The Abu Halen family has lacked a vehicle for the past two months, so our world is largely restricted to a three block radius that includes home, work, the bus stop, the grocery store, and the cheap taco shop that I think is actually just a lady’s back door but she always makes you tacos if you ask. With such limited horizons, I’ve been lazy about taking pictures. Still, I was paying attention when Billy Joel said: “I know the game, you’ll forget my name, and I won’t be here in another year, if I don’t stay on the charts.” I get it, Billy. The masses crave content.

Or, in my case, the mass — which consists mostly of 28 bored people in the Midwest (my mom stopped reading years ago, preferring jigsaw puzzles to reading my drivel, and my wife also got bored of the blog a few years ago when she realized I only have about a decade’s worth of ideas and then I just start recycling the same jokes). So, to satisfy the mass, I waded into my photo archives for some sweet action memories. Here are a handful. Enjoy, if you know what’s good for you.

Leh, India; 2017

A picturesque Indo-Tibetan city perched 11,500 feet up in the Himalayas, Leh is a great place to get altitude sickness. Halen got a migraine and Violet upchucked, all within three hours of our plane landing. We visited in October. This meant that overnight lows dipped into the 40s. It also meant that all the guest houses had turned off their heat for the winter to save money as tourist numbers bottomed out. Everything was fine though; it turns out hot mint tea and jumping jacks staves off hypothermia well enough.

Shannon and I took advantage of the fact that our kids were still too small to physically stage a successful family mutiny and forced them to visit a half dozen drafty Buddhist monasteries high in the mountains. All child complaints were met with uncaring disinterest.

For me, meeting the Indus River was a bit like meeting a celebrity. This river is a cradle of civilizations. It’s been a stage for countless migrations and military movements. It’s watered the seeds of empires. Savannah and Violet just wanted to know where the crap are the PB&J sandwiches I promised them.

I got up really early in the morning and sat on the roof of an unfinished concrete slab of a building for an hour so I could get this somewhat washed out photo. Sometimes people do dumb things..

I get a little wistful when looking back at photos of when she was too little to care where we were, what we were doing, or whether we had an iPad upon which she can waste time. Here she is after walking around a dusty town all morning, seeing nothing but rocks, closed fabric shops, blue sky, and emaciated cows. Perfectly content. Bring back those days.

Bali, Indonesia; 2019

Me and Grace took a daddy-daughter trip to Bali a couple months before the pandemic. She didn’t really care where we went as long as there was pizza and a pool. The pool was easy; our hotel had a huge maze of a pool with pedestrian bridges overhead and tiny islands throughout bursting with tropical trees and bushes. We played pool tag for hours. Our eyes turned red from whatever chemical they use in their pool water and we couldn’t see, so we nearly-blindly inched our way down broken up sidewalks to a pharmacy to buy eye drops. On the way home we smelled a small pizza parlor so we sat with blurry vision, eating pizza, waiting for the eye drops to work. They did eventually. Now Grace is 14 and doesn’t like vacations very much that take place outside her room. Things change and I guess that’s okay. Sort of.

We needed transportation. Renting a car cost hundreds of dollars and, in a car, traffic means it takes an hour to go two or three miles. Renting a scooter, on the other hand, cost six dollars and traffic becomes a non-issue. Grace was not sure at first, and, despite this forced pleased expression, remained unsure for the duration of the trip.

I made sure to schedule in phone time to keep Grace happy and docile.

Nothing says “Evening Beach Scene” like hot corn on the cob. Amiright.

Camel Market; Tikal Liwa, United Arab Emirates; 2019

We decided to go check out the camel festival in the desert southwest of Abu Dhabi. It turned out to be less of a festival and more of a market. In a truly fascinating spectacle, Land Rovers, Land Cruisers, Lexuses, and big, boxy Mercedes Benz G-550s all cruised up and down a wide, dusty avenue of hard sand in the middle of the desert, men in immaculate white kanduras hanging out open windows and sunroofs to ogle at packs of camels being led through the melee by their merchants. The air was dust, camel grunts, and harsh, staccato Arabic calls. It was awesome. We couldn’t afford a camel — they can go for hundreds of thousands of dollars — so we got Pizza Hut in Zayed City as a consolation prize.

This guy was selling camels. I wanted one, but Shannon deemed it “impractical.” But she doesn’t know anything about camels. They are very practical. You can ride them like a slow car and if you tie them up in your front yard they dissuade home break-ins. Also — little known fact — their humps are full of candy, like big, hairy pinatas. I don’t know how you get the candy. Sometimes life is hard.

Here is Grace doing a cartwheel in the desert. There’s only so much to do when there’s no WiFi or cell service.

Montreal, Quebec, Canada; 2018

I rode my motorcycle 700 miles from Washington, DC to meet some friends in Montreal. I planned to take the scenic route, but after my first night camping I woke up to heavy rain clouds bearing down. Abandoning the winding two lane highways, I hightailed it in a panic to the toll road interstate from Albany north. I paid the toll, laid on the throttle… and by Glen Falls I was completely soaked and hydroplaning all over the freeway. Even though it was only noon, I pulled over, got a hotel, and sat in a hot bath until I could feel my fingers and toes again. The next morning the rain had moved on but the temperature hovered around 40 Fahrenheit, a chilly temperature that feels downright frigid on a motorcycle at 75 mph. So I wore long johns, two pairs of jeans, three pairs of socks, and four t-shirts… and utterly froze for the three hours to Montreal. It rained most of the way back to Washington, DC, too. Totally worth it.