Still Alive!
2004-10-18,

I'm here to report, true believers, that I am in fact alive, well and mainly undamaged.

I'd have to say that there's little more fun in life than driving down twisting, unlined country roads. At night. In the rain. With a dog in the car that gets sick during long car rides. Really relaxing, to be sure. Not. But we made it safely and, once there, actually did relax. It's soothing to stay in a house that you have no responsibility to maintain.

We got there fairly late in the evening, having stopped to get dinner at a Mexican place in Wooster on the way. Hil described the people of that town - at least the ones in the restaurant - as "so� the same." Truly, she is starting to see the world as it is. I pity her.

Anyway, it was a quiet first night. Saturday brought us some interesting and varied weather, from sunny to frozen rain, and lots of wind. Pooh-style blustery, if I do say so. First stop of the day was a tour of an Amish home, along with a good ol' fashion, touristy buggy ride. Neither of the kids had done any of this stuff before, so we were running the tourist gambit. Also included in the stop was a 'petting' area, chock full of idiot sheep, surly goats and darling donkeys. Horses, llamas, alpacas, and kitty cats, as well.

After that was Heini's Cheese Chalet, known not only for its product but for its atmosphere-- cheese. We practically made a lunch of cheese and fudge samples, and actually did bring some home. We then meandered through a few parts of Berlin (pronounced /BRR-lin/, of course), including a craft shop and, upon Hil's insistence, what may have amounted to the stinkiest pet shop in America. The smell clung to my clothes for at least 10 minutes, after having been there only for five. Uck.

All this was followed up by what was supposed to be the piece de resistance of the day, the trip to see the World's Largest Cuckoo Clock. Personally, I'd seen it before, when I was about ten, I think. I recalled it as something to behold, an amazing work of mechanics, wonder of wonders. Certainly, the children would be amazed, H would cling to me as a hero for bringing them to such a wondrous thing.

Not so much.

We had dinner at the buffet restaurant that was part of the complex, and then we ascended the stairs to the clock itself. We were in a hurry, because, according to our timepieces, we had just a few minutes before it chimed the 7 o'clock hour. We rush to the top and-- nothing. I mean, the clock was there, but� there was a guy descending the stairs just as we reached the top, and he told us, "you just missed it, but nothing happened. It chimed the hour, but nothing moved." Broken. The damn thing was broken. All we managed to glean from the experience was Hil getting creeped out by the yodeler guys on the clock and their poorly-lit, eerily still faces. Sigh.

You'd think I would have learned from watching Land of the Lost reruns on Boomerang that revisiting childhood memories as an adult is never anything but a bad idea. One just ends up turning what was a pure and innocent memory of great things into a shambles. Again, sigh.

At least we got some good fudge out of the trip. That, and some well-deserved sanity points back.

Oh, and one good thing I did see at the alpine tourist trap was what I might consider one of the cooler clocks on the planet, shown here in a different wood color that I saw (I can only imagine it was the cherry finish that the ad indicates as an option). This is a must-have, in a 'one day' kind of way. Though I imagine it's something of a bitch to keep dust free.

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