One Upping ad Infinitum

You have probably witnessed some one-upmanship, or been the victim of a one-upper, or possibly even one-upped someone yourself, but this one-upping is beyond the pale-- and I recognize the irony of saying that I am in possession the best one-upping anecdote in the history of one-upping: my wife and our friend Connell were sitting on the porch at Sea Isle, drinking and discussing the profound beauty of the night sky (and the travesty of light pollution) and my wife reminisced about the vast array of visible stars in the sky that she witnessed when we stayed inside Mesa Verde National Park, high atop the mesa, far from civilization . . . she said "there was a star in every piece of the sky" and Connell replied to this, without malice or premeditated hyperbole, by describing his trip to New Hampshire,  where from beside a mountain lake he could see "a thousand stars in every spot in the sky" and and we all reflected upon this description for a moment and then realized that Connell had one-upped Catherine, but by a thousandfold, and not a simple thousandfold, he one-upped her by a thousandfold per piece of sky, which is enough one-upping to last a lifetime (or at least inspire a lifetime of ridicule, which we have heaped upon him in the succeeding days).

Monkey Beats Ant

Yesterday we finally saw a monkey, while we were hiking at Mirador el Silencio-- a private nature reserve which I highly recommend because the admission is supercheap and because we saw a spider monkey swinging through the dense jungle, doing all kinds of monkey antics, and then the trail ascends out of the jungle into the cloud forest and finally ends at the 1968 lava field, where it is cold and cloudy-- a real winner of a place and we were the only people there so we had all the trails to ourselves for the three plus hours it took to navigate them; we then got snacks, plantain and yucca chips, and then descended the 500 steps the the La Fortuna Waterfall, an epic tumbling cascade of cold water that plunges straight out of the jungle; we swam in the river below the main falls, in a plethora of pacu, then we ate lunch and headed back to Los Lagos to enjoy the pools; we ran into the supernice one upper again and talked sports, we learned he was Tracy McGrady's point guard in high school and has his contact in his cell phone and then after a bit more one upping he left and we talked to some professional sporting parents from California who were so successful at raising up their giant atletic progeny that they didn't need to one up-- they talked strategy and made us feel like amateurs: their oldest son just got a full golf scholarship to Illinois and got endorsed by Foot Joy and Titleist and they retained their younger son once and were planning on doing it again so he could excel at football; both kids did not attend public school, instead they did sport specific schooling and these parents pursued all sorts of scholarships and funding, pretty wild and way out of our league; then as we were walking back to our cabana, the one upper drove by and yelled some amazing one upmanship info out the window: "I heard Soda La Hormiga, The Ant, has the best food around! Eight dollars a plate! A local guy told me . . ." and he drove off and we actually considered going there but first we needed gas and the station in town ran out so we had to wait in a line out of town and then La Hormiga was closing so we went to another place and it's a good thing because we saw the one upper's wife at breakfast and she said her son got sick from the food and it was lucky we didn't follow her husband's advice and then we sat next to them while we ate and the one upper mapped our route to Samara on his phone for us.

Monkey Beats Ant

Yesterday we finally saw a monkey, while we were hiking at Mirador el Silencio-- a private nature reserve which I highly recommend because the admission is supercheap and because we saw a spider monkey swinging through the dense jungle, doing all kinds of monkey antics, and then the trail ascends out of the jungle into the cloud forest and finally ends at the 1968 lava field, where it is cold and cloudy-- a real winner of a place and we were the only people there so we had all the trails to ourselves for the three plus hours it took to navigate them; we then got snacks, plantain and yucca chips, and then descended the 500 steps the the La Fortuna Waterfall, an epic tumbling cascade of cold water that plunges straight out of the jungle; we swam in the river below the main falls, in a plethora of pacu, then we ate lunch and headed back to Los Lagos to enjoy the pools; we ran into the supernice one upper again and talked sports, we learned he was Tracy McGrady's point guard in high school and has his contact in his cell phone and then after a bit more one upping he left and we talked to some professional sporting parents from California who were so successful at raising up their giant atletic progeny that they didn't need to one up-- they talked strategy and made us feel like amateurs: their oldest son just got a full golf scholarship to Illinois and got endorsed by Foot Joy and Titleist and they retained their younger son once and were planning on doing it again so he could excel at football; both kids did not attend public school, instead they did sport specific schooling and these parents pursued all sorts of scholarships and funding, pretty wild and way out of our league; then as we were walking back to our cabana, the one upper drove by and yelled some amazing one upmanship info out the window: "I heard Soda La Hormiga, The Ant, has the best food around! Eight dollars a plate! A local guy told me . . ." and he drove off and we actually considered going there but first we needed gas and the station in town ran out so we had to wait in a line out of town and then La Hormiga was closing so we went to another place and it's a good thing because we saw the one upper's wife at breakfast and she said her son got sick from the food and it was lucky we didn't follow her husband's advice and then we sat next to them while we ate and the one upper mapped our route to Samara on his phone for us.

