Arachnophobia

I was eight or nine at the time, maybe a little older, when I suffered my first traumatic arachnid episode.  Well, it might have been earlier, as I recall seeing some scenes of Kingdom of the Spiders on TV when I was a kid. That memory of a town entirely covered in spiderweb chills me to this day.  My earliest memory of an actual (not televised) encounter was on the way home from school one sunny day.  My friends and I were walking down Forest Avenue, returning home from a busy day at Tuckahoe Elementary School, when we decided to stop at the creek near the intersection of Rock Creek Road and Forest.  As I walked through the rails of the bridge, I felt this tickling sensation moving up my arm and looked to behold the biggest spider I had ever seen, scampering up my arm in an attempt to GET TO MY NECK ANDSUCK OUTMYBLOODAAAIIIIIIEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

Ok.  Maybe the spider wasn't really that large.  I mean, when you're eight, everything is huge.  Size also could have been distorted by my point of reference:  looking up my arm at the DEADLY EIGHT LEGGED BEHEMOTH- I mean, spider- crawling straight for my face.  I still maintain that it was of a respectable size.  It definitely was not a tiny thing.

This memory came back to me in Church, of all places.  Heather and I were sitting at the back of the chapel during Sunday School and I notice a small object sort of floating in the middle of the room just above the pews.  At first I thought it was an airborne piece of lint, or other dust-like object, until it started to move and then dropped into the pews.  Since this thing was at least eight rows ahead of me, and I could see it quite clearly once it moved behind the sister in the white blouse, I could tell that it was larger than the average spider.  This alarmed me.  I had never seen a spider in the church, before.  Yesterday was the first, and now my last place of refuge has been infiltrated and I can no longer go into the Chapel without first looking up above my head to make sure a spider is not perched, waiting for the perfect moment to strike and GET TO MY NECKANDSUCKOUTMYBLOODAAAIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

I'm not really all that freakish about spiders.  I do all right as long as they don't make physical contact.  Let's face it- I live in Virginia.  There are a lot of spiders, especially in the wooded areas.  At scout camp there were some pretty big spiders residing in the woods.  In fact, at night you could lie really still and hear them walking around on the outside of the tent.  Again, I was ok.  I had a mosquito net over my cot that I would tuck under the mattress so nothing could enter my space.  There is one particular scout camp spider incident in which I came off looking quite stoic and unflappable, or at least too tired to care. 

My friend Sean and I worked on the camp staff at T. Brady Saunders for several summers.  The staff had a pretty nice setup.  Our tents were bigger than those the weekly scouts were using.  We lived in these things all summer.  I could stand up and reach up with my hand and just touch the apex of the tent ceiling.  They were on platforms up off of the ground.   We had room for our cots, our foot lockers at the end of the cots, a little table between the cots at the head,  and even room for a little table at the entrance of the tent.   Quite spacious.  Of course, due to the critter factor in the woods we all had mosquito nets over our cots.  I had started tucking the net under my mattress at all times ever since a Black Widow had managed to get inside my cot.  That unfortunate Widow was dispatched quite quickly with a overly generous amount of Off! repellent.  I considered myself fortunate to have only suffered that minor breach of security.  Matt Johnson, in the tent next to us, once entered his tent to find a snake curled up on his cot.  I'll take the spider.

Instead of the standard military surplus green netting, Sean had opted for a fine white mesh mosquito net.  Remember that detail, it will figure prominently in the telling of my tale. 

The day came that we returned to our tent for the evening and IT was there, waiting up in the tip of the roof of the tent.  A large, furry wood spider about the size of my hand.  Sean freaked.   I knocked the sucker off of the ceiling and shooed him out of the tent.  I wasn't stepping on that thing.  It would've been a mess.   Unfortunately, the little beast was back up on the ceiling when we came back to the tent the next night.  Again, I shooed him out of the tent.  This went on for several days.  Now we get to that fateful night- the night that will forever live in infamy- the Night of the Arachnid!!!

