Humorous Events in California: Part I

Classic mistaken identity

As previously mentioned, New Years Eve 2010 was spent in the city of angels to celebrate my little brothers wedding.  A previous blog depicts the majority of the evening, but I have to mention a specific moment in the evening that flushed my sister-in-laws face red with embarrassment.

Prior to leaving for Long Beach, I borrowed my brother’s sweater because I failed to pack for a chilly L.A. evening.  With comfortable clothing and anticipation of a wonderful evening I joined my siblings for the night.  Wearing this sweater would create a mistake in identity that will not be forgotten by many. 

Being able to able to celebrate New Years Eve with three of my siblings is a rare occasion.  On our evenings trek, I purposefully bounced around visiting various individuals in our party.  Enjoying each others company we conversed and joked with each other as we walked the streets. 

Once we reached the large crowds of the harbor, we consolidated our group space, my sister-in-law more than others.  Wanting to feel the security of her husband, she reached out for what she thought was her husbands arm, but took mine instead.  Not knowing to whom the strange arm belonged, she shrieked out, “You’re not my husband!”  Surrounding eyes jumped to see what woman failed to recognize her husband. 

After what seemed like ages of awkwardness, she amended her statement to justify her statement with “You’re my brother-in-law.”  This feeble attempt to correct a bad situation did not impress the crowds.  Pushing our caravan away from her embarrassing moment, my sister found relief knowing anonymity would return as we lost ourselves in the crowd.

While her embarrassment brought smiles to many faces, it is semi-understandable that she could make this gross error.  Additionally, I did not help the situation by borrowing a sweater from the sibling that most closely resembles me.  Regardless of the circumstances, my sister-in-law completely humiliated herself by failing to identify the father of her children and the love of her life.

When the parents are away we will play!

One of the perks of being an uncle is the ability to be the fun and irresponsible adult for your nieces and nephews.  Enjoying these perks can be very dangerous if you are too cavalier because you will evoke the wrath of parents.  In order to minimize chastisement, I am strategically releasing this story about a one year after the fact.  Motto of this post..."No harm, No Foul!"

Early in January 2009, my niece was allowed to stay at my folks overnight.  Cherishing every moment with their grandchildren, my parents made sure to have plenty of activities for her enjoyment.  Exhausted from a busy day (my parents, my niece), my parents directed my niece to get ready for bed.  After my niece dressed in her pajamas and brushed her teeth, she joined us in the living room on the couch. 

Due to the unusually cold nature of my parent home, she was wrapped snuggly in a blanket capturing as much heat as possible.  Looking at how tightly she was wrapped in the blanket, I could not help but think back to my high school physics lessons and the properties of circular forces.  She seemed to be the perfect specimen for an “experiment.”  All I needed to do was present the experiment in an acceptable fashion.  Knowing how naïve children can be I prodded her to let her “fun” uncle and “sweet” papi show her a trick.

Quickly, so as to not allow second guessing, I laid out a blanket on the ground and had her rest in the middle.  Papi and I grabbed the ends of the blanket to create our own version of a hammock.  Rocking her back and forth, she laughed and giggled.  Her enthusiasm grew as we increased the energy of our swings.  Eventually we pushed her momentum above 90 degrees. Squealing with joy, she asked us to continue.

We continued for a few more minutes allowing her to further experience of weightlessness.  Knowing that we should not attempt a 360 degree swing and the she still needed her beauty rest, closed down shop for the evening and promised not to disclose this evening to her parents.

A little word to all my siblings, this is one of many "hazardous" activities I love to do with your children.  They have survived so far, so I would not get your panties in a bunch. 

Coolest parents in the whole world!

How many parents do you know that would take their children across country to see an insane daredevil jump a car on New Years Eve?  Ok, so maybe there were other activities involved in the trip, but it is still pretty impressive that my sister and her husband took the boys out late on New Years Eve to see Travis Pastrana jump a car at the Long Beach Harbor.  Oh, let’s not forget that my sis hauled their infant baby girl as well.  They subscribe to the motto “Work Hard, Play Hard!”

