Signs We Enjoy 2

This is on the elevator at a friend's apartment building. What I wonder is if they have a special way of designating those who use it who are very very important and those that are just average. How else will we know who deserves to have the door closed behind them?
Um, ew.
This is at City Stars Mall. They have them all over the place. And it's just wrong, I tell you! So many great things to photograph!
Exhibit A of all the things at City Stars just begging to have their pictures taken. This is not really a sign, but more of an ad campaign. And a very good one at that. Nothing says, "Adidas" like Hellboy, if you ask me.
You know, I do have a birthday coming up... And this is just the look I'm going for...

Please be sure to click on this picture. You have to see this guy's face.

Products We Enjoy 1

The braver (is too a word) I get about snapping pics in public, the more entries there will be in this category.

This is toothpaste. Like unto Fitty Cent, but less with the hip-hop and more with the hygiene.
This is very special dish soap that is only available during Ramadan. Well, not the soap so much, but the super awesome Ramadan-lantern-shaped packaging.
There are more pictures of this because, obviously, I had to buy it. It would have been wrong not to. Who wouldn't want lantern-shaped dish soap, I ask you? Crazy people, that's who.
A better shot of the decorations on top:
I'm not sure this really qualifies as a product, per se, but it delights me to no end, so I'm including it. It is my cell phone, displaying the last phone call I made. See the date there? Didn't know there was a month abbreviated "Ram," did you? Well, as evidenced by the presence of lanterns full of dish soap in stores everywhere (What? You don't have them in your town? You should move), it is Ramadan, and today is the 22nd of Ramadan. So logically, that's what my cell phone says.
Someday maybe you can be as cool as me.

This can't be comfortable

Clearly the boy has some issues.

That's one of his favorite books, P.D. Eastman's Big Dog, Little Dog. He calls it "FredTed."

The Year of the Jake

Jake has had a great year so far. Here are some pictures:

Hanging out in the back yard at Grandma & Grandpa Lewis' house.

Sitting in a tree in front of our house in Monterey.

Jacob earned the Webelos badge and was awarded the Arrow of Light before moving up to Boy Scouts.

In the corral at the Spencer ranch in Carmel Valley.

Jake visited the grave of his 5th Great Grandfather, Tarlton Lewis, in Teasdale, Utah.

Dancing on the edge of a cliff behind Grandma Raynes' cabin near Teasdale. That's right: dancing...on a cliff!

Taking a break during a long, hot hike in Capitol Reef National Park.

Peeking out from a cave in a canyon wall at Capitol Reef.

Jake and Sam spend as much time together as possible. I don't know which one loves it more.

Sailing on the Nile. Ahoooy!

In the pool near our house in Cairo. One of his favorite stunts is to stand on Dad's shoulders to jump into the deep end.

Reading to Sam on the couch.

Jake: You're the man!

Dad

Signs We Enjoy 1

"1" because there are sure to be more to come.

This one is found on the main shopping road in our neighborhood. Kevan, in particular, is fond of it.
Here's a close up of the best part:

Hey, Kelly!

Look what I found in my neighborhood.



Now will you move here?

"Ain Sukhna" or "How I Got My Sunburn"

So, Jake and I went camping on the shore of the Red Sea with troop 701 last weekend. Here are some pictures:

First, for those of you who care, here is a map of the area--Cairo on the upper left, and Ain Sukhna (Hot Springs), a tiny town about 80 miles southeast of Cairo.


When we got arrived, we snorkeled with friends from the branch, Jake's first time I believe. If I had a waterproof camera, I could show you the variety of small tropical fish, just 15 feet off the shore.

Jake and I had a great time in the water, and only swallowed a little saltwater.

The waves were not big, but made a spectacular spume as they splashed off the rip-rap on the shore.

This is a picture of a highly developed eco-can, that has evolved to blend in with its natural environment. No, really.

There is nothing unique about scouts hovering around the fire, but I liked the way the fire cast a spooky shadow on the wall.

Jake and I slept under the stars on top of our sleeping bags. The cool breeze that blew throughout the night died down about 5:30 and flies landing on my feet woke me up in time to see the sun rise over the mountains of the Sinai peninsula.

The water was quite calm and the waves were rolled ashore smoothly.

Jake was up early enough to start a fire and wait for everyone else to wake up.