We had completed the spider-shooing ritual and turned in for the night.  We worked in the camp kitchen, which was a hot (meaning sweltering) and exhausting job.  I took my shower, then rolled up the tent sides to allow more airflow to cool the tent, and then went to sleep.  My peaceful slumber was interrupted in the wee hours of morning, when I  awoke to Sean hollering.  As I shook the fog from my head and tried to figure out what was going on, I saw Sean's flashlight come on and bounce around inside his mosquito net.  All I could see was the light, I never saw Sean.  He was yelling and practically jumping through his netting.  He finally freed himself and took off running into the woods.  I waited a few minutes for him to return, and like the loyal and concerned friend that I am, went back to sleep.  When I woke again at sunup, Sean was back in his cot, and the spider was gone.  I asked Sean what the deal was.  He explained that he had woken up in the middle of the night to see the moonlight reflecting off of his white mosquito net, and thought it was a giant spider web and freaked out.   I never saw the spider again.  I just figured that after enduring the being tossed out of the tent every night, Sean's episode was the last straw and the spider headed for greener pastures.   A year later I would be in Arizona, a place hotter'n heck and with the highest critter factor of any place I had ever seen.

I was serving as a missionary in the Arizona Phoenix Mission.  This place was an alien landscape to me.  It was hot, dry, dusty, flat, and was deficient in the foliage department.  Every time I got out of the car and stood up I had to hold on to the car till the feeling of falling left me.   I had never been in a place where you could see for miles from ground level.  The other missionaries made fun of me because I took so many pictures.   "You don't understand," I'd tell them.  "There's nothing out here!  Nothing!"   I had never seen so much nothing before.  I felt that I had to photographically document the place because I wasn't sure that I could adequately describe it in my letters home.  In Virginia, you're lucky if you can see two or three yards down due to the denseness of the woods and brush.  One of the things that got me the most was the variety of critters that inhabited the area.  There were snakes, lizards, roadrunners, jackrabbits, scorpions (another story in their own right), and of course, spiders.  These were not just any spiders, though.  They weren't even the Virginia wood spiders.  These things were tarantulas.   I remembered them from Kingdom of the Spiders.  Fortunately, I didn't have too many run-ins with them.  The first time I saw one my jaw dropped.  We were driving down the road and I saw one running in the opposite direction.  The size stunned me.  I couldn't believe they were really that big- and dodging traffic at that!  The next time I saw one was when we stopped by a church member's house one afternoon.  As we walked up to the door we heard screaming.  The screams would stop, then start again.  We were a little worried as we rung the doorbell.  The family's teenage daughter and her friend opened the door, looking quite panicked.  As it turns out, and as we could see from the front door, there was a really large spider up on the wall near the vaulted ceiling.  Every time the thing moved the girls would scream.  It was funny, actually.  We were unable to enter and vanquish the spider, since the parents were not home and mission rules restrained us from any further assistance.  I don't believe I ever heard what became of the thing.  I kept expecting to return and find it stuffed and mounted alongside the jackalopes on the wall.

My final big spider memory occurred during the last three months of my mission.  We were headed across the plains to a zone conference in Page, Arizona.  It was a three hour drive.  It had rained the night before, but it was a clear day.  I was driving the car, and I remember noticing the shadows of the clouds overhead, as they would cross the road and shade the landscape ahead of us.  At one point, what I thought was a shadow turned out to be something else.  As we got closer to it the shadow broke up into little dots, then big dots, and then a lot of flying, squished dots as I realized we were driving through a whole herd of tarantulas!  There must have been thousands of them!  It was really gross.  At least none of them managed to hop onto the car and hijack it at the next rest stop. 

Since then I have not been exposed to any large arachnids, just the run of the mill little spiders that are easily smashed by a rolled up newspaper.  I think it's possible that I have become complacent, and the spiders have sent me a message to remind me that they are there--watching...

I need to talk to the bishop about mosquito netting.

Bark! Arf!! Woof! Woof! Bark! RRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrr.....!!

It's been a long day.  A nice day, but long.  Been doing drywall work pretty much all day.  Just got home around 10:00.  My dogs keep barking.  They do that a lot, lately.  Have no clue what they're barking at.  Probably a mosquito, or something, because I can't see anything.  It's getting quite annoying.  They'd better watch it.  I'm about to donate them to science.  Not that science would want them.  What could possibly be learned?

You know, we have been receiving a lot of "Field & Stream" magazines at the house. They've all been addressed to Heather.  Don't know how that subscription came through.  I've been teasing Heather about her new "hobby".  Any day now I expect to walk into the living room to find my dogs stuffed and mounted on the wall.  If that happens, just know that it won't be my doing.  I couldn't even bring myself to dissect the frog in high school biology. 

A study of the aerodynamic flight properties of the dogs might be rather amusing, though....

