The GeekHiker

This weekend, I’m off to the Big Tomato.  My parents have sold their house, and I’m flying up to help them move.

Sadly, this means that the GeekHiker won’t be doing any hiking or camping over the weekend.  And since my Father won’t have his internet connection in the new place turned on until Tuesday (probably late Tuesday, as members of the GeekHiker’s family always seem to be the last stop on the service guy’s route), I won’t have any computer access either.

Good God, no hiking and no geeking?  Whatever shall I do?

I might actually have to open a *gasp* book.

Plus, there will be no carefully crafted hastily thrown-together posts for a few days.  Sorry, kids.

All kidding aside, I actually like books.  They’re much easier to curl up with than a laptop.  My current read?  An 800 page history of the Transcontinental Railroad.

Now that I’ve typed that, of course, I suddenly feel like an old man reading musty old books.  No, really, I’m in my thirties.  Really.  Now get off my lawn, dag-nab-it.

But I digress.

The house that they’re moving out of was one of two houses that define my childhood.  There was a duplex somewhere before that, but it exists only in small fragments in my visual memory.  The first house was out in the suburbs, new construction in the late 70’s.  It was white stucco with dark green trim… not in a good way.  It was uuuugly.

My parents hated the house.  They didn’t like the layout, the location, everything.  For example, when you walked into the front door, the first thing you saw was… a closet door.  What I remember is that the front door faced east, and during certain times of the year, the sun would shine through the little peephole lens and make a perfectly circular rainbow on the closet door.

Unlike my parents, I have fond memories of the house.  The backyard was an easement from the local utility (some power lines ran across it, which explains my slight glow when the lights are out).  It was just shy of 1/3 of an acre, most of it just a big grassy lawn.  There was a jungle gym my dad put in and a garden my parents tried to grow.  The 1/3 acre was up a slight (i.e. 20 foot high) hill from the house that my parents planted with iceplant.  I have, shall we say, less than fond of memories of weeding that hill on many a Saturday morning.

After all, there were cartoons to be watched, dammit!

For the little GeekHiker, that backyard was a paradise.  It was the corridors of the Death Star where I, as Han Solo, chased stormtroopers.  It was the halls of some ancient temple where a 3-foot tall Indiana Jones hunted for ancient artifacts.

My Dad even gave me a 6-foot length of rope for a whip.  I used it complete with “whit-kaa” sound effects and tried to swing across imaginary crevasses with the rope over the jungle gym bars.  It’s a wonder I didn’t kill myself.

In hot summers I would run through the sprinklers.  We never had a pool, despite my begging for one my whole childhood.

When I was in Jr. High, we moved into a house closer to the city.  and since Jr. High is a time of so many changes anyway, it serves as the perfect divider between my childhood years and my teen years.

I primarily remember this house as the house I came back “home” to.  It was where I returned for weekends in college, holidays over the years, that sort of thing.  It was a good house for entertaining, with a big living room to sit in and a formal dining room for family dinners.  It was a warm place.

It’s a very nice house, and I hope my parents have sold it to a very nice family.  But with three bedrooms, it’s far too large for my parents at this point, so moving to a smaller house only makes sense.

I don’t know that I’ve quite grasped it, though.  In fact, I think I’m just thinking of this as a simple trip back home to visit the folks.  After all, it’s just a house, right?

Or will I feel different when I arrive Saturday morning and find the house empty?

Which is why this is only Part One…