Hit the Trail

In my never-ending quest to understand the complexities of the world we live in, there’s one part of the newspaper I rely on to help it all make sense. The comics page. But there’s one strip I always skip. I’ve tried reading Mark Trail from time to time, but it’s never managed to hold my interest.

It doesn’t help that everything about it seems dated. Even the clothes look like they’re from the Johnson administration. The Andrew Johnson administration. Despite my best efforts, I’d inevitably abandon it in favor of a faster-paced activity. Like watching my fingernails grow.

Recently the Times Union rearranged its comics section and Mark Trail was given a special spot below the puzzles. With its presence nagging at me as I worked the Sudoku, I made a more concerted effort to read it. But the storyline was too boring. Even the Jumble, with answers like “snooze-fest,” “yawn” and “molasses” seemed to agree.

But it occurred to me the problem may be more than the slow pace. Mark and I, it turns out, have nothing in common. He loves seeking adventure in the great outdoors. I, on the other hand, believe if God had intended us to go out and experience nature, He never would have invented the Discovery Channel.

Then, while doing the cryptogram one day, I noticed something different about the strip. A man was bringing breakfast on a tray to a woman propped on pillows in bed. Now here’s a storyline I can relate to.

It turns out the man, Wes, was trying to convince the woman, Shelley, to go camping. Shelley tells him she doesn’t care for the outdoors. Either Wes is hard of hearing or else he’s fond of the celibate lifestyle because he insists she go camping anyway. Then he enlists Mark Trail and his wife, Cherry, to help. I’ll bet if they showed the next panel, Shelley would be trying to smother Wes with one of those pillows.

The next day’s strip shows a plane flying over mountains. Apparently Mark’s idea of a great camping spot is one that’s hours from the nearest first aid station. Or restroom. There’s a bear watching the tiny prop plane as it lands. I can’t help but notice it’s salivating like someone just rang the dinner bell. Good thing we can’t see inside the plane, because poor Shelley’s frantically searching the bottom of her purse for a stray Valium.

Shelley spends a lot of time at first complaining about being unable to use her cell phone. Which means room service is totally out of the question. Things quickly go downhill when, for some unknown reason, Wes and Mark fly off in the plane, leaving Shelley and Cherry alone at the campsite. At least Cherry has the decency to offer Shelley a drink. Unfortunately for Shelley, the drink turns out to be tea.

Then the plane crashes. Now, that is fun! The two men are forced to spend the night in the woods without food or shelter. A pack of wolves begins howling. It’s hard to believe Shelley would rather have stayed in the city than miss this. Wes is too injured to move. Given the luck they’re having, gangrene will soon set in. I’m sure they’ll all look back on this one day and have a good chuckle.

Another pack of wolves is howling near the women’s campsite. Shelley nervously calculates her chances of survival. Meanwhile, somewhere in the woods, Wes is calculating the size of the diamond he’s going to have to buy Shelley when they get home.

Soon, I’m tempted to forego the word search in favor of finding out what’s happening to Wes and Shelley. This week, the wolf pack chases two moose through the campsite. The moose knock a propane tank into the smoldering campfire. Suddenly there’s a huge explosion and everything is burning. Incredibly, Shelley still isn’t having a good time. Boy, talk about a stick in the mud.

Considering how hard the cartoonist is working to portray camping as a fun and safe activity, I can only wonder what Shelley will encounter next. Rattlesnakes? Avalanche? Sasquatch? I’ll have to keep reading to find out. Right after I do the crossword.

Don't Bug Me

Whenever I venture outside in the summer and have the audacity to speak, yawn, or God forbid, breathe, there’s always some gnat with a death wish that flies into my mouth. I try to spit it out, but can’t, and I’m left dry heaving on the front lawn until my neighbors call to complain. Which is one of the many reasons it’s better to stay inside (and I’m talking about both suicidal bugs and complaining neighbors here). So it probably comes as no surprise that I’d never intentionally eaten an insect.

All that changed recently, however, at my book club meeting. The book we were discussing, State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, was set in the Amazon rainforest, so our hostess, Sheila, decided to serve refreshments in keeping with a Brazilian jungle theme. Now you’re probably thinking that we had bananas or mangos or even Brazil nuts. But you would be wrong. Sheila decided to go with something a bit more exotic and serve us something the Amazon has plenty of: insects.