Escape from New York

This past Christmas Heather's bosses gave the whole family a trip to New York City.  They took care of the plane tickets and the hotel, so all we had to worry about was the cabs and any of the sights we wanted to see.  I wasn't all that thrilled about the prospect of spending my time in a big city, what with New York being a favorite haunt for terrorists, alien invasions, and Godzilla.   Had I known beforehand the wealth of blog material that the Big Apple would present this weekend, I probably would have been much more excited.  Well, I struck gold on that count. I might have too much to put into just one blog installment, but we'll see how it goes.

We started our trip by heading to Richmond International Airport.  As we were loading the van, we received a call stating that our flight was delayed.  We figured we had plenty of time, but wanted to get there early just in case, so we climbed into the van and started off.  As we were getting into the van we got another call informing us that our flight had been cancelled!  Not what we wanted to hear.  Heather would have none of that, so she shifted into Facilitator mode and made a bunch of phone calls.  She found another flight that would take us to Philadelphia, where we could connect with a flight to New York.  I dropped her and the girls off at the terminal, then ended up parking the van in Economy Lot C, which had to be the furthest lot away from the terminal.  I caught the shuttle back to the terminal and met the girls just as they were calling for boarders on our flight.  As luck would have it, the ticket desk had printed Emily two boarding passes, and not one for me, so they wouldn't let me through security.  Heather had to run back to the ticket desk and have them correct the ticket.  We got to the plane just in time.

The flight itself wasn't bad.  Only about an hour.  We landed in Philadelphia around 7:30pm.  We grabbed something to eat.  The girls were wired.  Emily's doctor just put her on an oral steroid for her allergies, so she was all full of energy, and Amanda was just herself.  I wonder if we can get some sort of pediatric tranquilizer for the next time we travel?  We caught our connecting flight on a small turboprop plane.  It was also a rather pleasant flight.  The humming of the engines was kind of soothing.

The flight was only about half an hour, or so, and we arrived at New York's LaGuardia Airport without incident.  Since we only had carry-ons, we didn't have to deal with baggage claim. 

We caught a ride from the airport to the hotel.  Our driver was Danny, a very nice and talkative guy.  He was from Africa and had been in New York for 30 years.  He pointed out some of the areas as we drove through them and told us about the city.  His driving style concerned me, though.  I had to trust that his was just the legendary New York City driving and that, although we appeared to be in a constant state of immenent collision, this was actually normal and safe driving for the area.

The hotel was very nice.  It was midnight when we finally arrived there.  We were pretty wiped out and went to bed pretty quickly.

We woke up a little later than intended on Saturday.  The Heather and the girls woke me to wish me a Happy Birthday.  I had forgotten that it was my birthday.  Since you asked, I just turned 9 for the 4th time. Mom Sandy also called me to wish me a happy birthday.

On that note we left the hotel for our day on the town.  We headed for the waterfront for our harbor cruise and visit to the Intrepid Museum.  We took the subway to the street we needed, and then walked the four long city blocks to the waterfront.  We only walked because we couldn't seem to get a cab.  Oddly enough, we didn't see many when we needed them. 

The cruise was nice.  It was about two hours, and took us along the length of one side of the island and back.  We were able to see Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. 

Once back at the docks, we walked to the next pier where the World War II aircraft carrier Intrepid was berthed.  It was a long wait to get inside, and it was a hot day.  We finally got in and then waited in line to walk through the Cold War era submarine, the "Growler".  It was pretty cool.  I walked through a Los Angeles class submarine years ago on a Boy Scout trip, and this sub was pretty small and cramped compared to the newer one.  We entered the sub through the cruise missile bays.  The sub originally carried two of these missiles, each of which were roughly the size of a Korean war era jet, and looked kindof like one, only without the cockpit.  Once we decended down the ladder into the sub proper things got really tight.  I was stooped over for most of the tour.  Those early sub crews must've been tough-  and very, very short.  There were bunk beds three and four levels high, stuffed in places not much bigger than my closet.  I definitely could not have been a submariner.

We exited the sub and went over to the Intrepid.  We started our tour on the flight deck, where most of the aircraft are on display.  This is where Will Smith was driving golf balls in "I Am Legend".  I was in heaven.  I had been aboard the U.S.S. Eisenhower during that same scout trip mentioned before, and this was a much smaller carrier.  I had never been aboard a WWII carrier, and we were able to explore most of the areas of the ship. 

