Jump Trax

 

My 18-year-old nephew known as Nicholas or Nick to the rest of the world and Nicks to me, works part time at a place called Jump Trax. He's worked there for two years and though I've visited during that time, I never had a chance to see the inside of the place. In fact, I didn't really know what the place was. It's an inflatable jumping place. Hmm...

So I'm back in the Boston area unexpectedly and we were planning to drop Nicks off at work one day and I asked if we could have a tour. “Sure”, he said. Remember, he's 18 and I'm his aging aunt. Saying “Sure” was very large in my book and I was looking forward to seeing what a jumping place was. I mean I know what “jumping” is, but an inflatable jumping place, that's something different from a place that's jumpin' or getting jumped.

Son of a gun, if Jump Trax isn't a place where kids go to jump. It's a village of huge, soft, inflatable creatures and structures. You take off your shoes and dive in … and jump. You can have jumping parties or open jump time if nothing else is scheduled. You can enjoy it if you're 6, 16 or 60 although I was not invited to jump... not everything was totally inflated yet. Maybe next time.

I'm not sure I CAN jump, now that I think of it. I know I could jump once, but I don't do it often any more. I jump off the boat (actually a graceful step-down is more accurate) and I “jump to” when the captain gives a command (as if!). If I get a special invitation, I jump on it. And when we don't get to port on time or the weather's lousy, I get jumpy. I need to ask Nicks if I can jump at Jump Trax. It sounds as if it could be another adventure.

Days and Ways to Celebrate

A daily list of mostly obscure holidays and fun ways to celebrate them.

April Fool's Day

The reference to this day dates back to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in the 14th century. It's celebrated in many countries by sticking a paper fish to someone's back without them knowing it, a tradition known in France as poisson d'avril, literally April Fish. Go ahead, do it, fool someone!

Sliced Bread Day

First time sliced bread appeared commercially (Holsum Bread), followed by Wonder Bread (1930). It was advertised as "the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped" which led to the expression "the greatest thing since sliced bread". And now you know the rest of the story.

A to B Update: Blizzard!!!

Whose woods these are, I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening – Robert Frost

It's one thing to return to Boston and another to return in winter in time for a huge blizzard. They call this type of storm a nor'easter. I haven't experienced snow and bone-chilling cold for a long, long time. Somehow, I'm just not appreciating it the way I should.  I've had brief moments of nostalgia as I caught snowflakes on my tongue and thought about all the forts and snowmen I built as a kid. The fond memories dissipated quickly when I was brushing off the car and copious amount of the freezing white stuff filled up my borrowed boots.

I'd always heard that the native Inuit people of the Arctic region have ~400 words for snow. In actuality, that's an urban myth, there's less, but still they know their snow. They have closer to 50 maybe … about as many as I have. There's powder, wet snow, heavy snow, damned snow, I'm sick of snow. I could go on, but you get the gist. This snow, by the way, was heavy, wet and sticky … snowball snow.

It started snowing about three days ago. At times, visibility was 0 and it snowed horizontally, thanks to the wind. The weather forecast called for 4-8” and was revised several times as the 8”, then 12”, then 15” marks were met and exceeded. It looks like about 20” total fell and it's a proverbial winter wonderland out there. Along the seacoast, exceptionally high tides and winds swept away a home which had been sitting precariously on an eroded cliff … just snatched it up and sucked it away. There was lots of coastal flooding and beach erosion. Here, a bit more inland, there are lots of broken branches and downed trees and deep, heavy snow.

I do remember the quiet, muffled sounds in a post-snowstorm neighborhood, the snow insulating us from noise. No traffic on the unplowed roads; just the occasional sound of someone shoveling in the distance. The quiet was palpable. Despite the dark gray skies, the brightness of the reflected snow hurt my eyes. All that white. The evergreen boughs bent way over, straining with their load. Icicles dangled from the eaves and tiny branches. It's that way here at the moment.

I had to memorize Robert Frost's poem as a child. For all my complaining, I did watch my sister's woods fill up with snow. It was beautiful.

As an aside, David is working and sweltering in Adelaide. We'd like to exchange a little of his Adelaide heat for some of my Boston cold, but we haven't figured out quite how.

Days and Ways to Celebrate

A daily list of mostly obscure holidays and fun ways to celebrate them.

Save a Spider Day

Fat Chance!

Pi Day

A day to celebrate that mathematical constant (π) and its never ending value 3.14159... It's also Albert Einstein's birthday (1879). Makes you want to calculate the area of a circle, huh?

On the Airwaves

Gentry, blog mistress extraordinaire, forwarded us an email from our Just a Little Further blogsite. Damian from ABC Radio in Hobart (that's the Australian Broadcasting Company not the American version) had just read our blog about walking in the Queen's Domain. ABC was interested in chatting with us about our sailing adventures and our time here in Tasmania. Wow!

ABC Radio Studio

We rang them up. “Could we come to the studio for an 0720 broadcast tomorrow morning?”, Jo, the producer asked. “Absolutely!” The studio is about a 10 minute walk from the wharf and we reckoned we could pull ourselves together and get there by 0715 without too much trouble. At that time of the day, we were pleased it was radio considering we looked a bit windblown by the time we appeared at the studio's front entrance. We arrived early and paced around for ten minutes before ringing the entry buzzer. Jo met us at the door as planned and showed us into a waiting area. We hadn't been in a radio studio before … ever. This is ABC's radio and television broadcasting center in Tasmania and it's pretty plush.

ABC Radio in Hobart

ABC Radio broadcasting

Talking live on a radio program would be a new adventure for us. They hadn't provided any questions in advance, so there was no prepping or preparing. I concentrated on not saying “ah” and “uh” too much and hoped the words I was thinking would actually come out of my mouth. I cleared my throat a lot while we waited. I asked for some water.

ABC

Jo ushered us into the studio at around 0715 and we sat opposite Ryk Goddard, the young, good-looking, affable morning talk show host. Jo got us settled. We put on the headphones and sat in front of the microphones. Hopefully, there would be no trick questions. And then we were talking with Ryk. He introduced us while he adjusted knobs and dials, looked at his computer to see who had just “tweeted”, consulted several monitors and generally multi-tasked to the Nth degree...all the while chatting into the microphone. Things happen quickly.

ABC photo opp

There was no need for nervousness. Ryk seemed genuinely interested and asked some good questions.

“How did you start your journey?”, “How do you stay financially afloat?”, “David, where do you go when you're in the doghouse?”, “Where haven't you been?”. In between several other tasks, Jo appeared once again and snapped photos for us while we answered Ryk's questions. All in all, a delightful 8-minute experience that left us high for several hours after. As we said goodbye and left the studio, Jo had already e-mailed us a digital copy of the interview. Talk about efficiency. Now we can listen to ourselves talk.

Click here for the audio of David and Marcie's interview.