They Got to See the Beach. And Chase A Seagull.

We've never thought our two dogs, Daisy and Dottie, were all that good in the car. They both want to sit with the driver. They both get really nervous. So we had our doubts when we planned a quick family trip to the Oregon coast -- a trip of almost 2,000 miles -- that they'd survive.

But our dogsitters had moved. And we thought, what the heck?

There were times they didn't like the car. But they did fine.

And they got to play on the beach, near Face Rock at Bandon. And they had a ball chasing a seagull.

Dottie remains our miracle dog. She had IVDD a few years ago and was paralyzed in the rear end department. But she recovered. She still has a bit of a stagger, but can run. And loved running, chasing that bird.

The Fratelli Chase

I just have to do this.

First, this Fratelli Chase

I understand that the official movie soundtrack was released this year to commemorate the 25th anniversary of "The Goonies," but at $32.00 a pop, I guess I'm not that excited to own one of the 5,000 copies. This will suffice. And it also solves a mystery, as I didn't realize until today the Dave Grusin, who wrote this piece, also wrote the score to "Bonfire of the Vanities," which used the Fratelli music in some promos, much to my chagrin.

Then this one:

Finally, this one:

Life gives us so much to look forward to.

Goonies Never Say Die

Most of the catchphrases I use come from two movies.

The first is Ghostbusters. The second, well, let’s see if you recognize them:

Something goes terribly wrong and I’ve discovered the evidence. I say: “It is Chester Copperpot.”

One of my kids has wandered off, but I can see a trail that might lead me to them: “Follow them Size Fives.”

A child o’ mine has to go to the bathroom in a place that’s less than sanitary: “This isn’t the kinda place you wanna go to the bathroom. Because there might be daddy longlegs . . . and DEAD THINGS, Mikey! KILLER dead things!”

Someone’s having trouble getting something, anything, to open: “Let go of the handle, Francis!”

Mom wants the kids to do something they’re reluctant to do: “Trust your Mother, boys! Throw ‘er into four-wheel drive!”

Any helpless, innocent person is instantly named Missus Rosalita.

Every time I encounter a dead bird in the yard or a dead mouse in a trap: “IT’S A STIFF!”

And, finally, I’m caught doing something stupid: “Oh shit, what?”

You Goonies understood. Immediately. Even before I mentioned Chester Copperpot. Because the best catchphrase is in the blog post title – which I use whenever I’m asked to do something difficult that I don’t want to do.

Last year, I got to go to Goonie Astoria (and nearby Cannon Beach) before the hysteria of the 25th anniversary of the film’s release hit the town this year and swelled its population far beyond its ordinary 10,000. I found Mikey’s house and saw where Chunk performed the Truffle Shuffle.

I saw Chunk’s bowling alley. I walked on the pier where Steph went bobbing for crabs. I saw Mikey’s Dad’s museum, the County Jail, and other Goonie landmarks as I took my family on our own Goonie adventure through northwest Oregon.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/06/AR2010060603590.html

The most heartbreaking thing I learned as I read about the film’s 25th anniversary: This from the Washington Post:

According to Sean Astin, who played Goonies leader "Mikey" Walsh, he was allowed to keep the treasure map used in the film. Several years later his mother discovered it, thought it was just a crinkled piece of paper, and threw it in the trash.

It hurts just thinking about that.

But I’ll tell you what doesn’t hurt: My wife’s a Goonie, though of the Andy variety (real Goonies will know what I mean). I’m so glad she is. My kids are Goonies, because, hey, what kid wouldn’t want to be?

I can easily see my kids doing this same thing. Riding off, getting into trouble, manufacturing and using fake puke, then expecting a Domino’s pizza after it’s all over. Especially my five-year-old. He’s dangerous.

I have my sister Chris to thank for turning me into a Goonie. She saw the film in the theater and insisted the rest of the family had to see it. We didn’t believe her. Later, when it was out on video, she rented it and made us watch it. Now, almost every time we see each other, well, you know:

Cannon Beach Beckons

To think I used to be a homebody.

As a kid, we never went on vacations. Oh, the occasional trip to salt lake City for the day, but rarely anything beyond that. We did do the camping thing in Yellowstone National Park. We did fly to San Francisco. But that was it.

Then I got married to a globetrotter. Within a year, she dragged me to Washington, D.C. Within five years we'd visited England and France, not to forget to mention a cross-country road trip in the USA and many, many other smaller, yet still grandiose, vacations, including a cruise to Alaska.

Read here about our latest adventure: A trip to Cannon Beach, Oregon, where we stayed for days under the cloudy -- but never rainy -- Oregon sky and enjoyed playing on the beach with our kids.

Cannon Beach is a wonderful place, and not only because its famous Haystack Rock was featured in The Goonies, one of my favorite films. We visited in the off-season, which I highly recommend. The beaches weren't crowded. The hotels were less expensive. There were fewer people about, so we were able to enjoy the solitude and beauty without having anybody else's laundry flapping in our faces. Go during the off-season, before mid-June and after August ends. That's when Cannon Beach is a wonderful place.

