Zoo highlights marathon road trip

What do Gay Pride Weekend, a shimmering car with one headlight, a Messina and Loggins concert at the Gorge and a marathon road trip all have in common?

Last weekend — or how to stay awake for 28 hours.

The weekend started out innocently enough with an early morning trip Saturday to Seattle with my family and in-laws. We all packed into the Rokstad Ford-purchased red Expedition around 9 a.m.

The itinerary was simple: Go to Seattle. Spend early afternoon at Woodland Park Zoo. Pick up sister-in-law Marina's car. Stay in a motel. Caravan home Sunday morning after sleeping in a motel bed and swimming in the motel's indoor pool.

Woodland Park Zoo is awesome. The kids loved seeing the giraffes, monkeys and the hundreds of other animals on display. I liked all the attention the zoo gave to protecting endangered species and my wife, Marlisa, was impressed with the butterflies and blooms display.

We grabbed a nice dinner in a restaurant near a statue of Lenin in the Fremont neighborhood that had been adorned in Gay Pride pageantry. Then panic started to sink in. We didn't have motel reservations anywhere and I knew by listening to the radio that Gay Priders had packed every available space in the greater Seattle area.

Since the motel reservation person in our group didn't, we had to punt.

I suggested we pick up Marina's car and head east to Ellensburg — 100-plus miles to the east — and try our luck there. My thinking was we were that much closer to home and that much further from Seattle.

Marina hadn't driven her Subaru for many months so the plan was to take it to Sandpoint to clean it up and sell it to raise some money for some courses she wanted to take.

As I turned the ignition key I immediately noticed that one of the headlights was out and that the car made a grinding sound whenever I turned to the left. At that point, I suggested Marlisa and the kids ride in the safe confines of the Expedition while I drove the Subaru.

We left Seattle a little after nine.

A few hours later we started getting closer to Ellensburg and I turned to a local radio station. A too-excited DJ was beside himself as he explained to the radio audience about the great Kenny Loggins and Messina concert he had just left at the Gorge, by George.

The sold-out concert was great, he intoned.

I knew immediately what that meant. There wouldn't be a motel room in Ellensburg or Moses Lake or even Spokane for that matter (think Hoopfest.)

As we pulled into Ellensburg, I blinked my one light at the Expedition and explained the predicament. I decided to scout out a few motels just in case someone with a reservation hadn't showed up to there.

One motel had yellow construction tape across the entrance with "Don't Even Ask — No Room" written on the tape. A lady at Super 8 just smiled at me and said, "no way, honey." Job's Daughters had taken over Ellensburg.

I hooked up with the rest of the family and discussed two options. We could nap in the vehicles for a few hours and then hit the road or we could soldier on through the dark eastern Washington night.

We were off.

The rest of the trip was uneventful in my car, mainly because I was alone. The silence in the Expedition, however, was violently broken at about 4 a.m. by my four-year-old daughter who apparently awoke and bolted up in her car seat and shouted "You idiots!" and went immediately back to sleep.

My thoughts of being locked up in a car seat for a total of 14 hours and the lack of a motel swimming pool may have contributed to her nocturnal expression

We arrived in Sandpoint around 5 a.m. and immediately found the nearest pillow.

There is no moral to this story, just that I was grateful that my family and extended family made it home safely. 710 miles in one day . Wow.

Now, if you are interested in a road-tested Subaru with a brand-new headlight, call me…

Bee business manager Carolyn Inge had no sympathy, she and her husband, Bob, recently drove straight from Rapid City, S.D., to Sandpoint. That's 950 miles and they did it all in daylight, she'll tell you.

Which Sandpoint High soon-to-be-a-junior recently met with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld? Stay tuned …

How are ticket sales for the Festival At Sandpoint going? How about record setting. I have been told by reliable sources that ticket sales very strong and are out-pacing every year to as far back as the late '90s. The only reason the '90s are mentioned because that's as far back as the spreadsheet goes.

Ryan Adams is leading the way.