After breakfast the scouts took to the water on their canoes and with masks and snorkels. A pod of dolphins appeared and swam around the scouts inquisitively for about 5 minutes before continuing on. Note the tanker on the horizon, 30 miles or so out of the Suez canal.

This is the only shot I got of Jake in the same frame as the dolphins. You can't tell, but that's him in the front of the canoe on the left. They got about 10 feet from the dolphins before they lost interest in the scouts. One of the young men in the branch snorkeled out to them and touched one with his hand as they swam past each other.

Jake collected paddles after a swamped canoe drill. Who let Dad in the canoe?

Jake and some other scouts lashed two canoes together--a catamaran experiment--but too many chiefs, as they say, made the experiment less than successful and the fun slowly dissipated.

The terrain reminds me of central Utah. Here's a road blasted through rock,

and here's a mound of two-tone desert rock with traces of iron, one of the only colorful parts of the drive.

The whold drive reminds me of the road between Price and Monticello in central Utah. The area is so sparse, you can never be quite sure if the power lines were built next to the road, or if the road was built to maintain the power lines.

This is representative of most loads in Egypt. There's always room for more, whether driven by a camel, horse, or combustion engine.

Approaching the eastern outskirts of Cairo, you can see the two most prolific types of buildings. Mosques and concrete tenements.

Khaaaaaaaaaaaaan!

If I were slightly less lazy than I am and/or I cared, I would put up a picture of Ricardo Montalban to go along with that title. But, well, lazy, don't care, the end.

The same day we went to The Citadel, we also went to Cairo's main/infamous/crazy shopping market Khan al-Khalili. That place is a trip, to put it mildly. We only spent a couple hours there, but I imagine that if you looked long enough, you could find pretty much anything you wanted. We weren't looking for anything in particular--we just wanted to check it out--and I think that made it easier to deal with it all. I think the term "sensory overload" originated after a visit to The Khan.

This is a shot of one of the eleventy-billion alleyways, each one crammed full of tiny shops, and each one of those crammed full of everything you never knew you needed. My take on most of the wares for sale (again, though, we really only scratched the surface and clearly never made it into the section where the locals shop) was that most of it would be made exponentially better by the absence of all the pyramid-sphinx-scarab-random-Egyptian-symbols that Prove You Were In Egypt And That You Appreciate Their Culture Thank You Very Much that seemed to have been put onto everything. Pure kitsch, baby. But maybe that's just me. Not that I expected much more, but wow. I think anything and everything that held still long enough ended up with Nefertiti's head stamped on it.
When we first got there, a shopkeeper was trying to get our attention/business, but we just kept on walking. This guy's particular brand of luring customers (as we soon discovered was quite a popular one) was trying to identify their nationality. So he says as we go by, "You British?" We ignore. "You American?" Still nothing from us. "I know, I know, German!" Nada. And then, "Japanese?" That did it, and we all just cracked up. Kevan and Shon started laughing and talking with him, confirming that why, yes! We are Japanese! How ever did he know?! That then became the boys' go-to comeback the rest of the time we were there whenever we encountered shopkeepers who were into that same game. Kevan and Shon particularly liked the split-second shock they'd get when some unsuspecting shopkeeper would say, "Where you from?" and then one or the other of them would happily offer, "Japan!" It was made even better by the fact that they would conduct these conversations in Arabic, but Kevan's not here right now to help me with the transliteration, so you can just imagine. I think the shopkeepers liked it just as much, as they would then start laughing and joking with them.

Besides the crazy, there was also a lot of pretty. I loved all the old stone, the colors, and, prepare yourselves for shock, a lil bit o' symmetry. This series of pictures is from one of the quieter alleys we found.







When we were done wandering, we stopped for lunch. This is Shon, with his faithful companion cat. This little kitty, along with several of its friends waited very patiently right next to us our whole meal, just hoping for a dropped morsel.
The picture I'm not showing you is the one Kevan took of Shon with the remnants of Kirsten's meal. She ordered the stuffed pigeon. And that's exactly what she got--a whole pigeon, stuffed and fried. Kevan and Shon, I guess in an attempt to recreate an Ozzy Osbourne concert or something, took a few pics of Shon and the bird's head. You may remember that Shon is also the one behind the pictures of the dead shrimp from the day we went to the fabric market. The lesson here is that I need to stop giving up control of my camera when the triple threat of Kevan, Shon, and meals-that-include-carcasses come into play.