Old memories of adventure travel in Mexico emerge during a bedtime story with Chloe.  It's no lie.

Turkey sandwich featuring choice peppered turkey, pepperjack cheese, wheat bread, oil and vinegar . . . oh yeah, and fajita vegetables including jalepeno, onion, and bell pepper
This could be a column all of its own.  What do you do with left over food from camping or road trips?  I recall the days before owning a 12 volt refrigerator (um, that would be the Engel) that food gets pretty nasty sitting in a cooler of melted ice that's been riding in the truck bed on dusty roads.  You ever seen cheese that's been soaking in water?  It turns to this disgusting yellow mush blob.

Well, this time I got lucky with a pretty cool assortment of leftovers.

Oh great. Just great. Brooke's birthday has already passed. Our anniversary was last month. And it's July, a whole six months from Christmas. Just when I find the perfect gift for my hottie adventurous wife, I have no event to celebrate.

Maybe I'll just surprise her with a pair of these for fun. Just to say, "I love you."  Jewelry is one thing; these shoes are entirely different.  Seriously, they fulfill a certain fantasy I never knew I had . . .

What do you think would happen if I came through the door one evening after work with a pair of these babies in a bow-clad box? A swoon? A leaping spread eagle that lands around my hips and she smothers me with smooches? We'd get a babysitter for the night maybe?

$1,000 shoes....
but at least they're cute.Yes the shoe is very real, but I may never know what it's like to give it to her. It's Italian. The pair costs $1,000 (no kidding). I groan when we have to pay $100 for running shoes, so I'm a lost cause for this shoe.

We spent a thousand bucks, actually just under, for the three of us in Baja for two weeks last month. Thousand-dollar shoes -- but at least they're cute.

You might recall that I wrote a piece called, "How To Marry And Adventurous Girl" a few weeks ago.  Seriously, my first piece of advice is notice her shoes and compliment her on them.  Wow.  Think.  What if you saw the object of your affection strutting around in a pair of these?  She's practical, she's spicy, she's fit. She's combining the workout of a a hiking shoe with the come-hither styling and delicious calf display of a high heel. Win-win.

Speaking of Winning . . .

Steve Casimiro from www.theadventurelife.org is so smitten with this shoe - of which he simply mutters "WTF?" - that he's giving away a video camera to the best submitted caption for this picture.  You can't win if you don't play.

Coming at you live-ish from the Baja peninsula... which is a very good reason why you haven't seen any updates in over a week.  It's been super tough. Shrimp tacos and off-the-grid beaches on Mexico's most notoriously fun strip of sand and rock are keeping us really "busy."

Pardon some of the funky keystrokes on my part because they have keyboards here that do stuff like this ñ and this ¿ by just hiting the wrong key.

So, back to Mexico. Baja.

The other day we - Brooke, Chloe, me, Greg, and Samantha - were enduring a brutal morning on the beach south of Mulegè.  Some coffee, some huevos rancheros, and a gentle tide at about 90 degrees F.  A clunky old Ford pickup stopped next to our palapa and a thick and muscular Mexican man spoke a hilarious version of Spanglish through which he offered us an hour-long boat ride for $25.

He claimed he'd show us a sunken boat that's since been taken over by the sea as a reef.  He also suggested he'd take us to a nice point where we'd get some fresh clams from the bottom of the Sea of Cortès and swallow them down right there.  "Bring limes and salsa, I bring mi panga over here in one two or three horas."  He told us in his peculiar, yet admirable, dialect of Spanglish.

Get out your map and look up Bahía Concepción; it's about 2/3rds the way down Baja on the Sea of Cortés side. Here goes a minute of your day from our little boat on the sea.

No camping child is complete without a t-shirt like this.

Are you thinking the same thing I am?  Yeah. Why is that graham cracker missing a tooth?

I really wanted to get a video of Chloe telling me who's on her shirt, because she's good at it. "Dat's a gwam cwacker, dat's a choc-lit, dat's a marshmellow, and he's wunning!"

I didn't create it, I just bought it because I'm a sucker for this stuff.  No kidding. In Yellowstone National Park, I also bought her an impossible-to-pass-up little pajama set with a hat because it had an embroidered grizzly bear on the butt and on the hat. I paid $25 for that set, and it was too small for her in under than two months. A fool and his money . . .

But whatever! Look at this shirt.  It's perfect for the camping kid.  I found it at snorgtees.com for under 20 bucks, but still. I thought it was too funny to pass up.  Now, in all disclosure, if you buy that shirt through my link below they'll send AdventureParents.com a little kick back.

Kids.  They make everything look good, don't they?  So, in the end, you can get your s'more' kids t-shirt at snorgtees.com and help support our fun little website. And, and, and!  And your little offspring will have something to look . . . you know . . . sooooo C-U-T-E.

Get Your Shirt:

• Children's S'mores t-shirt
• Women's S'mores t-shirt
• Men's S'mores t-shirt

You're going to find me despicable. This, my confession, is supposed to be a preemptive measure so The Universe goes easy on the Karma tomorrow.

When I picked up Chloe from her GiGi tonight, Chloe didn't want to go. Naturally.  She's two-and-a-half.  NO NO NO NO is her trademark phrase for me.  I have my devices to deal with this.

