As we’re touring the gardens at Hearst Castle, my wife points out a plant that’s just like one we have at home.
“Yeah, this place a has a lot of similarities to our house,” I say. “We have a plant, we have a pool . . .”
“We don’t have a pool,” the boy says.
“Well, we have access to a pool.”
We’re waiting at LAX for a flight to Houston when a large black man in his 20s sits down near us in the waiting area.
“I could take that guy one-on-one,” my kid announces.
I’m about to mention to him that not every big black dude is necessarily a basketball player when he says, “Wait a minute, isn’t that Mario Williams?”
I have to admit to him that I wouldn’t recognize Mario Williams if I saw him.
He pulls up a photo of Mario Williams on his iPhone. “Yeah,” I say, “that does look like him.”
“And he’s waiting for a flight to Houston? That’s got to be Mario Williams.”
The final clue is that the guy is decked out in Adidas gear from head to toe. A Google search for “mario williams adidas” on the iPhone reveals that Mario Williams has a sponsorship deal with Adidas.
So we’re pretty sure we saw Mario Williams at the airport.
Continental changed up the seat assignments . . . the boy ends up in Row 8 while I’m back in Row 26.
“I’m way ahead of you,” he says. “I can pick up the rental car and drive to the hotel before you even get off the plane.”
The boys arrived back from their graduation trip, but missed their connecting flight in Philly, which seems to be the rule rather than the exception for U.S. Airways.
They were able to get on a later flight — to Los Angeles though, not Orange County — so the parents drove out to pick them up at LAX at 11:45 p.m.
“We should sue the airline,” one of the moms said.
“That’s a good idea,” I replied, not because I thought it was a good idea, but because I wanted to hear the plan.
“Five sets of parents have to drive all the way to Los Angeles,” she said. “Gas is expensive! Then there’s punitive damages. Frustration. Loss of income.”
“How is there a loss of income?”
“Some parents might have to work at night. You don’t know.”
“How much do you think we should get — a million dollars?”
“No,” she scoffed, like I was being ridiculous. “Two hundred thousand.”
Here’s a young man enjoying the beach at Cannes, probably as a high school graduation trip with his friends.
He looks like he’s enjoying himself, clowning it up for the camera . . .
A large group of kids from the music program at Northwood High School are traveling to San Francisco next week. Half are flying up on United and half are flying on Southwest.
As you probably know, Southwest doesn’t charge for checked luggage. United does.
Each kid on the United flight will give his or her suitcase to a “baggage buddy” on the Southwest flight. Each Southwest kid will check two bags while each United kid will check none.
Using this arrangement on both legs of the trip cuts the travel cost by $3,500.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — An acclaimed outdoorsman who wrote movingly about testing himself against nature is presumed dead after a crocodile snatched him from his kayak while he led an American expedition from the source of the White Nile into the heart of Congo.
CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico (Reuters) – Two car bombs exploded in northern Mexico early on Friday, days after marines found the bodies of 72 people gunned down in the country’s escalating war with powerful drug cartels.
MANILA, Philippines — Commandos shot and killed a former policeman who was holding 15 tourists hostage aboard a bus in downtown Manila on Monday, authorities said.
Six of the hostages were killed, hospital officials said.
My boss is vacationing in Cabo San Lucas next week. With all the Mexican killings in the news recently, I hope he got a good deal on the room.
¡Olé!
My dad was telling me about a recent trip he took to the wilds of Ecuador. From the airport, it was a three-hour truck ride, followed by two hours in a motorized canoe to get to the lodge he was staying at.
“That doesn’t sound good,” I said. “What if you have a medical emergency?”
“There’s a shaman at the village,” he said. “And what the shamans do is they take peyote or whatever the local hallucinogen is, they hallucinate about a drug, then they go into the forest, come back with the drug and give it to you.”
“Are they board certified?”
“No. And the other thing they do is they blow smoke on you.”
“I hate that. What kind of smoke is it?”
“I think the guy has a pack of Marlboros. But if you have a heart attack or something, that’s all you’re gonna get.”
TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) — Iran confirmed Tuesday the arrest of three American hikers who crossed into the country from neighboring Iraq and said they have been charged with “illegal entry,” a semi-official news agency reported.
When you hear about people doing something pointless and stupid — and not just pointless and stupid but elaborately pointless and stupid — like traveling halfway around the world to take a frigging hike along the border of a totalitarian regime that hates Americans, don’t you secretly hope that something bad will happen to them?
So do I . . .