I love the fact that the Spokane Symphony is opening the Festival with a pops concert. It's nice to have the symphony twice this year. As most of you know, the symphony is very expensive and the FAS folks are hoping the crowds will follow to both concerts.

I'll keep you posted about sellouts, etc. as we move closer to Sandpoint's premier summer concert event.

Have you filled out your Best of Bonner County ballot yet? Deadline is Thursday.

Thursday is a special day for another reason. My daughter, Olivia, turns five on that day. As I have written before, I am smitten by this pretty little girl who cuts her own hair and speaks her mind. I love you, Olivia, I cherish every day with you and am anxious to spend the rest of my life being tied with your Mom as your biggest fan.

The Newspaper in Education golf tournament was a trememdous success last week. I was lucky enough to be paired with Kary Miller and Carolyn Inge from my office, as well as Bob Huyck. Huyck is a Realtor with Windermere.

We finished second to last. If you ever have a chance to golf with Bob Huyck, you had better do it.

I spent the entire day listening to his one liners.

"David, mind if I give you a little advice on your golf game?" he said after the first hole.

I said sure.

"You are standing too close to the ball after you hit it," he said.

And so it went…

I won't even tell you about the golf ball and the cow joke he tried out on me.

I count three restaurants opening in the next month in the Sandpoint and Ponderay area. I tried out a new restaurant in Clark Fork recently. The Bee Top Bistro was wonderful. Read a review of this great new place.

E-mail of the week:

Kids say the darndest things:

A little girl was talking to her teacher about whales.

The teacher said it was physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human because even though it was a very large mammal its throat was very small.

The little girl stated that Jonah was swallowed by a whale.

Irritated, the teacher reiterated that a whale could not swallow a human; it was physically impossible.

The little girl said, "When I get to heaven I will ask Jonah".

The teacher asked, " What if Jonah went to hell?"

The little girl replied, "Then you ask him."

A Kindergarten teacher was observing her classroom of children while they were drawing. She would occasionally walk around to see each child's work.

As she got to one little girl who was working diligently, she asked what the drawing was.

The girl replied, "I'm drawing God."

The teacher paused and said, "But no one knows what God looks like."

Without missing a beat, or looking up from her drawing, the girl replied, "They will in a minute."

A Sunday school teacher was discussing the Ten Commandments with her 5- and 6-year-olds.

After explaining the commandment to "honor" thy Father and thy Mother, she asked, "Is there a commandment that teaches us how to treat our brothers and sisters?"

Without missing a beat one little boy (the oldest of a family) answered, "Thou shall not kill."

One day a little girl was sitting and watching her mother do the dishes at the kitchen sink. She suddenly noticed that her mother had several strands of white hair sticking out in contrast on her brunette head.

She looked at her mother and inquisitively asked, "Why are some of your hairs white, Mom?"

Her mother replied, "Well, every time that you do something wrong and make me cry or unhappy, one of my hairs turns white."

The little girl thought about this revelation for a while and then said, "Momma, how come ALL of grandma's hairs are white?"

The children had all been photographed, and the teacher was trying to persuade them each to buy a copy of the group picture.

"Just think how nice it will be to look at it when you are all grown up and say, 'There's Jennifer, she's a lawyer,' or 'That's Michael, He's a doctor.'

A small voice at the back of the room rang out, "And there's the teacher, She's dead. "

A teacher was giving a lesson on the circulation of the blood. Trying to make the matter clearer, she said, "Now, class, if I stood on my head, the blood, as you know, would run into it, and I would turn red in the face.."

"Yes," the class said.

"Then why is it that while I am standing upright in the ordinary position the blood doesn't run into my feet?"

A little fellow shouted, "Cause your feet ain't empty."

The children were lined up in the cafeteria of a Catholic elementary school for lunch. At the head of the table was a large pile of apples. The nun made a note, and posted on the apple tray:

"Take only one. God is watching."

Moving further along the lunch line, at the other end of the table was a large pile of chocolate chip cookies.

A child had written a note, "Take all you want. God is watching the apples.