Brooke and I kicked off 2010 by driving up to her mom and dad's house with Chloe and a her little Tinkerbell duffel bag packed with just enough necessities to get her through a night.  After we knocked on the door, we took off running and left Chloe there with a note taped to her forehead: I want cookies, ice cream, candy, and juice PWEEZE.  You don't want to experience my carnal scream.

photo courtesy Greg Taylor
And after that, the two of us drove to Celebrity Theatre for the Roger Clyne and The Peacemakers New Year's show.  Brooke purchased us some "Section A2" seats, which means they're pretty sweet.  Right in front of the orchestra pit.

Celebrity Theatre, though, is a theatre-in-the-round (one of two such unique theatres in Arizona) with a mechanically rotating stage and seating for just 2650 kindred souls - making every seat a good one.

But we had a problem. Brooke thought she scored two tickets that were separated by two other seats.  We thought, "No prob, we can get somebody to swap or scoot down or something." That wasn't the problem, though.  The problem was that as the usher was showing us our seats, we realized that we weren't two seats apart, but two rows apart.  Ugh.  We're happy people though.  We sat down in general seating instead and enjoyed every moment until the intermission.

At intermission, an usher walked over to us.

"Don't you have reserved seating tickets?" He asked point blank as if he knew. We told him our silly story.

He looked over his shoulders one at a time, leaned in closely and said, "Okay, this is my New Year's gift to you. You want to go down to the front row?" (He told us not to tell anybody, so don't tell anybody that I told you . . .)

For the second half of the show, that's right, we got to hunker down at the front of the action in the reserved seating section.  When the stage spins around, you see, you get to see the side of the drum kit where the magic happens - four limbs burning some 3,000 calories every minute doing the typically thankless job of keeping time and locking the band together while making it look easy.  After watching P.H. going bonkers with the sticks on Mekong, Brooke says, "I have a lot more respect for you drummers after seeing what he just did."

That's the condensed version of our New Year's Miracle.  And I think that's a great way to begin a year - with a miracle.  Or small moment of joy.  Call it what you may.

We're going to do waht we can to enjoy every moment
I'm looking forward to other great things in 2010, here's a quickie:

Travel & Adventure:

• Sierra Pinacate of Northern Sonora (January) - Hiking the sand dunes and camping on the beach with some good friends
• New Mexico Backroads (March) - Some little known dirt roads, small towns, and big vistas await
• Southern Utah (April) - I'm thinking Capitol Reef or the Maze District.  I'll take any of it.
• Baja Sur (June) - ferry across the Sea of Cortés from Guyamas or Los Mochis and hang around on remote beaches for a week or two.  Chloe should enjoy the ferry ride.
• It's time to tie into the rope and climb some vertical rocks again
• Backpack a segment of the Arizona Trail

Writing:

• Personal Goal: One hand written journal entry per day
• Professional Goal: Publish one essay per quarter
• Remember what Malcom Gladwell penned: "Good writing . . . succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head - even if in the end you conclude that someone else's head is not a place you'd really like to be."

Photography:

• Tell the story
• Keep focusing on the eyes

Parenting:

• Like it or not you're going need to develop consistency in discipline, pal

Flashlight art on New Years Eve
As 2009 creeps to the horizon, I'm taking a moment to think back and hand pick 20 photos that sum up my 33rd year on planet Earth.

I'm talking about the memories and stories here - if you find technical prowess in the photos, it's just coincidence because I picked these for multiple reasons. We managed some superb trips and massive memories. Brooke trained for, and competed in, her first triathalon. I managed to make this website a reality. At the top of the "2009 FAIL" list: Chloe, our 2-year-old, isn't potty trained yet. It's not for lack of trying.

Funky Snowman poem by Calef Brown, Polka-bats and Octopus Slacks
If you're "one of those people" who's all bent out of shape at phrases like "happy holidays," prepare for your blood to boil.

Here's a winter greeting in our house these days: KICK IT, FUNKY SNOWMAN!

I know Brooke would never go for it, but if she did I have a suspicion she'd get a tattoo similar to this heart-shaped music theme. That's just cool usage of the treble and bass clefs.

Check out these two galleries at parenting.com

JPFreek Adventure Magazine Logo --- what's real? What's not?
I loaded up the Jeep with a backpack, a few vittles, a camera, and a GPS with the idea of landing myself in Guadalupe Mountains National Park for a number of days. This was my first solo trip in years, and preparing for it felt as foreign as walking on the moon. Just me and the Jeep, no family this time. 535 miles and four days. And somewhere out there at a campgound in the Chihuahuan Desert, a few friends awaited in a huddle around a campfire. They'd be waiting a while.

I didn't get there until 2:00 am. Strange things happened out there on the road.

Music sure is magical, isn't it?
We're giving that purple blob of felt a run for his money. If you've ever been at your wits end with those Barney songs and your child's unwavering request for said songs, this one's for you.

Look at the way she looks at me while contaminating the evidence, my carrot stolen right out of my hands. What's next the car keys?

She's got nearly every aspect of the criminal's craft down pat. It started with lying.

Another gem from the annals of daily fatherhood - where we get surprised and enlightened at the smallest comment from our offspring who, despite our trying, have learned to read and think.  Enjoy this one.