TK's Overnight Trips: Yosemite National Park

22 years I've lived in California and I've never been to Yosemite!  What the fuck.  So when Moms said she wanted to road trip somewhere, I figured let's kill two birds with one stone.  One of them could be Mom!  JOKE.  Sort of.  Anyway, off we went to Yosemite on Wednesday morning.

Drive drive drive.  Finally get to Yosemite around 1:30 p.m.  It's beautiful, just as advertised.

Here's the thing with Mom: she is a fucking pain in the ass to travel with.  Me and The Wife are kind of casual, hey-whatever-happens-happens travelers, but Mom is FOCUSED and DIALED IN and that means LET'S GET TO THE VISITOR CENTER ASAP because a trip MUST BEGIN with a visit to the Visitor Center. 

In Yosemite, the parking area for the Visitor Center is about a 1/2 mile away from the VC.  Mom's getting up there and she doesn't walk so fast and so we spent a good hour of daylight in the 24 hours we have in Yosemite slowly walking along a pathway between a parking lot and a Visitor Center that, upon arrival, Mom decided she wasn't that interested in.

But don't get me wrong; it is a truly stunning place.  Yesterday morning we took about a 2-mile hike through the Mariposa Grove with all these giant redwoods and shit.  Unbelievable.  Pro tip: If you're going to do this, get there early, because we had it mostly to ourselves until around 10:30 when school groups started arriving.

They have these tram tours which we were initially terrified that Mom was going to force us to do because she loves any kind of tourist shit like that but when she found out they charge $26.50 for the tram tour she shut that idea down in a fucking hurry because the only quality that wins out over her touristness is her cheapness.

I know it sounds like I'm bitching a lot, and I guess I am, but it really is tiring traveling with someone who constantly approaches strangers to ask what country they're from and uses the term "Orientals" unironically and refuses to tip in restaurants and is a martyr on top of the whole thing.

I want to go back, though.

2 things: (1) The Comfort Inn in Oakhurst is relatively cheap, really comfortable, and not far from the south entrance to the park; and (2) Lunch at the Wawona Hotel is less expensive than you'd think and totally worth it.

More bullshit on the drug war front

Apart from picking which lucky SOB is going to get to undeservedly claim credit for the inevitable economic recovery that will happen in the next 4 years, voters in some states are also going to decide whether to legalize pot.  Predictably enough, people that make their living from pot being illegal are harshing everyone's mellow.

"Next month in Colorado, Oregon and Washington states, voters will vote on legalizing marijuana," Peter Bensinger, the moderater of the call and former administrator of the DEA during President Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan administrations, began the call. "Federal law, the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court decisions say that this cannot be done because federal law preempts state law."

Bensinger added: "And there is a bigger danger that touches every one of us -- legalizing marijuana threatens public health and safety. In states that have legalized medical marijuana, drug driving arrests, accidents, and drug overdose deaths have skyrocketed. Drug treatment admissions are up and the number of teens using this gateway drug is up dramatically."

Ugh, Huffington Post, it's "moderator," not "moderater."  Anyway, STOP THE PRESSES: Former DEA Administrator against taking some kind of small drug law reform?  SHOCKING.

Let's leave aside the question of federal preemption because that's boring and he's basically right anyway.  Instead, let's look at Chicken Little's second claim, that "[i]n states that have legalized medical marijuana, drug driving arrests, accidents, and drug overdose deaths have skyrocketed."  Wow, that's terrible!  Also total bullshit, as you might have gathered.

In my 10 minutes of Internet research, I couldn't find good stats on "drug driving arrests," but, surprise surprise, "accidents" in states that have legalized medical marijuana (and by "accidents," I assume he means "fatal car accidents," not "accidentally eating an entire bag of Cheetos" har har har) have actually FALLEN.

Comparing traffic deaths over time in states with and without medical marijuana law changes, the researchers found that fatal car wrecks dropped by 9% in states that legalized medical use — which was largely attributable to a decline in drunk driving. The researchers controlled for other factors like changes in driving laws and the number of miles driven that could affect the results.

Medical marijuana laws were not significantly linked with changes in daytime crash rates or those that didn’t involve alcohol. But the rate of fatal crashes in which a driver had consumed any alcohol dropped 12% after medical marijuana was legalized, and crashes involving high levels of alcohol consumption fell 14%.

The "drug overdose death" claim is just bizarre, because if he's hinting that people are dying from overdosing on medical marijuana, he's obviously very, very wrong.  In fact, most drug overdoses - about 74% - are due to prescription drugs.  And the rate of prescription drug overdose in New Mexico, for example, a state without medical marijuana, is about 3 times the rate of prescription drug overdose in California, a state that has medical marijuana.  Therefore, I'm calling bullshit on everything this asshole says.

