Kids drew a lot during vacations.

The vacations were advancing by huge leaps and I somehow have not been coping. Kids have been nice, cooperating, and interactive — but they keep me busy all day; there are no free mornings. And when granny takes over, I rush to take care of things like having my cracked crown fixed (in warranty and therefore a no extra charge, but I still had to sit it out in the dentist's chair), or traffic school. After almost ten years in America, I have received my first ticket. For the tailgating. Well, I was. On a packed freeway, where no-one is ever minding safe distances. Given the fact that the cop stopped me when I was driving in an HOV lane (I don't know what comes more funny — whether the acronym or the diamond symbol painted on the blacktop — the both symbolize a traffic lane reserved for cars with two or more occupants; the existence of such lanes has been driving me crazy for all the ten years and seem completely counterproductive; see one of the first journals), and it seemed that seeing my children in the back of my car set him back (the bus has tinted windows in the back and you cannot see what's inside; front windows are clear and the cop could easily see there was no front row passenger), so I got the feeling that he quickly came up with the tailgating to have a reason to have stopped me. Oh well, policemen.

To avoid a permanent record and increase in insurance premiums, I had to attend a traffic school. Nowadays, this is done online, with an advantage — some years ago Hippo had spent two long weekday evenings at a real school, and that's a bore. Nevertheless one must spend several hours even just with a computer (it took me about six), which could be spent a lot better. Our progressive (Santa Clara) county has found its role model in communist practices, i.e. there is only one traffic school business "authorized" to provide their "services" for drivers cited in this county, and despite there being lots of competition, no one else is allowed. I'd be interested who at the county court administration is the "uncle" ensuring such a monopoly.

At Children's Museum with Nicolas.

Given the relative success of our swim classes at the community center, which, alas, could not be extended, I signed the kids up for swimming at the YMCA. The class is only twice a week, but it still gives the children some schedule and order. They have been swimming on Mondays and Wednesdays; Tuesdays and Thursdays are my climbing days (i.e. on Tuesday, granny baby-sits and on Thursdays the kids have dinner out with Hippo); this fills up most of our afternoons. The swimming classes were similar to the community center. On the first one Tom buckled and refused to cooperate; after my rumbling as to how he should behave, it got better. Again his teacher was male (well, if he's over twenty, call me an airplane), which seems to suit him better than sweet and soft females.

It would seem that the children miss their school a bit; every day they paint, draw, create, form — often they take a sheet of paper and figure out what to do, and they can spend incredible amounts of time in their projects. Tom uses his creative activities to cope with his moronic family. When he asked granny for four boxes to build a corral for Lisa's horses, and granny did not understand, why, Tom took a sheet of paper and briskly created a numbered procedure how to build a corral. Even granny had to understand that.

A model train exhibition took place in our town — we lacked the foresight and took our kids to see it. Right at the entrance Tom announced, "And which train will you buy me?" and Lisa said that, "Trains aren't for girls." We explained to Tom that electric trains are expensive, and for Lisa we found a circus and a rodeo among the model tracks, so she could admire the animals (and subsequently demand a horsey, which we refused to buy again). Nevertheless Tom has been promised a train for Christmas, and he sat down and made a sketch of his desired engine from all sides, to be sure.

Andrea at Castle Rock.

Tom can read, but he refuses to read on demand — he would read what he fancies or considers useful, but he does not like to be "assigned", which sometimes sets us back. The other day on a parking lot he said, "Look, there a car named Bottoms-out" (Outback retranslated through Czech). Lisa starts to write and – just like Tom – does not bother with vowels (hence she signed something as Lisa PRL), which is OK; it's important to understand the principle of writing. They would start with letters in school soon, learning to read and write after New year, so she's well ahead.

Some day in July Tom lost his first baby tooth. I was worried that with his sensitivity to pain it would be a crazy drama, but he actually loosened it and removed himself. There was a minor problem that he wished to get a specific Transformer for the tooth — and naturally one that's really hard to get. After a half day of wandering through countless toy stores we talked Tom into ordering it online. Even so, it was a problem — our kids are necessarily somewhat out of phase, for they always like something that has fallen out of fashion, and stops being easy to get.

Occasionally, visitors are a welcome disturbance from our child care and home care routine. This year, my Slovak friend Henrieta came with her husband Mirko. Heňa used to live in Prague and then we climbed together; we even banded up for several weekend trips. I have seen Heňa last in 2000, shortly before my wedding, when I went to climb her native Súlov.

Prosser Lake was warmer this year than last, but still submerging required some courage.

