In a brand new hotel in Chapel Hill, N.C., I realized something this summer: My family is woefully un-prepared should disaster strike.

In the wee hours of the night, as we slept on virgin pillows and virgin sheets, we were suddenly awoken by the most wretched of noises. It sounded as if a pterodactyl was throwing up in the bathroom. Loud and rancorous, it assaulted the ears — a pulsing, throbbing, piercing noise.

BLURT-BLURT-BLURT.

My first reaction was anger. How dare some North Carolina pterodactyl disturb my slumber. The nerve!

There’s nothing like, and nothing worse, than the disorientating fog of being awoken in the middle of the night. You slowly come to your senses — grab a bit of awareness out of the air — and then remember that pterodactyls are long-since extinct. The blaring noise was really a fire alarm.

“How dare the hotel be on fire!” I remember thinking.
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You want to take a trip down memory lane, and feel really old at the same time? Here’s how you do it. Get on the Web and search out Beloit College’s Mindset List for the Class of 2014.

A small college that dates back to when Wisconsin was still a territory, Beloit puts together a fascinating list every year to give us some insight into “the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall.”

You know, stuff that we older folk used to find commonplace, but today’s incoming freshmen will scratch their heads and say, “What you talkin’ ‘bout, grandpa?”

Because, think about this, most freshman now hitting college campuses like the one I work at were born in 1992. NINETEEN-NINETY-TWO!!! As the list points out, these little dudes and dudettes never had to worry about a Russian nuclear missile hitting the U.S.

A read through it gives you an idea of how much things have changed, and how quickly. What was once standard in our lives are now little more than historical relics or forgotten pieces of the past.
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Whoever thought eating healthy would be so dang hard? It’s enough to make you throw up your hands and scream, “Bring on the Pop-Tart sushi!”

(In case you were looking for signs of the end of civilization as we know it, I give you Pop-Tarts World — the nutritional apocalypse. It’s opening in Times Square and will sell, I kid you not, Pop-Tart sushi. I gained a pound and lost a year off my life just reading about it online.)

Thanks for kicking us while we’re making progress, food companies. Here we are becoming interested in what we eat, and adjusting to organic squash and multi-grain pasta. Then you have to go and give us that.

I’ve always been a relatively healthy eater, but in the past year I’ve turned even more so. Or at least I’m trying.
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As you stand atop the ballistic missile doors of a nuclear-powered submarine it suddenly occurs to you … I’M STANDING ATOP THE MISSILE DOORS OF A NUCLEAR-POWERED SUBMARINE!!!

And the shock is almost enough to send you jumping into the water. Well, if not for the patrol boat down there with the front and back 50-caliber machine guns.

But the thought of 24 Trident intercontinental missiles sitting just below your tennis shoes will send a shiver down your spine and get your teeth a chattering. I think I chipped one.

The back story: I got the chance this past weekend to tour the USS Alaska, which calls Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in Georgia home. He’s a big boy, that Alaska.
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Maybe I need a hobby.

I was thinking about this as I sat listening to my brother. He collects vintage motorcycles, restores them, loses sleep over them, caresses them lovingly like Kobe beef, says things like, “you sure have a pretty tail pipe,” and then spends most of his waking hours buying parts from far-off lands so he can get them to run for all of 13 seconds. Then they stall and the engine has to be rebuilt.

These are really old bikes. When I say “vintage,” I’m not talking about 20-30 years old. I’m talking about the kind of motorcycles the Hun used to invade China back in 176 B.C.

Well, maybe not that old. But these British bikes certainly pre-date me. I don’t typically pay attention to all these conversations with my brother about timing chains and oil gasket breaches, so I can only guess they hail from around World War II.

With my brother, though, it’s not enough to merely collect and restore bikes. And it’s not enough just to ride them. So instead he has taken up racing — what you call “hobby expansion” or “hobby extreme.” That’s when putting something on a shelf or in a garage simply won’t do. This way you can consume more time and money on your hobby, and further infuriate your wife. (Guys who want to prove that they’re really into their hobbies have steel plates holding their legs together. My brother does. That way people know you’re hardcore about your hobby.)
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I’ve been told that a daughter needs a father’s affection. That it is essential — vital even — to growing up right and not bringing home guys who look like alien biker thugs with gum disease.

I never thought of myself as an entirely affectionate guy, but that all changed when I had a daughter. I became a puddle of mud. A bottle of syrup. A big soft-serve ice cream. A loving, doting, slobbering, hugging, kissing, sweet-mouth talking lump of sappy blubber.

But here’s the thing: I might be affectionate — a sad sack of Mr. Snuggles — but getting the little partner to join in ain’t so easy. When it comes to her dear old dad, she’s affection-resistant.