Description of our evening…

Like most parades, we had our share of characters that included my all my siblings and spouses, except my youngest brother.  The male grandchildren and the baby were also invited to come while the residuals stayed at home to be watched by grandparents.

We started our evening by hoping onto the Los Angles rail system near Manhattan Beach.  Getting the party started we followed a enthusiastic crowd that was dressed to enjoy a hoppin New Years Eve.  Trusting that we were just as cool as them we followed them in hopes that all roads would lead to Pastrana.

Humming along on the rail, we got our bearings and made sure to get the proper transfer to get to Long Beach.  This was quite interesting as we conversed with a number of people and traveled through the famous locals of early 1990s rap.  I could not help but think of how odd we looked as a group of ten white individuals traveling through something that was clearly not in our element.  I could not tell who felt more uneasy, members of our party or the regulars that were being invaded.

Once we arrived at the end of the line we walked to the entrance of the fenced off area.  To the delight of my nephews we spotted two starts of the show Nitro Circus.  Shy and timid they did not want to introduce themselves to these stars.  With some coaxing from mom and dad they walked up and got pictures with the celebrities.   They even revealed their Nitro Circus tee-shirts and got them signed by Eric Ronner.  Officially part of the cool club, they said good bye to the Nitro Circus team members. 

Had we left at this point of the evening the nephews would have been more than content with the experience.  Being as cool as can be, we through caution and bedtime to the wind by staking claim to a good viewing local.  We took turns holding down the fort as members would meander around the grounds taking pictures and people watched.

Not wanting you to miss out we need to share some of the wonder full things we experienced.

1. A lady enthralled with hula hooping to the point that it appeared she neglected her daughter (she was probably a little loopy).
2. One energetic boy repeatedly rolling down a hill.
3. A young lady get on her boyfriends shoulders to get a better view.  We got an eye level view of solid crack despite her best efforts to correct the situation.  Some things need to be corrected with at good clothes shopping trip or months of dedication.

Misc. Photos:

Nephew with Jolene Van Vugt

Brother-in-law helping the boys meet the heros...notice the look of awe in nephew's face!

Sister trying to milk V.I.P. access with the baby.

Oldest brother and his wife in front of a replica of the jumping car.

Me with the same replica.  It was amazing how short of a start Pistrana had on the jump.

Brother and his wife in front of crowd/landing

Sister-in-law and nephew with good view of the jump

 

O Silent Night...the boys are misbehaving!

After having a wonderful Christmas meal with family, my brothers and their families decided to sleep over and see if St. Nicolas would visit. Since our dinner ended early enough to put the children to bed, the adults had multiple hours to enjoy.

Being Christmas Eve, the city plow only went one time through the neighborhood. This left enough snow on the streets to get around in a vehicle and tow someone on an inner tube. Thanks to my summer purchases of a ski tow rope and an inner tube, we were ready to plow through the neighborhood.

The combination of Christmas Eve and fresh snow persuaded everyone to stay indoors. Golden Valley streets were at our disposal. Since my Brother’s car does not have a hitch we opened the tailgate window and had one person hold on to the rope as we towed someone. After a couple of brief pulls and corrections we began our evening street prance.

I had the initial run and was the guinea pig and was the first to get run into the snow bank. Driving very conservatively, my brother barely got me to hit the bank as we made our first turn. The only good thing resulting from that turn was that we realized it would take some pretty gnarly driving to seriously injure one of us. Our objective became to get some one thrown over a bank.

Having completed my turn I jumped behind the wheel to throw my brother around. I did a much better job meeting our objective than he. Finishing his turn with a few laps he wanted to get behind the wheel and redeem himself. His wife grabbed hold of the tube and we drove off.

While we were having a ball, we failed to realize what an odd spectacle we created. People were startled by our shouts of excitement as we drove by. Our interruption of the neighborhood bliss reached a crescendo as we nearly through my sister-in-law into a fence post. Shortly there after, we met the villain of our evening.

As we checked to make sure my sister-in-law was alright a brightly colored car bulled up impeding our path. While the colors of the lights were similar to Christmas Red, White, and Green, one was substituted with blue. Stepping out of his car we knew this man was not Santa’s helper assisting in the Christmas holiday.

