Living a Dream

They say that light is the only constant in the universe. I disagree. The continuity of how stupid our species can be is indisputable. I'd like to give some examples that illustrate my point. Helmets. Why do helmets exist? They exist to keep our brains safe from traumatic injury. Do you know what else keeps our brains safe from traumatic injury? Not doing things that cause traumatic brain injury. We race motorcycles, play football, go mountain-biking, ski, snowboard, do construction work, and so many other things. All of these things require helmets because they've caused death by head-trauma. Only now, with the ongoing saga of NFL concussions, has anyone even considered the idea that - hey, maybe we shouldn't do these things that cause massive head trauma? Maybe helmets are a band-aid over the axe-wound that these things are causing? Just me? OK, fine. Watch any prime time TV show and you'll see a commercial for a medication. My favorite one starts with "tir...

I teased this a little about two weeks ago, but now we're here and ready to talk about a little road trip that we took. The plan was simple: Get a place to stay near Florence (but not in Florence), have a good old-fashioned Italian farmhouse meal, and drive around Tuscany, mainly looking for hill towns. In practice, it was at least that simple - maybe simpler. You can't end up in a bad place. Everywhere is beautiful, even if it was a little hazy at times. It was February 28 when we left, so it was supposed to be cold, but we were going south without much knowledge of the elevation at-play on this trip. Our first stop answered some questions. A sign on the highway pointed toward a (maybe) national park of the lakes Suviana and Brasimone. I don't know which on this actually is, but it was beautiful. We had a nice time tossing  rocks into the lake and watching the ice spider-web. Quite a setting. We hopped back in the car, periodically pulling over to take photos, a...