I had arranged baby-sitting with granny and a date with our visitors directly in the climbing gym. We climbed a little and then hurried to our house, where we proceeded in planning their trip all over U.S. Southwest, until one in the morning. I promised them some more climbing for Wednesday; Heňa was attracted by Pinnacles where I refused to go due to the heat. I rather took them to Castle Rock, which is located closer to the cooling coast and where we could expect humane temperatures. I don't know Castle Rock much, I had climbed there only once before, and this narrowed the localities to take our visitors to one. We knew we did not have much time, I did not want to experiment and then stand under a face that cannot be climbed without adding protections (which neither of us owned, and while I don't know about Heňa and Miro, but I am not sure how to use yet), or where the climbing is ugly. Andrea, whom we took along as our fourth climber, is a beginner and had never climbed outdoors before, and so even for her I needed something nice.

I know the area around a waterfalls to be climbable and also simply pretty (it, after all, contains a waterfall). I even found a climbers' trail and we slid below the rocks without an accident. In the end (I hope I can say for others) we had a good time. I found out that in a pinch I am able to recall many a thing, and in one spot I was desperate enough to use a knot as trad gear. Fortunately we had no need to test how my amateurish knots hold up in practice.

Then I took our visitors to a Vietnamese lunch and home again — they received our last instructions and maps before they embarked on a round-trip through the American Southwest. In the evening I fell in bed and right the next day started to pack and prepare our family for a long planned ballooning get-together at Prosser Lake. Jeanne and Tom, our friendly pilots, were moving to South Dakota, and thus this was also to be a sad goodbye for us.

Ballooning get-together is mostly about meeting old friends.

David, one of the balloonists, took to organizing it — and among other things came with an idea that after flying balloons, we could go rafting on Saturday afternoon. Well, he reserved a Class III white-water with guides, who don't accept children under seven (and I don't blame them), but the idea stroke a chord with us so much, that I reserved a raft rental on a Class I section for our whole family (including granny).

We departed for the ballooning get-together already on Friday morning. And a LATE morning it was, for Hippo spent the actual morning in a three-hour phone conversation with our mobile phone provider (don't ask for details, as during the first hour it was only Hippo who was getting upset, while it was mostly me during the subsequent two hours, for we were supposed to be long on our way, and not being switched from one line to another like a hot potato). We did not come out too badly, as we reached the campground near Prosser Lake before five in the afternoon. It was hot and most tents were deserted, and we had to locate the campground manager and make him tell us where actually Jeanne had pitched her tent. Still we did not want to erect ours on the site without her awareness. Under the persistence of hot air and kids' asking for a swim, we went to the lake — there we found Jeanne, two fifteen year old boys and a plastic canoe. Jeanne was just rather strongly explaining to someone on the phone that they should come and fetch the canoe, for she was not going to lift it on her own and much less carry it on the roof of the balloon trailer. Tom surprised me when he asked Jeanne where Thomas (her husband) was. When she replied with South Dakota, our Tom said that Thomas then had probably seed the presidents carved in rock (he must remember that from school; I would have to peruse Wikipedia to research that Mt. Rushmore is really located in South Dakota).

Ballooning take-off.

Meanwhile we jumped in the water, which was much warmer than two years ago. Kids were issued vests; the lake is large and deep, we would not want to fish for them there. Soon it was time to return to the campground, erect our tents and devour our dinner. Balloonists had organized a complicated cooking process involving several campfires and propane stoves operating in unison, but we'd feel embarrassed just to mooch as we did not bring anything along, while our kids would have probably gone mad from hunger before the official dinner was declared ready (and as I know our picky snouts, they would still squirm over frown upon offered grilled delicacies); this way, we simply heated up soup from a can for them.

We had stuffed granny in the same tent with the children, for Hippo and I intended to get up at 5:45. After all, balloons must take off at dawn, before the wind picks up. The launch followed a familiar script. A line of ballooning pick up trucks, a bunch of people that holler at each other, get friendly, joke, and sometimes argue. Simply a chaos, which, although it does seem unlikely, ends up as a line of balloons in the air. Sadly, Jeanne's large balloon had not passed recent annual inspection and she was flying only her small one, which is capable to take along only one other person, and a very petite person at that (in other words, neither Hippo nor I could fly this weekend).

