Denver Colorado, Summer 2011: Day 6

“As the bus goes forward, we go backward in time!”

Not sticking out, but still all over the freakin' ground.

The morning was one of recombobulation, as we tried to figure out what I could get away with taking home in the big suitcase, while they kept the carry ons.  Then it was off to a mighty prehistoric adventure.

The Doctor is “IN”

Forty eight years ago yesterday, a little educational show started up in England.  It featured a history teacher and a science teacher traveling with, and providing lessons to, one of their students.  Due to the Kennedy assassination, the show’s premier went almost completely unnoticed, and only a rebroadcast of the initial episode before the second kept if from vanishing before it started.

The teachers’ lessons were greatly enhanced by the fact that their young student’s grandfather could bring them all to the date and location of any lesson needed with his magic box that could travel through Time And Relative Dimensions in Space…

A month later, they were all attacked by psychotic, fascist pepper mills with unusual armaments. 

I always said, “It’s not the toilet plunger, it’s the egg whisk you need to watch out for."

The educational aspect was mostly tossed out the window in favor of intelligently presented adventure and, in what has become the most successful and longest running science fiction series of all time, the Doctor and his companions have been running ever since.

Hartnell started it all, and influenced all who followed.

Denver Colorado, Summer 2011: Day 5

“How Big Could the Zoo Be?”

Not a bush, this time.

The day started with another bit of airline website checking, another bit of omelet breakfast, another bit of Anabelle reading an Elseworlds comic (I’m so proud.) another bit of pool swimming, and another round of demented sounding phone messages.

Denver Colorado, Summer 2011: Day 4

“You may want to eat further down the mountain.”

Not as peaceful as it looked.

We started the day with a good old fashioned emotional upheaval. Anabelle, who had been sleeping on an air mattress on Titi LuzMa’s floor, woke up extremely sad, and telling us she missed us.  This caused us a bit of concern as Rosa had recently realized that with our insane schedule we’d barely be able to fit in all the sightseeing we planned, never mind the sisterly stuff she also wanted to do.  We discussed it and as much as we didn’t want to be apart that long (for the first time in almost a decade) we didn’t want the opportunity to be missed.  Rosa started checking on the possibility of staying an extra week.  Work was such a zoo at that point, I was lucky to get the week off I had already scheduled.

Denver Colorado, Summer 2011: Day 3

“A New York Tyrannosaur, you’d think we’d have noticed that on the plane”

Not tiptoeing through the tulips.

We began this day by all visiting the pool. Anabelle continued to practice her headstand, while I continued to swim butterfly because the pool was too small to do good overhand laps in. Of course that meant I set up a standing wave forceful enough to continually knock over my daughter. (Excellent parenting there, Jeff.)

Denver Colorado, Summer 2011: Day 2

“They have grumpy fish too”

Not a fish.

Our first full day started out with my making eggs for Anabelle while Rosa reconfigured the schedule based on the fact that we didn’t have much else to eat except the eggs.  Luz Maria and I contributed greatly to that need to reconfigure the schedule by initiating our complete inability to navigate for each other and getting thoroughly lost on the way to pick up the rental car.  Based on Joe selling Chrysler vehicles for years, and Aurora’s favorite color, I chose an Orange Dodge Caliber.  I was warned that the car was slightly lacking in pick up, which it did, in much the same way the Sun is slightly lacking in swimming pools.  Once equipped we headed back to Luz Maria’s house to find Rosa busy taking pictures, with her super deluxe magic Cannon camera, of the elegant layout  and décor of the place in a fashion which indicated I was going to be living in multiple episodes of While You Were Out  when we returned home. 

Denver Colorado, Summer 2011: Day 1

“Hey look, Mountains”

Not a mountain.

As she had been separated from her family for far too many years, we planned a trip to visit Rosa’s sister in Denver while Anabelle was out of school.  Luz Maria immediately started sending us brochures of things to do, and I volunteered to set up a Disney like spreadsheet to organize our days. Rosa insisted that this would be a much more relaxed vacation, and we would not need a spreadsheet. Imagine my surprise as the flyers and e-mails with links to websites intensified the week before the trip when I found a grid listing various Museums, Zoos and comic stores cross indexed with the days of our trip.

Being a responsible adult, I did not gloat about this fact.

Being a male, I did write “Ha Ha!” at the bottom of the spreadsheet.

Once upon a time…In the Hall of Justice

The ability to create original superheroes was mine from childhood.

The ability to organically combine masses of existing superheroes took over twenty years of comic book collecting.

The ability to do this comes from being the father of a little girl…



As usual, click to enlarge and bask in the obsession.