One-Uppers Are A Downer

Last night, just after discussing the infamous "one-upper" that now works with us (this Emilio, he is more than famous for his "one-upping"-- for example: when a co-worker mentioned that he made some guacamole, Emilio claimed that he was growing an avocado tree in his closet) my friend Eric described a house he was landscaping and he mentioned the well-maintained garden with its plethora of pepper plants (a plethora, oh yes El Guapo, we have a plethora) including a beautiful Thai hot pepper bush with tiny colorful hot peppers growing all over it-- and I then remarked that I owned several such beautiful Thai hot pepper bushes when we lived in Syria and I kept them on our porch, where they served as a decorative spice rack and Catherine looked at me and said, "I think someone is doing some one-upping" and she was right.

1.5 Kilometers is more than 1 kilometer

We went ziplining down the mountain yesterday-- this was the first time for me but my wife and kids did it in the Poconos; however, they said our first "practice" run was much longer than the longest run back home; the lines got longer and longer, one of the was a kilometer, we zoomed over the La Fortuna waterfall and a deep jungle chasm before plunging into the bush . . . a little scary but mainly exhilarating and certainly big fun, we did 12 lines in all and there was lots of hiking through the cloud forest, our guide said he once saw a jaguar while riding one of the lines during the early morning safety check; after lunch at a local joint we returned back to the spring fed pools and water slides and our boys made friends with some kids from Florida; their dad was a friendly very eell traveled businessman and accomplished surfer, he had lots of information about Costa Rica but he was something of a one-upper; his family had gone rappelling down a waterfall in the morning and when we told him we went ziplining he said that the only place to go was around the mountain in Monte Verde because they have a 1.5 km line, which is .5 longer than one kilometer; he also told us where the BEST surfing wave is in Costa Rica, it's near where we are headed but not exactly where we are headed . . . he said the place we are going is good, but not the best, and then -- I'm not making this up-- he told us they were headed out for pizza, and he had made reservations at the best pizza place, Cafe Mediteraneo, and ee told him we had great pizza at Anchio-- which was true, it was better than most pizza in the states-- and he said he heard that was good but not as good as the place they were headed . . . I have to stress he was supernice about all this and I was probably setting him up a bit and he might have amiably one upped a bit more if his son hadn't wiped out on the wet stairs and hit his head and scraped his elbow (I did not mention to him that my kids were running on the stairs with his kid and did NOT fall, because one upping something like that is kind of mean).

1.5 Kilometers is more than 1 kilometer

We went ziplining down the mountain yesterday-- this was the first time for me but my wife and kids did it in the Poconos; however, they said our first "practice" run was much longer than the longest run back home; the lines got longer and longer, one of the was a kilometer, we zoomed over the La Fortuna waterfall and a deep jungle chasm before plunging into the bush . . . a little scary but mainly exhilarating and certainly big fun, we did 12 lines in all and there was lots of hiking through the cloud forest, our guide said he once saw a jaguar while riding one of the lines during the early morning safety check; after lunch at a local joint we returned back to the spring fed pools and water slides and our boys made friends with some kids from Florida; their dad was a friendly very well traveled businessman and accomplished surfer, he had lots of information about Costa Rica but he was something of a one-upper; his family had gone rappelling down a waterfall in the morning and when we told him we went ziplining he said that the only place to go was around the mountain in Monte Verde because they have a 1.5 km line, which is .5 longer than one kilometer; he also told us where the BEST surfing wave is in Costa Rica, it's near where we are headed but not exactly where we are headed . . . he said the place we are going is good, but not the best, and then -- I'm not making this up-- he told us they were headed out for pizza, and he had made reservations at the best pizza place, Cafe Mediteraneo, and ee told him we had great pizza at Anchio-- which was true, it was better than most pizza in the states-- and he said he heard that was good but not as good as the place they were headed . . . I have to stress he was supernice about all this and I was probably setting him up a bit and he might have amiably one upped a bit more if his son hadn't wiped out on the wet stairs and hit his head and scraped his elbow (I did not mention to him that my kids were running on the stairs with his kid and did NOT fall, because one upping something like that is kind of mean).

Was Dave One-Upped or One-Downed?

When I mentioned that my dog Sirius requires two bags for his morning walk, my friend Stacey -- who is taller than me, but has a much smaller dog -- one-upped me and claimed that her dog Norman fills THREE bags on his evening walk . . . and while I'm not sure if this "one-upping" or "one-downing," I loved the conversation, because instead of "humblebragging" -- an act that I detest -- we were actually bragging, which is something I love (even if the topic is the amount of fecal matter our pets produce).