We climbed the tower into the command and operations bridges and stood where the officers would have watched for the launching and returning aircraft.  Below, in the hangar deck, were some more aircraft of the type that the Intrepid had actually carried during her years of service.  There were several interactive exhibits for the kids, and some flight simulators.  One of the exhibits was a mock up of a ship hull, from the waterline to the top deck, with a large net hanging from the side.  Both Emily and Amanda climbed up and hit the button at the top to set off the blue light to show they had reached the top.  I didn't think Amanda would climb all the way up, since the thing was probably a good 15 to 20 feet high, but she scrambled right up the thing and then jumped away from the top so the staff could lower her to the floor.  I was so proud!  Unfortunately, our pictures of the occasion are rather blurry.

We were pretty tired by this point.  It was almost 6pm.  It took us a while to find a cab to Times Square.  We endured another white-knuckled drive through the streets of NYC.  Our cabbie was not as talkative as the last.  I tried to remain stoic and impassive, but inside I was screaming as we tore through the streets, swerving around cars and running between lanes and around horse carriages and such.  Honestly, I don't know why they bother painting lines for the lanes in that city. 

Times Square was insane.  Giant video screens were all over the sides of the buildings.  The crowds were there, but as we would see later, it was not as crowded as it could get.  TV just doesn't do it justice.  We went over to the Toys R Us store, where I endured a ride on the indoor ferris wheel.  I noticed the other Dads who seemed to be wearing the same look I was sure was on my face, as they rode around.  The Dads unlucky enough to land in the Barbie and Pretty Pony cars didn't even make eye contact.  At least Amanda and I ended up in the Scooby Doo car.

When we left Toys R Us and entered the square, we could smell smoke and the police were putting up barricades and pushing people out of the area.  The crowds were pretty intense and they were moving the barricades away and walking through them.   Those NYC cops are just like you see them on TV, only tougher.  I can see why, now.  They were hollering at people to get back behind the barricades, making the ones who had gone through turn around and go back, all the while reminding them that the barricades were there for a reason.  We didn't know for sure what was going on.  Fire trucks were across the street and traffic was being diverted out of the square.  We heard there was a car fire.  We were just trying to get across the street to the McDonalds. The push of people was so tight that we were literally pushing shoulder to shoulder, holding onto the kids for dear life just to cross the street.  We decided to skip the McDonalds after seeing the crowds.  We instead went through the M&M's and Hersheys stores.  When we left those stores we could see that the police had cleared even more of the square.  Having seen enough, we headed to the hotel.  It wasn't until later that I saw on the news that they had evacuated the McDonalds that we decided to skip.  They still weren't saying anything about a bomb, at that time.  Didn't hear about that until Sunday morning. 

From what we could see on the news, and what we saw Saturday night, our cab driver had dropped us off on the corner just down from where a car bomb had been left.  We were in the Toys R Us for about an hour, so it had to have been left while we were inside.  We walked by that corner again when we left the store, and the Fire Department had blocked the road at that point.  From what I've heard we were lucky it didn't explode.  With all the people that had been in the Square, it would have been a mess.

Sunday was our last day.  We started that out by walking a couple of blocks down the the F.A.O. Schwartz toy store.  That was where they filmed the scene with the big piano in the movie "Big".  There was a show with the piano, and then afterwards the kids were able to walk on it and play for a little while. We wandered around for a while.  Heather and Amanda went through the Barbie area, and Emily and I went another direction. 

"This is the best toy store ever!" exclaimed Emily as she danced through the aisles of stuffed animals.  "Nuh-uuh!" I cried, skipping gaily after her through the life-sized stuffed bears. "It's the best toy store in the whole history of ever!!! uh -after The Home Depot and Northern Tool and Equipment: 'where warriors prepare for battle'!"

Upon leaving that store we crossed the street into Central Park.  The first thing we saw was the huge statue of General William Tecumseh Sherman. The man burned the Shenandoah Valley, so in the interest of politeness there will be no further commentary.  We visited the Central Park Zoo.  That was ok.  It was even more humid than Saturday, and we were still hurting from all the standing and walking from the day before.  Really couldn't see a whole lot there. We decided to get a cab and visit the Museum of Natural History. 

The cab ride was almost an exact copy of the last.  The Museum was pretty cool. Really. It had great air conditioning.   It was a little difficult to follow, but the exhibits were really awesome.  We stayed until closing time and then caught (gulp!) another cab back to the hotel to pick up our bags.  Then it was time for the final cab ride back to the airport. 

The flight home was uneventful.  All boarding passes were correct, there were no delays, and we were home in bed by 11pm.  It's nice to have experienced New York, and I wouldn't mind another visit in the future, but it's nice to be home.