And that, in a nutshell, has been the problem with drug education and with trying to discourage kids from taking drugs.  You tell kids, essentially, "the first time you ever smoke pot you're going to go crazy and die" or "the first time you have a line of coke you will become addicted and end up giving blowjobs behind the Pak N Save for a hit" and then kids try smoking some pot or snorting coke and none of those things happen. In fact, it turns out just fine - better than fine, actually, really fun - and that's it, you just lost all credibility.  Why should I believe you when you say that I really can get addicted to heroin quickly, which is actually true, when you lied to me about everything else?

Anyway, I hope they do legalize pot in those states and it inexorably leads to pot being legalized everywhere.  I don't smoke pot any more, but from past experience, on the harm scale, it's somewhere between Benadryl and Jack Daniels.  Hardly the nightmare Mr. Bensinger envisions.

So, on that note, Mom's flying into town today and the whole family is off to Yosemite for a couple of days where, I imagine, Mom will tell Half Dome she's disappointed in it and why couldn't it have been a Full Dome?  Maybe some medical marijuana wouldn't be such a bad idea after all.

Unbelievable, Part II

Well, if you have any remaining doubts about the scientific validity of Reverse Jinxing, let them now be removed.

Here's how it looked from my office computer moments after the Giants did the unprecedented and came back from an 0-2 hole in a best of 5 series to win the NLDS on the road against the Reds.

I almost died.  If you watched the game, you know what I'm talking about.  That last Jay Bruce AB against Romo?  When he fouled off about 32 pitches and it was 3-2 and I CAN'T BREATHE HELP ME HELP ME I CAN'T BREATHE he finally flew out.

Truly unbelievable.

So, on to the NLCS against - probably the Cards, if I have to guess?  The Nationals just don't look like they have much life left in them.  We'll see what happens this afternoon.

Also, a note about MLB.com's "Postseason.tv" streaming service: IT FUCKING SUCKS.  I mean, for $4.99, why can't they just give us what's being shown on TBS?  Instead, you have your pick of like 5 or 6 camera angles, all of them apparently operated by drunken teenagers who have never used a camera.  The ball is hit!  Instead of following the play to first, let's....pirouette around for crowd shots!  The dugout!  The outfield wall!  WHEEEEE!!!  And the promised HD quality looks like Nintendo 64.  

Anyway, the NLCS games are all at more reasonable late afternoon or evening hours, so this won't be a problem again, but come the fuck on, MLB.com.

[NOTE TO READERS: Between now and whenever the Giants either win the World Series or are eliminated, this blog will mostly be baseball-centric.  If you're not super into baseball, apologies in advance.]

Unbelievable.

Unbelievable.  Last time we spoke, the Giants and A's both were down 2 games to none in a best of 5 series, and, as you may recall, my co-worker (and me, for that matter) held out little hope for the G's to peel off 3 in a row in Cincinnati or Cinncinati or whatever they have there and win the NLDS.

Well, well.

We watched Tuesday afternoon's game at the venerable Zeke's Diamond Bar with about 15 other hardcores.  It started out like Game 2, with the Giants making another decent, but not godlike, pitcher look like Roger Clemens channeling Sandy Koufax after eating Don Larsen and having a seance with Christy Mathewson.  In other words, for the second game in a row, a Cincinnati pitcher carried a no-hitter into the 5th inning.  Jesus Christ.

But then, amazingly, the Giants scored somehow on a combination of hit batsman and walks and sac flies or some kind of mystical bullshit and carried it into extra innings and somehow scraped out a win.

I was then felled by a horrible cold which had started with me sneezing and blowing my nose at Zeke's like I was in Contagion or something and blossomed Wednesday into a Full Bore Illness.  So I stayed home and watched.  When Angel Pagan lifted the second pitch into the seats, I thought, whoa, we might have something.  Of course the Reds were using some starter they found in a utility closet but whatever, it's the major leagues and you're responsible for your own shit.  The Giants go on to win 8-3 in a laugher that also saw Tim Lincecum come in and act like it' was 2008 all over again.

And so this brings us to today.  They're playing at 10 am?  I'm back at work.  Have to go investigate my streaming options.  Fuck this scheduling.  Oh, one other thing I've gotta take care of.

There is no chance the Giants will win today.  INITIATE NEGATIVE JINX SEQUENCE.

(Over in the East Bay, our cousins the A's are enjoying a similarly rapturous comeback, but I haven't really watched any of their games so all I can say is congrats, A's.)