Crickets, to be exact. Now I don’t know if there are actually crickets in the Amazon and I don’t feel like looking it up, but if there are you know they’re going to be some pumped-up-on-steroids type of cricket. The kind of cricket that would burrow into your inner ear and chirp endlessly until you jumped into piranha-infested waters just to end your misery.

The variety Sheila had were too small to be Amazonian crickets. Plus, they were dead so I was pretty sure their ear-burrowing days were over. They were actually called Crickettes and came in a small rectangular pack. Given their name and their packaging, I wasn’t sure if we were supposed to eat them or smoke them. Not surprisingly, they sat untouched until Sheila asked who was going to try one.

I don't know why I volunteered to try one, but alcohol may have been involved. Wait a minute. What am I saying? I was at book club - of course alcohol was involved! In my defense, we humans have a long history of consuming disgusting critters when we've been drinking. Don't believe me? Just ask the little worm at the bottom of a tequila bottle.

But I can’t blame just the alcohol. The box said the crickets were bacon cheddar flavored. I assume the flavor was added after the crickets’ demise because if living crickets are naturally coated with bacon cheesy yumminess I wouldn’t have waited so long to eat one. There was also the fact that no one else was brave enough to try one so this was the perfect opportunity to claim I’m the baddest ass mother on my cul-de-sac (and when I say mother I’m not using some gangsta slang. I mean an actual minivan-driving mother).

Truthfully, though, I wasn’t the only one to take the dare. Sheila’s 15-year-old son also volunteered. Since the judgment portion of boys’ brains aren’t fully formed until they’re 25, he had an excuse. I’m not a boy and I’m well-past 25, so I don’t know what my excuse was. Oh yeah, someone had just refilled my wine glass.

 Now, if you’re going to eat a cricket, here are a few pointers:

1.     Make sure it’s dead. Dead ones don’t put up much of a fuss.

2.      Whatever you do, don’t look at it. You’re not eating a frosted cupcake with sprinkles on top. Better to just pop the cricket in your mouth with yours eyes clamped shut.

3.     Don’t expect it to be delicious. Crickets have the consistency and taste of wood shavings. “But wait,” you say, “wood shavings don’t taste like bacon and cheese.” That’s right. And neither do crickets.

4.     Chew as little as possible. Otherwise you’ll end up like I did – with a cricket wing stuck to the roof of your mouth. And take it from me: no amount of dry heaving in your friend’s living room is going to dislodge it.

I did learn one important lesson, though. It turns out crickets are the perfect diet food. You really can eat just one.

  This is the "before" picture.

Trust me - you don't want to see the "after."

Happy Camper Is An Oxymoron

 I come from a long line of people who consider the phrase ”happy camper” to be an oxymoron. To put it simply, we Bitners are inside folk and I made sure to marry a man with similar proclivities. I assumed, then, that my husband and I would beget children who appreciated the value of memory foam pillows and indoor plumbing. I was wrong.

Recently my youngest has become fixated on the idea of camping outside. With me. In a tent. An item that, due to our love of the great indoors, we have conveniently neglected to own. Every time he brings up camping, I try to get him off the topic by offering him candy or turning the TV to Sponge Bob. Not a parenting technique I’m proud of, but one I was willing to resort to if it meant sleeping in my own bed. 

That is until the day my parental guilt took a direct hit from the Internet. I’d received an email announcing LL Bean was having a sale on all camping equipment.

            Malls I can do. They’re climate controlled, bear-free and the most dangerous part is looking for a parking space. Plus, the only equipment I needed was the piece of plastic in my wallet. So it was a no-brainer to head to Colonie Center for an adventure my nature-phobic DNA is better suited for: shopping.

            I was still on a buyer’s high when I returned home with my purchases – a tent, two sleeping bags and a self-inflating pillow. I only bought one pillow because I wasn’t sure it would work. If it did end up inflating, my son I would have to wrestle for it, but I was confident I could take him.