She’s the type of girl many dad’s dream about — adorable, sweet and pretty, yet at the same time a rough-and-tumble, high-energy, grade-A tree climber. She’s strong and agile for a 4-1/2-year-old, and can dole out a mean punch.
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Isn’t it time geneticists turn their attention to one of society’s greatest afflictions: Why men believe do-it-yourself construction projects will be easy.

It is one of the great issues of our time. Of all time. A stressor of marriages back to the earliest days of civilization. Historians have found evidence of an emperor telling his wife, “Hon, chill out. Rome TOTALLY can be built in a day. Let me get the hammer.”

It’s been downhill ever since.

What is wrong in our brains that we believe the things we say? Because we’re not liars. When we survey the scene, we really think there isn’t that much involved, that it will take next to no time to complete and (maybe the worst part) that there will be virtually no mess to clean up. (How many of us have uttered the fateful: “Put a tarp down! Why in the world would I put a tarp down? I’m gonna’ be real careful.”)
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Ten days. More than 2,800 miles. Eleven states, not counting that wacky District of Columbia. Four overnight stops. Enough cheap coffee to stew a yak.

Only one (no kidding) fast food stop. A plate of southern stroganoff in Asheville with pork medallions, cilantro pesto and a heapin’ pile of goat cheese grits. (Heaven in a bowl.) Streams. Feet in streams. Kid in streams. Barefoot with that icy, cold water tingling your feet. Smooth, slippery river stones. Picnics and Smoky Mountain air. Hiking. Chipmunks. Skipping stones. More cheap coffee.

Metro stations. Yankee beaches. Cousin’s wedding. Dogs who eat Swedish Fish. A tall green lady in New York harbor. The world’s slowest gas pump (still finishing the job as we speak.) And a vehicle that looked like the Clampetts paid a visit to “Sanford and Son.”

There’s nothing like a good, long road trip. Few better ways to experience large expanses of a great country like ours. How else can you be high atop a mountain ridge one day, watch pandas the next and then find yourself breathing in that wonderful Atlantic Ocean breeze on the pristine beaches of upper Long Island.

From forests of trees in the wilds of North Carolina to forests of skyscrapers in New York City. I think you can find bears in both.

Road trips are not merely a longwinded way to get from point A to point B. Rather, they’re a way to experience every single thing between point A and point B. Travel has become simply about how quickly you can get somewhere. How smoothly you can pass through airport security. How lucky you’ll be if your bags arrive with you. How poetically you’ll curse if your flight gets canceled. Generally, how miserable an experience you can have before you get where you’re going. You often need a vacation to relax from getting to your vacation.
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Pumped. Jazzed. Fired-up. Can’t contain it. The excitement is literally oozing out of my pores. My PORES! People are looking at me funny. It feels like I have fizzy pop inside me.  Fizzy pop? I don’t even know what fizzy pop is!

I’m just so fired up that the World Cup has started. The World Cup! Heard of it? It’s only the biggest sporting event since the Roman gladiators took on the dinosaurs. It’s football’s — the “real” football — shiniest moment. The Cup. The Big C. When the whole world holds its collective breath then screams, “Goallllllllllll!” until the planet spins of its axis and into a black hole.

Here on our little island, it’s not such a big deal. But in other countries it causes people to forget to do simple things like go to work, breathe oxygen, take the wrappers off of food they’re eating and dress their children when they go out.

Suffice it to say: It’s big!
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“You ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?” It’s a question The Joker asks Batman right before he shoots him. A great movie line, and one I thought about while braving the unrelenting crowds that swarmed through the streets and rides of Disney World this Memorial Day weekend.

There are much wiser ways to take your life into your own hands. You can smear a meat-flavored cupcake on a sleeping lion. You can run out into traffic. You can charge into a biker bar and yell, “Ya’ll ride a bunch of girl’s bikes and look like leather pansies.”

All would definitely get you killed. But if you’re gonna’ go, you want the quick and painless route. Not to die a slow agonizing death in scorching heat while herds of tourists trample your poor, broken body. Crumpled on the ground as they roll over you with strollers and $6 beverages, you cry, “Why didn’t I check the calendar before I booked the room?”

You ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight? Yes, yes I have.

OK, it wasn’t that bad. As Memorial Day weekends go, I’d rate it as tame. Remember: I’m a third generation Floridian. Buried in our DNA coding are the tactics and survival skills that our forefathers used thousands of years ago to brave holiday crowds at primitive theme parks. They honed these skills while taking their children on rides like “It’s a Pterodactyl World” and “The Real Pirates of the Caribbean.”
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