Before we found a good landing spot, collapsed the balloon and drove it back to the camp, granny and the kids went to the lake to swim. I was trying to use the ensuing gap and climbed in the tent to catch up with my unfinished night's sleep. The personal versions of following events are varied — I am hundred percent sure that I had implored Hippo to wake me up at ten thirty, for "someone" would have to pack things for rafting, so that we could go there by eleven. Hippo maintains that he was to wake me up at eleven. Either way, the kids woke me up at ten forty five, and we made it in time. Only "someone" had forgotten to take along our ancient camera, which I had packed along for the express purpose of rafting, as we would not bemoan its possible destruction as much.

Our only picture from rafting.

We found "our" rafting rental place in Tahoe City, but finding a restaurant for lunch was harder. We parked in front of some place that looked overpriced and what more, it was closed. Then Tommy announced that he has seen a PIZZA sign along the way there, with another sign OPEN next to it. I trust in Tom's talent of observation and sense for detail (and his hunger), and soon we found a pizzeria, actually with a deck overlooking the river. Kids were happy to see the stream and boats that we were soon to ride on. It was slowly dawning on us that it was going to be an experience. There was a whole sea of blue rafts wherever our gaze would fall, and the rental place was releasing more and more. It reminded one of escalator traffic in downtown Prague.

When we went to claim our raft, another obstacle stood out — this was the launch, we had to register in the finish. It meant turning our car around, driving downstream, waiting in a long line to a booth (despite having a time-reserved and pre-paid ride) and then loading on a bus and rattling back in front of the pizzeria. All this in the midst of a mad traffic jam engulfing this tiny mountain town, so our actual launch was at about two. The raft release still reminded of escalators — hand over tickets, jump in the boat, float away, a shuffling stream of customers keeping the pier full. Unfortunately, at least half of the crowd consisted of golden youth parties, already well socially fortified, dragging aboard coolers with additional supplies.

The kids did not mind, they were beside themselves on account of being in a raft, and noticed our cheerful co-rafters as a comical relief. I was bothered by the noise and even more by uncoordinated rafts that the river carried chaotically downstream; it all reminded of a bumper car ride. We were constantly being bumped into, and honestly, even in my few feeble attempts to control our raft, I could not avoid other vessels on the narrow river all the time.

Weather goes bad, crews and pilots stand around, no balloons flying.

The country around us was beautiful, the river relatively warm (for swimming), so we took turns in dipping in and relaxing; no complaints there. Approximately after one hour of floating among drunkards, a sudden break came — they had run out of drinks, and the summer sun finished them off, since they proceeded in altogether limply covering their boats like deflated dolls, and it became possible to pass them — and most importantly, they turned QUIET. Pulling rafts out of the stream went again like escalators — all we had to do was stumble through a large beer-garden, where the freshly exhumed drinkers collected new strength (and increased alc/blood ratio) — we reached our car in no time. Since we had forgotten our camera, we agreed to buy an industrial-grade photograph from a rafting salesperson. Alas, we did not think to pull all of the pictures from the envelope (with our still-wet hands); we were trusting the professionalism of the process. Hence we have one big picture that's not so bad, and four little ones that are missing half of Tom's head. Our attempts to contact the company were not replied to.

Still at the moment we did not know this, and so we happily drove back to our campground, and before the rest of the balloonists gathered together back from their respective sorties into the country, we managed to roast some sausages and declare it a dinner. We were rather lucky; we had arrived to the campground just after a thunderstorm, which we completely avoided, but lots of things were wet — fortunately nothing important. We were in the same situation like on the previous evening — waiting for an official meal would take much time, and our kids were rather happy with a small fire and the sausages with ketchup; other gourmet creations would probably not have enticed them.

Lisa is five years old.

In the morning, we (minus kids and granny) got up again at a maddening early hour, and when we drove up to the balloon launch area, it became apparent that there would be no flying. Pilots and their crews were depressingly loitering around the area and flexed their arms towards the hills, where a cloud wall stood threateningly. Within half hour, temperature dropped rapidly, wind picked up and turned, and made quite clear there would be no flying. So we returned to the camp, ate breakfast, packed up and left for home.

I had five more days to complete my washing, drying, airing and re-packing all of our traveling stuff. Then the bus needed an oil change, and according to the service manual, some belts and filters, so I had to leave it for a whole day with Tony. We still attended our swim lessons, climbing, my traffic school — and medical checkup and inoculations before Lisa's start of school. Also, Lisa turned five, and we celebrated her birthday only in a small family setting. Her birthday wishes were: to ride a horse (which got granted twice already), a good cake (she picked one herself), a flying horse (I managed to find a foot-long Pegasus) and a bouquet — which we talked her out of, since on the next day we would depart on our big summer trip ... of which I'd write next time.

A sampler of our vacation can be seen here in our gallery.