I recently spent a week in Florida with my son for a roller hockey tournament. We stayed at the Santa Maria Resort on Fort Myers Beach.

The place was great, like a furnished 2-bedroom apartment with a fully appointed kitchen: oven, stove, microwave, fridge, freezer, plates, bowls, pots, pans, silverware, etc. We went to the local Publix grocery the first day and stocked the place up with food and beverages.

We got all this for about $50 a night less than we would have paid for a room at, say, the Embassy Suites. And when I say “room,” I mean that usually when I travel with the boy, the hotel room is in fact a room and we’re both in it together. That’s a problem because he likes to watch TV in hotel rooms and I’d rather read a book.

But with the 2-bedroom setup — each bedroom on opposite sides of the suite, separated by the main room — I didn’t even know he was there most of the time.

Rating: Four stars (out of four).

Stoney’s Sports Cafe in Estero, Florida, has an interesting variation on the crane game. Instead of the usual collection of stuffed toys, the machine is filled with water and live lobsters. If you manage to catch one (at $2 a chance), they’ll cook it up and serve it to you.

Live by the claw, die by the claw.

One thing I learned on my recent vacation is that Florida, unlike California, doesn’t have a helmet law for motorcycles.

If you’re wondering what percentage of riders will wear a helmet for safety reasons if they’re not required to by law, the answer appears to be zero, although more than half the riders I observed did take the precautionary measure of wearing a shirt.

My son’s hockey team didn’t do so well at NARCh this time around. They got knocked out in the round-robin portion of the tournament.

That left us with some extra time on our hands, some of which we used to drive up to Tampa to watch the Angels get worked by the ordinarily hapless Devil Rays, 7-2.

We got good seats though! — right behind home plate about 10 rows up.

Completing the hat trick of futility, I arrived back in California to find that the mortgage bank I worked for had laid off 400 people, including me.

The good news is that I did get a severance package, unlike the last time I got laid off (from a dot-com company), when all I got was a handshake and an escort to the parking lot.

Oh, and I’ve got more time to read the last Harry Potter book. I’m really sick of Harry Potter but I do want to find out how the whole thing wraps up . . .

We’re off to NARCh for a week. I hope there won’t be thunderstorms every day like the last time we were there.

Let’s have a look at the 5-day . . .

Pictures from my son’s 8th grade trip to Washington, DC.

On the heels of my kid’s discovery that his tour group will not be break dancing their way across our nation’s capital, comes another disappointment — his tyrannical math teacher has been added to the list of chaperones.

“She’ll probably say, ‘Oh, Casey, I’m glad you’re here. Why don’t you calculate the volume of the White House?’”

My son’s going to Washington, DC, next week with a group from his junior high school. Once there, they’ll hook up with a group from Martin Luther King High School for a 5 day, 4 night Discover DC educational tour.

Despite the name, MLK High School is not a predominantly black school, a big disappointment to my kid, who was looking forward to his travel companions “breaking out the cardboard mats and spinning on their heads.”

I Have a Dream, indeed!

My wife is talking about the possibility of a Christmastime family trip to Thailand. She’s from Thailand, lived there through college, and still has relatives there.

I’ve never been to Thailand — I hate to travel, for one thing — but our son has been over there with her on a few occasions.

Here’s his reaction, punctuated with frantic screaming:

“AHHHHH! It’s people who can’t speak English in 170-degree heat!”

I don’t think this boy has a future as a travel agent.

“They haven’t seen you in a long time,” my wife tells him.

“Can’t we do a video conference?”

A friend is leaving tomorrow for a wedding in Hawaii. She asks me if I have any souvenir requests.

Yes! If you can get a picture of the entire bridal party mooning the camera with ALOHA written across their asses in tropical colors — you don’t have to write the O, just AL HA and bend over — that would be great!

If not, I don’t want anything . . .

One morning at the Grand Canyon, my son and I were walking to the Canyon Cafe for breakfast when we saw a big elk near Yavapai Lodge.

“How big was it?” my wife asked later, when the boy was telling her the story.

“Big enough to CHOMP MY HEAD OFF!” he said. “If he wasn’t an herbivore.”

We stayed on Route 66 as much as we could on a recent family drive to Arizona. The Mother Road has long since been bypassed by the interstate highway system, but long stretches of it are still driveable, including hundreds of miles in California and Arizona.

We just got back from a family drive to the Grand Canyon . . .

Have you ever tried to introduce family members to things that have made a deep impression on you personally? It’s often disheartening, isn’t it?

For example, here’s what my son got out of the sea of sage and grasslands that make up the Kaibab Plateau:

“I’d put an amusement park over here,” he said, pointing to the right. “And over here,” — pointing to the left now — “a shopping center and a sports arena.”

“Look at the mountains,” I said to my wife, indicating with a sweep of my hand the silent, austere beauty of the East Mojave, where desert mountains rise dramatically from the sloping terrain.

“I’ve been looking at them for five hours,” she said.

“You know,” I said, “you guys just don’t appreciate the grandeur –”

“HEY, LOOK!” my son yells. “IT’S A BUSH!“

“– of the American Southwest.”

A lot of people seem to love travel . . . I hate travel.

I start out thinking I’d be happier if I could just go somewhere, but when I get there, I’m not any happier than I was at home.

I’m the same person with the same problems, and now I’ve spent all this time and money in another failed attempt to get away from myself . . .

My son is listening to his iPod as we take off from Tampa, heading back to Orange County. We’ve been cautioned to turn off electronic devices during takeoff.

Continue reading Driving the Plane

Semifinal - 1:35 P.M. vs. NW Rebels

The NW Rebels are from Oregon. We saw them play a little bit in the round-robin games. They have one very talented kid, but hockey is a team game.

Final score: Bulls 8, Rebels 0.

Continue reading NARCh - Day 4

Game 4 - 9:00 A.M. vs. Mission Cooler Selects

The Selects are from Georgia. They fall behind 2-0 on the first shift and go downhill from there.

Final score: Bulls 8, Selects 0.

Continue reading NARCh - Day 3

Game 3 - 9:00 A.M. vs. Extreme Wolfpack

Extreme Wolfpack is from New Jersey, Like the Bulls, they are 2-0 so far in the tournament.

Final score: Bulls 4, Wolfpack 1.

Continue reading NARCh - Day 2

My son’s team, MPC Bulls Blue, is playing in the NARCh 12-and-under Squirt Silver division. Sixteen teams qualified in this division. Each team will play four round-robin games, after which the top eight teams will be seeded into the quarterfinals.

Continue reading NARCh - Day 1

The hockey tournament starts tomorrow . . . the first game’s at 9 in the morning. We’ll need to be there by 8 to check in, so we’ll have to leave the hotel by 7:30.

Continue reading One Day to Rest