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Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

Our tour of the Big Rock Things in the Black Hills continued as we left Sturgis and headed for Mount Rushmore. We’d stopped at a coffee stand so I could snag a double Americano for the road, and Rusty perked up from the back seat when he saw a tip jar on the lip of the drive-through window. We explained how a lot of service-oriented jobs use tips to supplement their base pay. This, to him, was fascinating. At the tender age of 11, he’s already a capitalist at heart.

We drove through Rapid City and onto Highway 16, approaching the Rushmore complex. This particular stretch of blacktop contains the highest concentration of tourist traps on the face of the earth. We kept up a steady stream of “no” as the kids, predictably, begged us to stop at water slides, souvenir stores, putt-putts, rock & fossil shops, you name it. Some of the come-ons were clever, like the Reptile Gardens: a billboard with a cartoon of a boy with his arm in a sling, and the slogan, “This Ain’t No Petting Zoo!” [more]

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

For thousands of years, Native Americans have revered the healing powers of the Black Hills in general, and Devils Tower in particular. It is a sacred area. Of course the first white man to “discover” it said let’s conquer that son of a bitch. It has since become one of the holy grails of the climbing fraternity, and now is riddled with anchors and bolts driven into it by idiots whose only focus was the personal accomplishment of vanquishing this rock. The Park Service, in a magnanimous gesture, has asked that climbers voluntarily refrain from scaling Devils Tower during the month of June, out of respect for Native tradition. Wow. A whole month. How very generous. I wonder how the Park Service would feel if 4,000 Native Americans a year were scaling the Statue of Liberty. [more]

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

Where am I? What day is it? Who are these people? Why does everything smell like hot tar and Corn Nuts? Oh yeah…road trip.

With our big ice chest and cook box strapped to our shiny new hitch-mounted cargo carrier, the roof-top box and the back of the 4Runner jammed to the ceiling with gear and supplies, we were off to our first destination: the gas station.

I asked Barb if she’d packed some snacks. “Oh, yeah, I bagged up some baby carrots and apple slices, and there’s a bunch of seedless grapes in the cooler. I also have some sliced cheese and some fresh veggies with dip. Sound good?”

“Yeah, it does. If you want to find yourself stripped naked and tied up on the side of the road somewhere. The kids will revolt. This is vacation, baby! That means vacation from eating right too. Don’t worry, I’ll grab some stuff at the gas station.”

We filled the tank ($4.05/gal.) and hit I-90 at 11:00 Saturday morning. Rusty and Speaker had their Gameboys charged up and settled in for the first day, which I figured would put us near Sheridan, Wyoming. Either that, or on the express train to Bitchandmoania. [more]

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

Well, my week started out on an incredibly shitty note. A musician friend of mine emailed me Monday morning: “Hey, did you hear Tim Ishler died?” I knew he wouldn’t kid about something like that, and I felt like I’d been punched in the chest. I called him right away, and he told me what he knew. Like everyone else who knew Tim, I was stunned.

I have been jammed up all week with trying to tie up loose ends with my work, and gathering equipment and supplies for my family’s impending road trip. I haven’t had more than five minutes to ruminate on Tim’s passing, and to deal with the grief.

But this morning when I looked at the front page of Missoulian, it became real. The story, by Jamie Kelly, was well written, sensitively done, and informative. Hell, just seeing the headline had me collapsing in tears. I sat on the front porch and dripped all over the page as I read the story. Heartbroken, I still had to get the yard mowed before we leave. So I pulled the lawnmower from the shed, put Led Zeppelin IV on my iPod, and proceeded to grieve. [more]

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

The Road Trip looms at the end of the week, the way the Kamikaze does at the carnival when you’ve got a belly full of cotton candy and gas station-grade nachos. It’s there. You know it’s going to happen. The only question is where the vomit is going to land.

We’re driving from Missoula to Murphy, North Carolina. We want to get a gander at the grocery store dumpster Eric Rudolph was hiding behind when the long arm of the law caught up with the Olympic Park Bomber in 2003. Well, also to spend some time with Barb’s folks, who have a place nearby.

According to Mapquest, the distance from Missoula to Murphy is 2146 miles. But those are Mapquest miles, and have little to do with reality. For example, they fail to take into account the extra 236 miles incurred when we double back from Butte because Speaker put her suitcase in the wrong vehicle. I guess that never happens in the Mapquest minivan. [more]

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

“Is that a wood bat?” asked the ump. She’s a tough but fair woman with a good sense of humor, one of our favorites.

“Yes ma’am,” I answered proudly, waving my major league monster.

“Well, wood bats are illegal.”

Flabbergasted? Dumbfounded? Does the word even exist that can accurately describe my shock and disappointment at that statement? She called strike one as my jaw hit the plate. I told her I’d been using a wood bat in 20 games a year for four years, and this is the first I’d been told it was against the rules. Our coach (Steve’s son, Eli) was already rifling the rule book in our dugout. “Oh, it’s common knowledge,” said the ump. It was obvious that she wasn’t going to engage any kind of argument, so I trotted to the dugout and swapped my lumber for a tin stick. The dugout was buzzing with indignation and protest (and PBR farts), but if there’s one thing I’ve learned on the softball field, it’s that the ump will never change his/her mind. Ever. [more]

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

Since Barack Obama became the presumptive Democratic nominee two weeks ago, his campaign staff and supporters around the country have been working feverishly 24/7 to stuff my inbox with emails.

“Bob, you may think the battle is over now that we’ve amassed enough delegates for the nomination. But it’s not. At this very moment, John McCain may be creeping into your backyard, dressed in a camouflage business suit, a knife clutched in his false teeth, to install a wiretap on your phone…”

A simply “thank you” for my vote in the primary would be sufficient, really. I realize that, in the democratic system of government, the #1 priority for any public servant is to raise money for his/her campaign. But these people are unrelenting. They’re worse than the goddamn food bank. You stick a check for $50 in an envelope, and instead of thanking you, they send you a bigger envelope. Every day. Forever. If I made a donation to the food bank every time they asked for one, I’d be one of their clients in no time. [more]

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

One of the most important rules in life is to use the right tool for the job. You don’t bring a Fiona Apple CD to your buddy’s garage when he invites you over on a Friday night to pull a tranny. That’s Stooges territory, dude, maybe some early AC/DC. Going to help somebody move? Leave the Prius at home. A hand truck has more interior capacity.

The right tool for the job.

This rule extends logically to choosing a beer. There is a right and wrong beer for every occasion, with one glorious exception, which I’ll cover later. [more]

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

Well, I was going to take down the Christmas lights today. But now I may as well plug ‘em in. When I woke up and looked out the bedroom window this morning, my reaction was enough to propel both of my kids out of their beds.

“Dad, what’s the matter?” asked Rusty, reacting to the string of epithets flowing from my room. “Did you have that dream again, where you were a sex slave for Condoleeza Rice?”

“No. Look out the window.” He looked.

“Whoa! Wouldn’t it be cool if we had a snow day?” he said, eyes widening. [more]

A friend of mine just sent me an article about how Google is making us stupider. We are “losing our ability to think coherently and deeply,” the article writer states. But couldn’t the same thing be said about bourbon?

I don’t think Google is making us stupider (I say “stupider” because we’re already pretty stupid) any more than a library makes us stupider. (Although it would really help me if they would just put their shit in alphabetical order.) With a world of information, communication and entertainment at our fingertips, the internet has pretty much leapfrogged the computer itself as a revolutionary development in the modern world. Well, as modern as a world that allows Flava Flav to have his own TV show can be. [more]