Flamingo on a Stick

Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do when they come for you? When those lights show up in your rear-view mirror, you know you’re busted. But this time, I had no idea why. Honest officer. Turns out my window tint was too dark for the front side windows. I didn’t even know there were laws about how dark my window tint should be. Since I bought if from a dealer, I figured maybe the officer was ticketing the wrong guy. Turns out I was wrong. There aren’t any laws about selling a truck with front side windows that are tinted too dark, just about driving that truck. That was me. I was driving the truck, so I was busted. I was a criminal. It would cost me $80.25 and I would need to remove the tint. The officer even offered up some tips on how to do that involving ammonia. Of course, I Googled it and he was right on all counts. My window tint was not only illegal in Iowa, but in every state of the union. To remove it, you should spray it with concentrated ammonia. I don’t thi...

Anchorage Our Alaskan cruise was scheduled to leave from Whittier and end in Vancouver, so we had to fly to Anchorage to begin. We were unable to book the land package to Denali, so we just added a couple extra days in Anchorage. Besides, it would be too stressful to travel the same day the cruise ship left, even though their schedule would have allowed it. What if something went wrong and our flights got delayed? So we get to airport at 5:00 in the morning for a 7:00 flight to Minneapolis to find out our flight was not delayed; it was cancelled. Not to worry, Delta already had us confirmed on a flight leaving the same time the next day. The next day? If we wanted to leave a day later we would have booked it then. Turns out we could get to Anchorage today, just not on Delta (bonus) and not through Minneapolis. So we flew through Chicago and Seattle and our flight to Chicago was leaving at 6:30. I see why they want you there two hours ahead of time. In Seattle we had time to eat and di...

The Race We had planned a cruise of Alaska’s inside passage for our 25th wedding anniversary, and the time was near. It would be my first three week vacation since I started working for Rockwell 34 years ago, and I was pumped. The cruise part was only a week, so we had time to do some other stuff too. Like go see a friend of ours swim, bike, run a triathlon in the Detroit Lakes area of Minnesota and camp out at their lake side cabin. Sweet. Our tent was back on-line after we replaced the tent poles that were broken during a storm earlier. The tent was ready, but I wasn’t su re Janie would be. I guess she could sleep in the truck again if the need arose, but what were the chances we would get hit by anther storm? She wasn’t going to miss this race, so we hit the road. The cabin turned out to be a nice property on a bluff over looking the lake. Plenty of room for a tent. I parked the truck close by just in case, but the weather was perfect. We all piled into their boat for a “booze cruis...