“Good evening, I see you are out having a fun evening tonight. I have been following your tracks around this neighborhood and it looks like you are being a little reckless,” the officer stated with resentment that he was working instead of enjoying is families company.

Not wanting to beat around the bush we confessed to what we were up to and were ready to take what ever punishment would come our way. Realizing we were being pretty responsible with our activities, we were told that he could not pin anything on us because he had not seen us violate traffic laws. He did instruct us on our tracks not denoting obedience to stop signs and that it would be best if we called it an evening. Thankful that we did not have fines to pay, we happily to returned home to await Santa Claus.

More Pictures:

What do you do at Christmas time, when all the world is white?

Waking up in a Blanket of Snow!
Early Christmas morning is awoke and the world was buried in white. Oddly, Winter's morning darkness lost its battle to the snow's bright reflection.   The early glow beamed through my window and pestered me enough to terminate my sleep.

Bounding into my room, my mother informed me my little brother needed to go the work and was currently plowing the drive.  I crept out of bed to assist in the chilly task.

After bundling up sufficient for a laborious activity, I slipped out of the house and grabbed a shovel.  At the bottom of the drive my brother was working hard to remove the drift resulting from the city plow passing in the night.  I invoked my elder brother rights to the snowblower and worked quickly to clear a path for his departure.

Sweat dripping from our brows, we had cleared the drive of this hefty snow and with enough time for him to arrive at work.  Admiring our work I noticed how many individuals were still shoveling in the neighborhood.  This was a little disheartening knowing most of the neighbors are not as young as the Richins boys and would require me to "donate" my talents for the goodwill.  Wishing I did not feel the weight of obligation I proceeded to work on neighbors drives.

Completing two of our neighbors drives I started to attach the most difficult drive in our neighborhood.  The steep angle of the drive and the slippery aggregate surface make the clearing process "interesting."  Exhausted, my first task was to clear the drift at the end of the drive.  For some reason this drift was more difficult than the others and took more than twice the time to finish. The dense snowfall and magnitude of snow led to the snowblowers inability to perform well.  I was forced to make a two step process of lifting and throwing the heavy into the yard.  This work initially, but higher drifts formed at the limits of my throwing range.  I ended up creating newer drifts that were higher and more dense than initially.

Coming to this realization, I wound up and punted the drift in the most frustrating manner.  I arrived at a euphoria; I could release my emotional tension and make the snow manageable for the snowblower at the same time.  With out hesitation, I proceeded to practice my soccer kicks as neighbors peered out there windows to a seemingly frenzied young man.   Little did they know this appearance of rage filled fit was really a discovery on efficiency.

Finishing the drift, I anticipated a returning to the warmth of the house.  Only the small and easier portion of the drive remained.  Since the homeowner started this section earlier I thought this would be quick.  What I found absolutely astonished me.  The method our neighbor implemented in plowing is best described as random.  Instead of starting at one end of the drive and clearing to the other end, he decided to plow wherever his heart desired.  I appreciated the assistance, but his support was more moral versus physical.  Basically, I had to do the drive again from top to bottom.  I quickly finished this and was glad to return to a warm house where I was able to reflect on the Christmas season and the wonderful relations I have.

Random Thought:
There is a certain amount of freedom that comes from doing what you want, when you want, and how you want.  In my neighbors reality, he could have been enjoying the beauty of the snowy environment as he randomly cleared his drive.  For me this method would be incredibly frustrating to use.  I would feel great in the short term, but eventually I would come to the realization that I am doing a lot of work without making progress. 

I liken this to deciding which letters you want to recognize when trying to read a page.  It can be nice at times to recognize the beauty of the individual letters or even the appearance of a compilation of letters.  That can sustain someone and they can be content with that experience.  Lacking in their experience is the intended communication from the author.  This is something I am trying to improve in my life.  I want to make sure that my eye are open to see and understand the world in the manner God intends for me.

For good measure, I thought I would post some pictures to show you how crazy people can be in Minnesota winters.  Well, at least how crazy I can be by going out in shorts to move a car off the street.