Ah, Vacation . . .

"Want A Clam Fer Yer Boy?"

I sense it's time to go on vacation again. That's certainly been the vibe this weekend, as we at Uncharted prepared yet another update, this time on a lovely day my family spent at Seaside, Oregon. You can read the story here. I'll have another story up soon, but right now it's just gonna have to wait. (UPDATE: The second story, with some recycled photos, is here.)

I've visited a lot of places. Only a few of them were good enough to tempt me back. Oregon's northwest coast is certainly one of those places. I could be a beach bum at Cannon Beach, eating seaweed and living in a driftwood hut, forever. That is, if I weren't married nor encumbered with job, children, mortgage payments, et cetera. But I could certainly spend a lot more time wandering Oregon than the fast week and a half we spent there last summer. Oh, I want to go back . . .

Look at the Pretty Flowers

A karesansui garden. Maybe not the place to take three, shall we say, busy, kids. But these busy kids ate up the scenery at Portalnd, Oregon's Japanese Gardens to the point that when we got to the zen garden, they actually sat on the benches and contemplated the cleanliness, the simplicity of this little sea of pebbles swirling in ripples around the rough rocks. And they got even more excited when their Dad pointed out that the squatty boulders were actually the tigers observing the towering Buddha. Or something like that. I was so blissed out by the time we got there, you could have relaxed me with a feather.

Read more about it here as Michelle takes you on a tour of the gardens. And definitely plan on a visit to the gardens the next time you're in Portland.

Uncharted, Undaunted

Uncharted, undaunted, keeps rolling on.

I won't go into the details of what happened in bringing this update to the public. Suffice it to say that, as with many small companies like ours spread out over several time zones, the following held true:

1) Thing break.
2) When they break, it's at the worst possible time.
3) When things break at the worst possible time, communication is key.
4) Sometimes, for whatever reason, people forget to communicate.

And so on. But that's beside the point. What matters is that Oregon's Multnomah Falls is quite the place, made even better by quite the hike from the serene little spot you see here to the towering heights above the falls, when the folks below on the bridge look like ants but you're too busy insufflating the bark off of trees because you're breathing so hard after climbing that steep little 1.2-mile switchback trail to the top.

As we walked, folks kept telling us, "You're almost there. Only seven more turns." We counted turns. And turns. And turns. It reminded me of that scene in Ghostbusters where they're walking up the stairs at Dana Barrett's apartment and Venkman says to Spangler, "So, where do you think we are?" Spangler responds: "Teens." Venkman then says "OK. When we get to twenty, tell me, because I'm going to throw up."

We made it, though. And this was only one stop on our ten-day spin through Oregon. Lots more to come.

Goonies Astoria

I got to see Mikey's House.

And Data's. And the museum. And the county jail. Also saw Haystack Rock and the store where Chunk is eating his pizza as the police chase zooms through town. I saw Astoria High School and Andy's field. I also got to walk the same beaches where they had that really neat ORV rally. Didn't see any with bullet holes.

Yes, I did a Goonies Tour while in northwestern Oregon.

I've long been a fan of Chris Columbus/Stephen Spielberg's sleeper hit from the early 1980s. My sister Chris saw the movie at the theater, and introduced it to us not long after that newfangled thing called the VCR came to Idaho Falls. I watched the movie a lot, and empathized with Chunk, the fat kid who wants to be part of the group but is only marginally included because of the comic value. If I were part of the Goonies, a band of kids who decide to go after some "rich stuff" -- hidden pirate treasure -- I'd be the fat kid doing the Truffle Shuffle.

So when we went through Astoria, I made sure to make it a Goonies Day.

The kids were very excited when I told them we were going to see a house in a movie. They're not even Goonies fans yet. I've tried, but the film is just a bit too scary for them. They were disappointed we couldn't go into the house. That's just how it is, I said. But we took lots of pictures, none of which I have downloaded yet because that's how this weekend has gone.

I really wanted to go into the jail. Too bad it's closed to the public. I had no idea when the movie was filmed that the old jail wasn't being used any more. Just assumed it was. And it's a lot smaller than it looks in the movie.

Astoria wears its Goonie history proudly. The Goonie House appears on tourist maps. The jail itself bears a paper placard declaring its use in the film, and outlining other films made in the area. As if anyone cares about the others.

Astoria, by the way, is a fun town. We had lunch there at the Pig n Pancake, part of a local chain of eateries, right in the shadow of the bridge Chunk could see if he weren't busy watching the bullets fly. What fun that was.

Did not get into Ecola State Park. Really, really wanted to, but the rest of the family said they'd seen enough trees. But the whole way through Astoria, I kept on saying: "You said, you said when I got to the top of this big hill, you said you'd give me a Twinkie." I didn't get one either, Chunk.

I wonder if John Jacob Astor, the rich stuff financier for whom the town is named, likes the fact that for a small portion of the American population, his town has a more meaningful cultural connection to a bunch of kids, a guy named Sloth, the Fratellis and One-Eyed Willy than to him. I wonder if I really care all that much.