Saturday, July 24, 2004
next stop: irons michigan. the continuing saga of trying to stay in touch with family ;-)
good thing i didn't decide to try and surprise my sister out in maryland, as they are heading to irons. mi to visit my uncle et al. yeah - surprise!
so i'm going to try and meet them along the way somewhere around toledo. their intended route is to keep along the turnpike then head nmorth along the western edge of the state. the maps disagree, but hey, i'm willing to get off of i-75 whenever i can. lived my whole life on that road, it seems.
so time to pack up the toys again and get on the road.
i need to follow up on the last trip just a bit, but i only had a couple days, and the mood to write hadn't struck yet. suffice to say that camp dearborn has been in a time capsule for at least 35 years. i also stopped at an old haunt for the first time in years, sterling state park. man, they bulldozed practically the whole thing and started from scratch. very nicely done, really, but i miss the old broken down place that i spent so much time at. that's another story. yet the new campground on the beach was droolworthy, especially when i spotted the lone 16 foot catamaran pulled up on the beach that morning. now that's camping.
too bad i don't have a picture. in fact, i won't have any pictures for a little while, at least ;-) i misplaced my cheapo camera. i think i left it with my brother's stuff; we'll see. not that i was using it that much. it was pretty frustrating trying to work around its shortcomings. still keepable for its original purpose, however.
anyway, it was the contrast between the very old and the very new that struck me. some sort of balance would be nice.
great day for the beach, though. as i was leaving, there was quite a breeze blowing along the beach:
me: man, are you guys sitting in the wrong place. if i just lift this towel...“
young lady: “oh, i'll move“ gets up. “did you see that weirdo?“
odd question. “which one?“ i made a funny. her boyfriend smirks.
“the guy walking up and down the beach with the headphones.“
“oh, him. what'd he do?“
“he keeps eyeing all the girls. sitting right behind them.“
i'm trying to keep a straight face.
she continues: “not like you, you're normal“.
“how do you know? i could be anybody.“ note that i have a 3-4 day growth of beard at the moment. i don't remember the answer to this, but her boyfriend seems to be enjoying the exchange.
me: “maybe he should've just been less obvious.” thinking of something i thought of earlier: “ i mean, even if you take binoculars to the beach to look at birds, i don't care where you point the things, everyone thinks you're looking at the girls. see ya.”
i wonder what the hell they thought of that.
the other observation that occurred to me on that trip was about reality checks. it is a habit of mine to keep track of such things in my life, as i don't always have anyone around to bounce perceptions off of to see if i'm on track, like most people (seem to?) have. but i never considered the quality of those reality checks, and the phenomena that a person can selectively warp theirs. this seems much worse than no check at all, since they get the impression that their worldview is being validated, when in fact it is a reflection of their own mind, not only defeating the check's purpose, but creating the very feedback loop that the check is meant to remedy in the first place. insidious, that. so me, in my solitariness, am at least aware of the pitfalls, whereas others may be in increasingly warped situations and fully believe that they are in touch.
just a rough formed thought to get down before i forget. now, i've got to get moving.