar. We entered a large auditorium in the back of the facility. This had to be one of the biggest sports bars I've ever been in. There are booths and tables setup in and auditorium style layout, much like a movie theatre, so you never have a head in your way. In fact the bar wall/ceiling is decorated to appear like you are in a baseball stadium. At the front of the bar is the TV wall, which is actually three 8ft x 12ft projector screens. The display is split across three LCD projectors that have the ability to split up each screen into several different displays, each playing a separate sporting event. While we were there we they had approx 11 channels playing everything from football, baseball, NASCAR, golf, and even a movie. It appears that they could chop the display up into 9 displays per screen and still have each large enough for viewing, or even stretch a single display across all three screens for special events like Super Bowl. There was eight brand new pool tables in the middle of the bar. And at the rear of the bar was what is called the Skybox. It's a separate room with large glass windows looking out into the main area. It includes large leather chairs, couches, and it's own pool table. Seems this would be a great rental area for corporate outings.

After drooling over the brand new lanes for a while I just had to play on them. Darci and I played two games. The first Darci won, I sucked, I was too rusty, especially since I was playing without my bowling ball. Although it was very nice to play with brand new house balls. Not the old chipped, alien finger hole sized/aligned house balls we're all used to. The second game I kicked ass! I scored 203 and only missed 13 pins out of the possible 110 pins. It's funny how fast you can gain the respect and admiration of bowlers around you. During the first game there was this grumpy old guy bowling on our right side who was taking his game too seriously (and sucking by the way), and a group of rowdy annoying young punks on our left. After I bowled my 4th strike in a row I gained the respect of both parties. The old guy was trading tips and trying to talk me into joining his league, and the young punks were yelling "Damn!", "Nice!", "Sweet!", each time I finished. It was pretty cool, I haven't had an on game like that in a while, especially with a house ball. I'll definitely start frequenting this place. My score card is below:

Frame	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Pins	9 /	X	X	X	X	9 -	X	9 /	X	8 - -
Score	20	50	80	109	128	137	157	177	195	203

If you are up in Vancouver try this place out, better yet, call me and we'll go hang out there together.

From Outta Nowhere!

On the way back from Burningman we where hit by a drunk driver. Fortunately everyone walked away from the accident. It could have turned out so much worse. It happened on Friday evening (9/1) outside of Crescent Lake, OR on Hwy 58. We had been stopped at a traffic revision light (the two lane highway was closed down to one lane, and there was a traffic light at each end of the section regulating east/west bound traffic). We were stopped for about 2-3 minutes when out of no where we heard screeching tires. There was just enough time for Kirk and I to look at each other, and for Kirk to yell "what the hell?", then BAM!! We were pretty jarred for at first, as we asked ourselves if this had really happened. I checked myself for injuries, nothing but a sore neck from the whiplash movement. Then I was pissed… I jumped out of the car and stormed back to the rear of the truck/tent trailer to see who/what the hell hit us. I found a second gen Toyota pickup with it's front bumper deeply lodged into the back of my newly remodeled tent trailer. At the moment I was fuming, I just wanted to punch this jerk in the face and verbally rip him a new one. Somehow I managed to keep my cool and politely ask the driver (a late 20's/early 30's Hispanic man) if he was okay. He said that he was okay, and asked if we should pull the vehicles off to the shoulder of the road. I quickly surveyed the damaged to the trailer and blazer and they appeared to be in operational order, at least enough to backup and pull off the road. I asked the other driver for his information, and attempted to copy it down, but I was just too shook up and angered by the incident. I asked Kirk to take over, while I stormed off and had a smoke. Then the other guy has the nerve to ask me for the cigarette. "Come on! You just took the ass end of my trailer off, and now you want a smoke. Damn man!" I gave him a smoke anyhow. The trailer just looked horrid, back end smashed in about 3 ft. and the trailers rear bumper was smashed in and twisted up like an old thorn bush. I wasn't sure if this thing would even be towable. The life saving item I believe was that Justen and I had swapped out my old 1.25 in. tow receiver for a full size 2 in. This baby held like a tank. Nearly no damage to my rear-end, just a bent hitch insert. If I had left the small hitch on it would have busted for sure. Then only God knows what would have happened then. With a propane tank and large deep cell marine battery mounted on the front of the trailer, and by rear gas tank nestled behind the tow package, it would have had all the ingredients necessary for a good explosion. I've heard horror stories about this type of thing.

After we finished swapping information I decided to call 911 for a tow, as I didn't think I was going to be able to tow the trailer out of there. Good thing I had some cell service. I talked to the operator, and then a police dispatcher. Kirk managed to flag down a trucker and get the approx mile marker for our location. The dispatcher said they would send out a tow truck. Barely even a minute later a police officer pulls up with his lights on. I turned to Kirk and said "Damn that is some fast service". I talked briefly with the officer and explained the situation. He immediately took the other guy aside and asked him how much he had to drink tonight. The guy disputed that he had drank anything, but a second later the officer found an open beer in the truck's cup holder. "What's this?" He then administered a sobriety test, which the guy failed, and arrested him. Two more cop cars arrived and administered a breathalyser test, which I can only assume he also failed as he wasn't released from cuffs and his comfy looking rear patrol car seat.

While all that was going on I found that the trailer damage while enough to total the trailer, wasn't enough that it needed to be towed. I found a second tow hitch insert in my truck (I borrowed one from my neighbor, because I couldn't remove the ball from mine, so that I could turn over the 2 in. drop insert into a 2 in. rise insert). The tow truck that arrived to tow off the drunk drivers truck said that if installed that 2 in. drop hitch and was able to follow him 4 miles to his shop, he could swap it over for me. After the officer gave me a copy of the paperwork and headed out, I installed the 2 in. drop hitch. It was just enough to get us up the road to the tow shop. They quickly swapped over the hitch for me at no cost (which was greatly appreciated), however I gave them a $20 tip for the work. Kirk and I reinstalled it and we were off.

The rest of the ride to Eugene went quickly. Kirk and I were gitty from the shock of the event. It's like when you hit rock bottom and you have no where to go, you just don't care. Kirk mentioned that aliens could land right then and there and abduct us and he wouldn't think it was unusual. This was definitely the last crazy incident in an epic road trip adventure. It's been a little over a week now. I've been dealing with the aftermath of this accident almost everyday. I've had to coordinate with my insurance, the other guys insurance (I'm so thankful he actually has legitimate insurance), my medical insurance, etc. I have some neck and back pains as a result of the accident. My doctor recommended physical therapy, which I've been evaluated for. So for the next month at least I'll be going to physical therapy three times a week to ensure that my neck muscles heal properly. I did finally get an adjuster to come out and look at my truck, not a whole lot of damage, but I'm being adequately compensated for. I'm still working with them to get reimbursed for the damages to the trailer, for some reason they have to get some regional person to evaluate it. I'm also supposed to be compensated for pain/suffering once I finish my medical treatments. Hopefully this will all be taken care of and finalized soon, so everyone can put it behind them.