I also purchased a first aid kit and something called a Pocket Survival Pack. I bought the pack because it had seemed cocky to look at it in the store and then put it back like I didn’t need it. With my lack of camping know-how, I was in no position to tempt fate. I could picture rescuers one day discovering my lifeless body in the woods and lamenting, “If only she’d bought that pocket survival pack.” Besides, it was on sale.

            I decided I’d better figure out how to use the stuff while I was still safe and secure in my own home. It took me about ten minutes – no lie – to figure out how to open the survival pack, which turned out to be a simple zippered plastic pouch. This did not bode well for my chances in the wild.

            The first thing I noticed when I finally did get it open was that my pack was defective – no chocolate. Second thing I noticed was it was full of cool stuff I hoped I would never have to use – like a rescue whistle, signal mirror and waterproof fire starter.

Then I came across fishing line and fish hooks. I searched in vain in the pouch for the little tiny fisherman that will use them. Good Lord, I’m never going to survive if I have to catch my own food. There was also a scalpel blade, which, if I used it for slitting my wrists, would be a faster way to go than starving to death. There was even a pencil and notepaper.  Although it says you can use the paper when it’s wet, I’ll try to remember to write my farewell note before using the scalpel.

            Then I checked out the bonus lifesaving instructions. The first instruction said: Don’t Panic! Too late. Especially if I was reading it while stuck on the side of some mountain. Come to think of it, instead of a zippered plastic pouch, the whole thing should come in a brown paper bag so I’ll have something to breathe into to stave off the inevitable panic attack.

           

 With any luck, this retail excursion will be enough and just owning the gear will satisfy my son’s desire to go camping. And maybe if I stick the stuff in a closet, we can forget all about it. At least until the Visa bill arrives.

Take It Outside!

I try to spend as much time as possible inside because, well, it means I’m not outside. Outside is where it’s cold or hot or wet or dark or buggy or … you get the idea. And some of my favorite activities are best done inside. Like sleeping, eating watching TV, playing computer games, reading and, of course, drinking, which is a very versatile activity because it can be done in combination with the others. Except for maybe sleeping, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t tried.

 Staying inside has the added advantage of not requiring any fancy equipment like snowshoes or grappling hooks or pfd’s (not to be confused with pdf’s). All I need to be happy is some good food, some wine, a remote, my laptop and books. Lots of books.

Books allow me to experience the world without ever having to leave my comfy chair. And certain books, Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and Into the Wild come to mind, clearly validate my decision to avoid nature as much as possible.

I also love magazines because, as much as I like to read, and I like it even better if the stuff I’m reading has pictures to go with it. Not to mention that reading magazines doesn’t take a lot of time, which frees me up to do as much eating, drinking and sleeping as possible. And with so many different magazine titles, there’s sure to be one to suit all tastes and interests.

I have my favorites. Food and Wine, naturally, is at the top of the list. House, House & Home, House Beautiful and TV Guide all appeal to my chosen lifestyle. The phobia collector in me appreciates Prevention, while Self appeals to my narcissistic side.

You have to be careful, though. Clean Eating is not about finishing off the leftover pizza in your refrigerator to make room for the cake. And Do It Yourself is not a handbook for parents looking for ways to get children to do more around the house. I’d subscribe to Wine Spectator if it weren’t for the “Spectator” part, which implies it’s about watching other people drink, thereby missing the whole point.

Recently, though, I came across a magazine that gave me chills just looking at it. It’s called Outside and its tagline is “Live Bravely.” Needless to say, I’m not a subscriber. But there was something about the in-your-face danger of its attractive cover that drew me to it, even though I knew it wasn’t right for me, much like the way men are drawn to the Kardashians.

I was intrigued by the cover story that promised to tell me how to endure my worst-case scenario. But the title “Could You Survive?” was written in a typeface so large and bold that it was clear the editors doubted my abilities without ever having met me. Okay, they may have a point.

It turns out, though, their idea of a worst-case scenario (avalanches and shark attacks) differed wildly from my idea of a worst-case scenario (a low battery warning on my iPhone during a power outage or finding out the DVR is full when I go to record the new season of Boardwalk Empire).

