We’re back.

As I mentioned on Friday, in Colin’s birthday post, Andi and I decided to take the kids north to New Hampshire for a little weekend R & R in honor of our little big man. Our friends, Denise and Mark, have a condo in Thornton, NH (in the Waterville Valley area) with an amazing view of the mountains. It’s times like these – and locales like this – that make you perform a few quick mental calculations to see if you can conceivably jettison the corporate nine-to-five in favor of those oh-so important quality of life pursuits. Unfortunatly, the math never works out in my favor.

But I guess that’s what vacation is all about; a few fleeting reminders of how good life can be – that carrot dangled tantalizingly close to our collective nose. What? Carrot doesn’t do it for ya’? What if I say it s deep-fried in chocolate sauce and gilded in gold?

Anyway – we had a great weekend. Denise and Mark’s condo is beautifully situated on a generous expanse of mountainside with a back deck view that looks upon a rolling series of peaks and valleys. The beauty of New Hampshire is it’s an all-weather state. Its peaks seem gentle and inviting – yet just large enough to impart that sense of majesty. Hiking, skiing, snowboarding – there’s always some way to traverse the countryside - so it makes for a nice destination, no matter what season.

Colin and Aria seemed to enjoy themselves. The group of us journeyed out for a morning hike on Saturday. Nothing overly strenuous (1/2 mile tops) but just enough to get you further down the beaten path and prove that nifty new Panasonic 103” Plasma Tau has nothing on nature when it comes to getting up close and personal and teasing your grill with the latest jaw-dropping image. Our group followed a gentle ascent alongside a bubbling river – which eventually gave way to the wide-mouth basin that birthed it. To add to the allure, we quickly discovered that this churning pool of mountain dew was kept hydrated by a gushing waterfall, pouring forth the remnants of winter thaw - past and present.

Watching Colin’s peepers come face-to-face with the largest geyser of water he’d ever encountered (not hard when that title was formerly held by the heavyweight champ - ‘Bathtub Faucet’), Andi and I shared the same feelings. That sickly sweet merger of the excitement in seeing your child tackle another of life’s mysteries mingling with the gut-churning fear that this moment, of all moments, will be the exact moment when that rickety bridge below our feet reveals itself to be constructed entirely of balsa wood.

I have a strange phobia. Heights do nothing to me personally – but when I see my children at certain heights – say ‘toadstool level’, I get all weak in the knees. Still – I’m not one to be the cautious Dad and coax the whole fam to cross the street everytime we see a stray Gypsy Moth headed our way. I think childhood is best experienced with some healthy fear – where we come across the new and unusual – and realize that old maxim – ‘whatever doesn’t hurt us, makes us stronger.’ So it’s with great pleasure that I view Colin and Aria – drinking in these massive sites – realizing that this is true economies of scale at work and that a modest waterfall to my orbs plays out as Niagara on steroids to them. (All right, I was initially gonna’ go with Niagara on Viagara here – but c’mon – this is a family friendly site.) [Editors Note: Too Late!!!]

While the weekend was spent as a respite from the daily grind, there were lessons to be learned. Contrary to popular belief, black fly season has begun in NH. Old wives have ‘em pegged at arriving ’round Memorial Day - but they’re wrong.

Growing up, I always heard so much of the feared black fly season and my head spun with various horrors, each inflated by my insatiable appetite of Creature Double Feature and Giant Pixie Stix. Growing up in a family that enjoyed vacationing in the White Mountains, I would hear parsed snip-its of conversation – a cautionary tale here, a dire warning there – all conspiring to cause me to heed the good advice and steer clear of New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont in late Spring/early Summer. For it was during that sweet-spot of spring that the massive clouds of Black Flies swarmed en masse across our neighbors to the immediate North – leaving pestilence, famine and plague in their wake. Of course, come June 13th, all was right with the world and we were crusing to Canobie.

I’m here to report that despite assurances the black flies were ‘en route’ yet still a few weeks away (last spotted mixing it up North of the Border in some Montreal bordello) –said black flies were in fact already holding court in New Hampshire. Obviously a well-orchestrated campaign of disinformation on behalf of the Secret Society of Evil and/or Misunderstood Entomologists. To prove the theory - to reveal the truth I found out there, I managed to snag a shot of one of these creatures.

Actually – the rumors of my digestion are greatly exaggerated. There were a handful of black flies but nothing a stiff breeze couldn’t handle. In fact – this pesky little bump I’ve had on my wrist – the result of my brush clearing activity in my own back yard a few weeks ago – is apparently the cause of a black fly. So, the nasty nuisance had managed to nosh on my flesh in the confines of mi casa, yet not one of these pests were able to sink their fangs in me while navigating behind enemy lines this past weekend. Talk about mythbusting.

I know this post has meandered, but what’s that they say - oh yeah, that’s life. Life bounces from topic to topic. I’d be remiss in closing out this article if I didn’t make reference to what is rapidly becoming this site’s house band, to my chagrin. Y’all should recall that tale from Aria’s Christening where Colin coined his catch phrase, It All Goes Back to Styx.

When Denise arrived on Friday, she came to the condo bearing the fruits of a Best Buy shopping spree. Using a gift card her company had presented her, Denise cleared the shelves of every band that ever adorned the side of a 1970’s party van (you know, those nondescript Chevy vans that had the lead singers of glam rock bands mixing it up with unicorns, busty Valkyries and Gollum immortalized in oil paint on the exterior – throw in some shag carpeting, a mirror ball and eight track and the Shaggin’ Wagon was born). Perusing her pile of freedom rock, I came across… (wait for it) Styx Greatest Hits. Once I found that the answer to the question “How did Styx manage to shoehorn 11 songs on a Greatest Hits album?” was a foolhardy pursuit, I allowed Denise to pop this disc in the turn-table and crank it to 11.

Somewhere around Mr. Roboto, my soul died.

The next morning, when the household awoke to begin the day, Colin looked at me with wide eyes and said “Good morning, Dada. (Pause) We listened to Styx last night. (Pause) It all goes back to Styx. (Pause) Pancakes for breakfast?”

Hey, it could be worse.

It could all go back to The Weather Girls.