A brief conversation with my co-worker about the Giants' remaining prospects in the playoffs

Coworker:

Of course it's still winnable.  Vogelsong comes on this afternoon and pitches like he did in his last seven starts.  Pagan and Scutaro get on base and score.  Then tomorrow Zito pitches well and Lincecum comes out of the bullpen and the change in speeds throws off the Reds hitters.  Then, if they win both of those, you know they'll win the fifth game.  They'll have all the momentum.  And Cain will pitch that game and shut them down.

Me:

But what do you think is actually going to happen?

Coworker:

Oh, they're going to lose today, for sure.

So here we are.  All those games, all those freezing nights at the yard, all those beers, more of those beers, and it comes down to today at 2:30.  And then, if that goes right, it all comes down to tomorrow.  And then the next day.  Is it possible for the Giants to win 3 in a row in Cincinnati after floundering helplessly the first two games?  Of course it's possible. Quantum mechanics teaches that it's possible for one solid to pass completely through another solid.  It's just incredibly unlikely.  It's POSSIBLE that Pablo Sandoval will lay off a pitch around his eyes.  It's just incredibly unlikely.

(Also, Tim Lincecum's Dad is mad because Tim is pitching out of the bullpen?  DAD, YOU'RE EMBARRASSING ME!!!!!!!  But really, if Tim wanted to get a start in the postseason Tim would have been well-advised not to have the highest ERA among all starting pitchers with enough innings to qualify.  Jesus Christ, Dad.  If I got rewarded for my performance in prior years, I'd get the start tomorrow for my little league team and nobody wants to see a 6'4" middle aged man bringing the gas against little Connor and Caden.  BACK THE FUCK UP I OWN THE PLATE.  It would be kinda fun, actually.)

We are expanding our roster

Please join me in welcoming Buster Matt Cain Shooter The Assassin Yards After the Catch K*:

[* Name not 100% cleared with The Wife yet]

That's right!  In 2030, this lil guy will be showing a fake ID to the door dude at the Uptown.  Or a fake retinal scan or Implant Identity Chip or whatever they have then.  

Can't tell much from that photo, huh?  I've taken the liberty of adding annotations:

Just like Dad!

What else?  We're very excited, obvs.  I promise not to become a Daddy Blogger.  Ugh, just typing that felt dirty.

How a company that makes cheap disposable backpacks wasted my time yesterday

A couple of weeks ago I was notified about the following event:

I guess it's some promotional event for Jansport, the company that makes the ubiquitous cheap disposable backpacks that emo girls put buttons all over.  Whatever, sounds like fun, right?  I like the Dodos!  (BTW, if you're not familiar, check them out, they're great.) And, as the accompanying email made clear, FREE BEER!  And Treasure Island!  I'm sold!  Sign me up!

The way this worked was, you have to personally RSVP and then they send you a confirmation email.  So Stoney and I sign up and we get out emails and we're all set.

We are advised that the doors open at 5:30.  We arrive around 5:45 and there is a line at least several hundred people long.  I can immediately see what the problem is: it appears there is one person checking the list and IDs and whatnot.  Hey, no biggie, we can wait.  The line seems to be moving.

Until we get close.  When we are maybe 50 people from the entrance, the line stops.  Now, this is an outdoor thing and so we can fully hear the bands and see all the Lucky Admittees strolling around with their free beers and so what the fuck.  Finally, we hear through the grapevine that they have reached capacity and they're not letting anyone else in.

WHAT THE FUCK.

So you're telling me that I RSVP'd and you sent me back an email saying come on over and I got there 15 minutes after the doors opened and I can see with my own fucking eyes that it's not crowded inside and after waiting an hour I can't get in?

WELL FUCK YOU JANSPORT. 

Hey, I understand that there is a limited capacity, but knowing that, why did you send out confirmation emails to people and lead them to believe they could get in?  I can understand overbooking by maybe 50 or 60, but when we gave up and left, there were several hundred people still in line.  NOT FUCKING COOL.

Now, Jansport, I'm not going to tell you how to run your promotional events, but here are some suggestions that might help out next time:

1. If you're going to have a whole rigamarole for RSVP'ing and sending out email confirmations, that should mean something.  Like, if the capacity is 1,000, don't send out 2,000 confirmations.  In this case, the confirmations meant exactly nothing.  You might as well have just admitted the first 1,000 people to show up and dispensed with the fucking email confirmations.

2. If you decided that you've reached some arbitrary capacity and you're not letting anyone else is, hey how about an announcement? Why don't you have some dork with a bullhorn go "We have reached capacity and we're not letting anyone else in"?  That would have saved some time.

3. Seriously, go fuck yourself.

So everyone, let's do what little we can do and NEVER PURCHASE ANOTHER JANSPORT PRODUCT AGAIN.  Not like you were going to anyway, but don't.