I wish a bear would find me: notes from Reno

My 8 year old niece’s interpretation of a line from Green Day’s "Boulevard of Broken Dreams”: Someday I won I wish a bear would find me.

With that in mind, here are some things I learned on my vacation West:

A) Further proof there’s no real point to airport security: In Reno, I checked my bags curbside and even tipped the guy $5. I get up to the first checkpoint and show my boarding pass and ID, and make it to the carryon/shoe/cell phone/makeup/chap stick/gum check. I hand another TSA person my pass, and she tells me, “You’re not Donna Daniels,” to which I thoroughly agreed.

So I tell her I made it passed one of her coworkers, so I don’t know what the heck happened. They escort me back with all my stuff back out to get another boarding pass. I return, coincidentally, to be inline next to the real Donna Daniels. Or so she said.

While you might think she had my pass, she didn’t. And she was heading to Seattle, not Chicago.

Noone quite figured out what happened.

B) The vertical striped shirt thing must stop. I was at a party and all these rich 40-something guys were wearing them, which made them look like the dads of Abercrombie & Fitch models. I, of course, wore a kilt. And you can’t go wrong with that.

C) You know how some guys shake hands really hard just to show how manly they are? Well I overheard some women talking about how some women do a similar thing with their boobs when they hug each other, rubbing them into the hugger. “Like a porn star,” is how one wealthy soccer mom put it.

D) People who like the Grateful Dead typically don’t have any good dance music available.

E) Rich people are different than you and me. They have nicer houses and live in prettier places.

F) Why are surf suits black? In Northern California the ocean is green-gray. Plus black makes you look like a sea lion, especially if you are a fat surfer. Why don’t they color the suits?

G) Never go snowshoeing if you are from the Midwest, new to 8,000 feet, have a cold and were drinking the night before. Then again, hyperventilating does clear the senses.

H) If you try to learn a new sport such as skiing after the age of 35, just keep reminding yourself that it’s no big deal if you fall on your ass. You have a life. Plus, people will just think you are handicapped and take pity on you. Or realize you are from a flat place, which they might consider to be a handicap anyway.