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.

But why wasn’t I jumping out of bed? Why wasn’t I scrambling to gather us up and rush us out the door?

Oh, we moved so slowly. My wife found her glasses and did a crossword. I thought about brushing my teeth — what if I was going to be interviewed on local TV! — and searched for a few valuables. And then, like slow, lumbering sloths we filed out the room with the other un-rushables and waited in the parking lot until the fire department declared the joint safe.

Fine powder from the construction had set off the temperamental fire detectors. We all filed back in.

“You know,” I said, feeling embarrassed and like a failure as a husband and a father — shoot, I was supposed to be the protector! — “That was pretty sad. We need to practice.”

We all looked at each other — all three of us — and felt kind of low.

It caused me to do some soul searching. This is my family — important people. And I couldn’t let them down if a real disaster struck. I couldn’t be so casual.

I joked with my daughter the other day that something scared me. “Oh come on,” she said. “You’re a dad. Dads are brave. Dads don’t get scared.”

She had a point. Or at least she had set a high bar of expectations for me. Brave! I would also need to be brave and fearless and strong — to jump into action when action was necessary and take control.

So maybe this was all floating around in the cerebral cortex the other night — actually early in the morning. We still sleep with a baby monitor in my daughter’s room, and it amplifies any noise in the house.

Like, for instance, a CRASH! A loud one. One that rippled through like a shockwave — a thud followed by this thunderbolt of smashing glass.

I didn’t so much hear it as I felt it like an electric shock. It jolted my body out of bed. When I opened my eyes, I was standing up in jungle cat pose. Ready to pounce, and before I knew it, I was barreling down stairs.

The only thing I remember thinking is: “If dragon, kill with bare hands and eat its liver.”

I raced into my daughter’s room only to find … nothing. She was sound asleep. The dog looked up at me with the kind of face that said, “Time for breakfast already?”

No, dumb dog. Burglars! Monsters! Huns! ATTACK! ATTACK AND KILL!

She didn’t so much as twitch an ear.

So what was it? Where was it? I raced through the house, switching on lights and girding for battle. Wolverines?!? I’ll tear them to shreds! Where are they?

Then I found it — the beast, the terror, the thing that went bump, slam and crash in the night. A photo in a frame I had just hung on a newly painted wall stepped out for a stretch. It toppled off the wall and shattered its glass upon meeting the floor.

That was it. That was all. I breathed a sigh of relief.

But as the adrenaline faded, I felt good. No dragon, but I felt ready this time. No hesitation — just total reaction. I didn’t dawdle, didn’t mull it over or waste time on fear. There’s no time for that when you’re a dad. Only time to do something noble and strong. To protect the family. And yes, even to be brave.

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.

Take the cord-ed phone: “They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.” Remember that? Yes, once upon a time phones were actually tethered to the earth, anchored down by cords that physically connected us to one another.

You couldn’t walk about the house, carefree and cordless. Although some people would have long cords that would hang off the phone like Amazonian vines to give you great reach in times of chat.

My mother had a phone cord that could stretch across the street. That was a good thing, as a member of the opposite sex might — it was possible! — call you to ask about homework or if you really did wear two colored socks to school that day. And if she did, you could then stretch that cord out and take it to the garage. Unfortunately, at some point during the call — usually when you finally got the courage to say something profound like, “Uh, hello?” — the cord would snap that phone free from your hand, like it was launched from a Medieval catapult. Bits of phone and cord would be strewn about the house, and there would be a long skid mark across your cheek.

“Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.” That’s another one from the list. Today’s college students text when they want to communicate, or they post messages to each other on Facebook that read like this, “

Will my daughter grow up texting Santa or posting her Christmas wish list’s to his wall?