The article then goes on to give 27 tips that can save your life. Well, here’s a tip for those smug Outside writers who are so busy living bravely they don’t know when to stop: that’s 26 more tips than you need. The number one tip that can save your life is: Stay home. (Okay, supposedly most deaths occur in the home, but wouldn’t you rather slip in the bathtub than get mauled by a grizzly?)

As I continued to leaf through the magazine with articles about fitness routines and adventure vacations, not to mention ads for mountain bikes, GPS systems and hiking gear, I began to feel like a lazy lump of flesh who wasn’t worth the expenditure of energy my muscles required to hold the magazine much less the effort of the writers to write it. It was almost enough to make me want to pick up the latest issue of Travel and Leisure – which would be the perfect antidote if it weren’t for the “Travel” part.

The Inside Scoop on Howard Johnson's

(This article originally appeared in the Albany Times Union on May 18, 2012)

Back when phone booths outnumbered tanning booths and Mad Men’s Don Draper was still faithful to his wife, thousands of Howard Johnson’s Restaurants dotted U.S. roadways. But nothing, except the presidential campaign season, lasts forever. The HoJo’s at Northway Exit 19 in Queensbury was leveled earlier this year and the HoJo’s at Exit 21 in Lake George, one of three remaining in the country, has a for sale sign in its window. With the demise of that piece of Americana goes a bit of my own personal history.

I got my first job at the Exit 19 Howard Johnson’s as a fountain girl. That probably sounds like I was a glamorous starlet in an elaborate Busby Berkeley musical. But fountain girl is really just code for “willing to spend eight hours a day up to my armpits in hot fudge for less than minimum wage.”

As fountain girl, I was required to wear clunky white shoes that looked like they belonged to a nurse at a clown hospital. I also wore a uniform made of military-grade polyester originally designed by NASA as part of a trampoline to deflect space junk. It was burnt orange. You know, the same color as many 1970s refrigerators, and about as figure flattering.

There were plenty of good things about that job, though.  I learned a lot, like bon jour is French for “I’m not going to tip you.” I tried to help others learn things, too. For instance, fellow fountain girl Rachel Ray would probably still be toiling in relative anonymity if I hadn’t taught her everything I know about being relentlessly perky. And my husband and I had our first date at the Musket Room, the Lake George HoJo’s bar.  It was an event that became the inspiration for the often overlooked Captain & Tennille hit song “Musket Love,” a paean to both young romance and the Second Amendment.

 So I was sad to think that something that had been so influential in my life was quickly disappearing from the American landscape. That is until I discovered that the now-defunct Howard Johnson’s in Plattsburgh had been recreated in a recent episode of Mad Men. Never having seen the series, I watched the clip online, excited about the possibility that the notoriety could launch a HoJo’s revival.

I also wanted to do a little fact checking, knowing that the show has a reputation for its painstaking attention to detail and historical accuracy.

Conical shaped scoops of ice cream – check.

Conical shaped bras on the waitresses – check.

Orange roof – check.

Orange sherbet ordered by Don Draper  – hold the phone.

I don’t remember any orange sherbet.  Convinced I’d found an error, I called my sister, Lynne, who’d followed in my enormous white footsteps as a fountain girl, to verify.

 

We both had regularly augmented our meager paychecks by sampling lots of “free” ice cream. We couldn’t help it; it’s in our DNA.  In fact, the Bitner Family coat of arms contains the image of a freezer chest. Lynne assured me that HoJo’s did indeed have orange sherbet, as well as lemon, raspberry and lime. I’d blocked that entirely from my memory, probably because the fruity names sounded vaguely healthy.

While watching the actors eat their sherbet, however, I did notice one glaring mistake. People who looked like that never ate at Howard Johnson’s. People like that never even drove past Howard Johnson’s. Because I can assure you that if I’d ever waited on customers who looked like Jon Hamm’s Don Draper, I would have pledged all my tips for a thousand years to buy enough HoJo’s stock to keep the place open. 

It’s too early to say whether the Mad Men spotlight will be enough to turn things around for Howard Johnson’s. So you should head to one of the remaining restaurants in Lake George or in Lake Placid while you still can. Because it looks as though HoJo’s is going the way of three-martini lunches. And I, for one, will miss them both.