Trump, Stop Being a Coward (I'd Use the P-Word, But It Would Be Gauche)

The hope that Trump might preside more moderately than his campaign rhetoric indicated has been shattered by his polarizing inaugural address and the hastily mandated executive order to ban Muslims and refugees from America . . . and while I was trying to ignore much of the day-to-day furor over his policies, I think he has drawn the proverbial line in the sand; if you're confused on this issue, I humbly present a few things you should digest and think about:

1) the new episode of The Weeds (The Don't-Call-It-A-Muslim-Ban) does a great job of parsing out the policy and the contradictions and problems with it-- you'll understand why there have been stays by federal judges enacted in regards to the ban;

2) a flat out "Muslim" ban is unconstitutional, so Trump had to make do by banning people from seven mainly Muslim countries-- but putting Syria on the list means that Trump can't help prioritize Syrian Christians-- or any other Christian refugees seeking asylum-- though Trump claims he would like to do this;

3) Trump suspended the US Refugee Program for 120 days and capped refugee admissions to 50,000 (instead of Obama's 110,00, which is still rather paltry considering scope of the crisis . . . global displacement is at an all time high);

4) in 2016, the United States accepted 12,000 Syrian refugees (Germany took in a million in 2015 and 300,000 in 2016) and Trump's executive order bans all Syrian refugees . . . this brings up the point that we weren't doing a terribly good job of addressing this refugee crisis under the Obama administration, and we certainly had a hand in creating this crisis because of our various military actions and inactions in the Middle East, and we are now presenting ourselves as an ugly selfish "America first" nation that is willing to turn its back on a heinous and horrible humanitarian tragedy;

5) if you need something more vivid to illustrate the toll of being a refugee, listen to This American Life: Are We There Yet?

6) if you want to feel especially shitty about your country-- and this is before Trump enacted the total ban on refugees from Iraq, then listen to This American Life: Didn't We Solve This One? and you'll hear the stories of Iraqi translators and defectors who helped us in the war in Iraq, were promised visas, and then were abandoned and left out in the cold . . . Trump expressed his solidarity for the "forgotten man" in America, but these people have been forgotten by America in an exponential and existential sense, and now they have no chance of receiving their due . . . this bureaucratic betrayal sounds like the perfect template to create terrorists;

5) you don't have to tow the party line on this, because tone and attitude towards immigration isn't a Democrat/Republican thing, it's a moral stance . . . for a startling example, check out the video of Bush and Reagan one-upping each other on how welcoming they would like to be and how many services they would like to provide for illegal immigrants . . . and Bill Clinton-- welfare reformer-- slammed illegal immigrants and their drain on social services;

6) Trump signed his executive order over the Holocaust Memorial weekend . . . I don't have to explain the irony;

7) America is a country with great wealth and resources and we are often big-hearted and welcoming to refugees and immigrants . . . but some of our most regretful and humiliating moments are when we treated foreigners poorly-- the Japanese internment and sending a boatload of Jews back to Europe to be slaughtered by Nazis are incidents that come to mind;

8) we are also a country where freedom of speech trumps all other rights-- this is no place for cowards-- and while it is extraordinarily rare that an immigrant commits an act of terrorism, this is a possibility-- but it is a possibility that we must endure if we are going to be a free country;

9) while I find it absurd, it's not illegal in America to literally believe in the words of the Koran or the Bible or any other outdated religious text . . . and it's not illegal in the United States to have radical religious opinions or radical political opinions or any other kind of belief, even if it be ridiculous unfounded and stupid, and because of this ur-policy, we are going to occasionally suffer some collateral damage-- but again, this is not a country for cowards . . .

10) the 2nd Amendment allows for the proliferation of guns and conservatives are fine with the collateral damage associated with this;

11) Trump and the Republicans want to deregulate environmental rules and regulations-- they're willing to let people drive around as much as they want, and pollute as much as they want, though this leads to the warming of the globe, the loss of biodiversity, and the death of lots of folks in automobile accidents . . . but conservatives show no fear of these dire consequences of their policy;

12) conservatives are also not afraid of obesity, going without health insurance, and pandemics-- Trump don't need no stinking vaccines . . . so if Great Americans, Trumplike Americans are not afraid of any of this, if they are willing to embrace death in so many ways, then I'd like to implore them-- Trump, his followers and the rest of the conservatives-- to stop being so cowardly about immigration; we love danger here in the US, whether it's getting run over by a drunk driver or shot by some lunatic in a movie theater or daring the oceans to rise and swallow our coastal cities, so let's embrace the danger and embark on a great adventure and let in all kinds of asylum seekers and immigrants-- let's expedite the system instead of drawing it to an ugly halt-- and let's do it for the forgotten men and women of the world, the people that have truly lost everything, who have nowhere to go and no one to look out for them . . . the huddled masses, the wretched refuse, the homeless . . . this is a concern that is beyond political polarization . . . where you stand on this issue determines not only what kind of American you are, but ultimately, what kind of person you are.