The Beginning

Avocato.  

A hybridization of the words avocation and avocado.  
Possibly hilarious.  Probably not.

Avocation:  a subordinate occupation pursued in addition to one's vocation, especially for enjoyment;  a hobby.

Avocado:  one hell of a nice thing to eat.

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I have a ton of hobbies.  I love them all and have varying degrees of success with them.  When I spend a day wading through the Blue River here in Colorado trying to fool some idiot trout into chomping down on one of my poorly tied flies but instead walk away with nothing but a sunburn and the stink of failure, I seriously think about stopping by the grocery store and picking up a couple of those poor, gauzy-eyed farm-raised bastards and tricking the wife into thinking that my stink is not of failure, but instead sweaty, high-country success.  But I'm not going to lie to her like that, or to me, and with my luck I would swipe my King Soopers card at checkout and it wouldn't be on sale anyway, so I swiped for nothing but my purchasing habits have once again been tracked.

Last year I bought a Jeep so my wife, Lola, and I could properly abuse the mountains right next door to us here in Denver.  We've tackled maybe seven or eight trails since then.  There is a website, Traildamage.com, that rates trails from 1 "almost any passenger car can complete this trail" to 10 "only the most modified vehicles will be able to complete these trails.  most vehicles will end up with some damage, and many will be too damaged to finish."  We completed a 4 with some friends, scaring the shit out them when the front right wheel got channeled into an unseen groove and the left rear tire came up a foot or so off the trail.  Good, rednecky fun.  I think a 4 is tough enough for me for now.  We'll see how things go before hitting a 5.

By the way, we named the Jeep Roscoe on the way home from the dealership.  He just felt like a Roscoe...big, stupid and ready for a fight.  If and when I buy another I may name it Cletus.  You should always name your vehicle.  You get bonus points if the name is relevant to its lineage.  Lola's Honda, for example, is named Toshi.  My last car, a Mini Cooper, was named Nigel. You see how it works.  It's fun.

And that is what this column will be all about.  Having fun!  Lola and I have chosen not to contribute to the ongoing human population fiasco so we elect to spend our discretionary income on ridiculous, seemingly irresponsible things that make life worth living.  What are those things?  Some are ordinary and some are just fucking ridiculous.  Sailing, traveling, boardgaming, disc golfing,  reading, drinking, camping, longboarding, eating out, cooking in, identifying and purchasing famous-to-somwhat-well-known furniture, pointing out misspelings on menus, sunburning, having the occasional cigarette, badgering people (although this and, often, sunburning don't even cost you a nickel), gardening (to a degree I guess, but mostly I do not care about gardening until the tomatoes start getting fat), and about a schmazillion other things that make us happy and amused.  Or, rather, that make me happy and amused.

I will take this opportunity to state for the record--so as not to implicate my wife in anything she may or may not agree with--that this blog is selfishly motivated.  Lola enjoys some to many of the hobbies listed above. Some of these hobbies she doesn't care about at all.  Hell,  I may not care about some of them in the future either. I am fickle. You should not trust me. Or this. What I am trying to say, though, is that I do not speak for my wife.  She is much smarter than I am and is perfectly capable of speaking for herself.   If I say offensive things, it is not her saying said offensive things, it is me. I am the guilty one.  Hang me.  

Me?  Who am I?  Just some guy, nothing special.  My family always says nice things about me, but you can't trust your family's objectivity when it comes to yourself.  I'll give you the broad strokes here:

• White
• 42 years old
• Married
• Born in Central Florida
• Living in Denver, Colorado
• College Grad
• Atheist
• Chef

I will paint in more as we move along.

OK, so what will I be doing here? Well, maybe I'll cook up some unjust and severely biased restaurant reviews, post photos from game nights with my friends while they are absinthe drunk and cheating, deliver a local river fishing report or two (hint:  the fishing is always bad), hammer out a few campground reviews (summer is nigh), stumble along the Bloody Mary Sunday brunch bike routes with my friend John, dead reckon my sailing logs, capsize a dinghy, and in general fiercely critique things that are ugly and wrong and champion those that are beautiful and correct.

Maybe I'll do some of these things.  Maybe I won't.  We will see.  My guess is that this blog will simply become  a word dump for my hobby du jour.  (Word dump.  Sounds like a brown graveyard for bad ideas.)

Until that all begins, here is a picture of the wife and me in 2009 at Meteor Crater...a fun, second tier  attraction we enjoyed visiting on our road trip of the Southwest that summer.