“Having hundreds of cable channels but nothing to watch has always been routine.” Although, the truth with that one is they can watch whatever they want when they want on the computer. I was thinking about that one, how we used to go to stores to rent VHS tapes back in the day. Remember that dinosaur age? That used to be the big thing for me as a kid. My parents were divorced, and every Friday night on the way back to my dad’s we would stop at the rental store and check something out. There was only one copy per movie, and all the recent good stuff had long-since been snagged. So we’d be left with

“The first computer they probably touched was an Apple II; it is now in a museum.” Apple IIs — revolutionary, cutting edge and incredibly cool looking back in their day. Now they look more like toboggans than what we know as computers. In fact, most of these incoming freshman probably have more computing power in their smartphones than an Apple II could muster with all its friends.

They likely know nothing about mainframe computers, those massive, China-cabinet-sized computers that spun huge reels of magnetic tape where they stored what would today no doubt fit in the spare room on a freshman’s iPod.

I remember using a Commodore 64 — one of the first home computers. The Commodore was little more than a keyboard in a color of tan so humdrum and lifeless that people often fell asleep just looking at it. And I think the “64” meant you could type 64 letters before the computer had to take a break before it overheated. The only visual elements were what could be constructed by stacking up lines of text to form crude images of stick figures. That was it.

But this crop never knew that. Never knew computers without CD drives. Never knew a time when second hand smoke wasn’t a carcinogen or that the big three television networks ruled the airwaves. Shoot, for that matter, what’s a television airwave? Barely ever wear a watch. Why would they? Their super-computing, cord-less, video-playing, text-sending, multi-colored phone will tell it for them. Not that they have time for it.

(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.

Maybe the change has been spawned by more widely-available nutritious, and even organic, offerings. Maybe it’s that I’m getting older and am more serious about my health. Maybe it’s having a young daughter who I don’t want to pump full of preservatives, sodium and sugar like some kind of toxic hot dog.

Or maybe there’s just more information out there about what goes into our food. A lot of it, you learn, is just plain scary. Issues with obesity, high blood pressure, hardening arteries and, maybe the worst, genetically modified monster food attacking our cities and stepping on our cars. Damn those genetically modified foods!

So I’ve started swearing off fast food and sodas, which I barely consumed before. I’m swinging clear of processed foods. Turning to more fruits and vegetables. Adding whole grains and organics to my diet. Reading labels — “It says they add rubber tires as a flavor supplement!?! WHAT!!!!” — and trying to better understand nutritional guidelines — “So by my math, if I eat four bowls of ice cream, but put a chopped carrot on top, I think I’m OK.”

A lot of people are doing this, and I think it’s great. Take a look at the aisles of your grocery store if you want proof. More healthy and natural offerings. People actually standing there reading ingredients and taking responsibility for what they cram in their body. It’s not just hype. I think there really is a food revolution taking place, and we could use it.

But it’s not easy breaking with our poor nutritional pasts. I can’t beat my newly-formed addiction to peanut butter pretzels. I’ve considered eating them with milk like a breakfast cereal. I think if I use hormone-free milk from cows fed with grass it’s actually fine.

The more I think I’m getting a handle on this healthy eating thing, though, the more I realize there’s more to learn, more to do, or that there is some new study throwing a wrench in it all. “Seedless grapes that aren’t massaged as they ripen cause cancer of the toenail?!? JUST GREAT!”

Sodium is my latest kick. The American Heart Association says Americans consume on average 3,436 mg of sodium every day. But the recommended amount of daily sodium is actually 2300 mg — the equivalent of a teaspoon of salt.

A TEASPOON! Shoot, I put more than that in my tea each morning. I’m already tapped out before I start breakfast.

Everywhere I look I now see sodium. Ten of those peanut butter pretzels have 10 percent of my daily allowance. I’m going to have to give up the salt lick hanging above my desk at work. No more sprinkling it on my strawberries.

If it’s not one thing it’s another, and everything’s a tradeoff. I switched to a different kind of bagel because it’s multi-grain and has more fiber and no high fructose corn syrup only to realize that — frickin’ frackin’ cowamalackin’ — there’s enough sodium in each one to kill a rhino.

I’m starting to think my only option is to go live with some koala bears and take up a diet of pure eucalyptus. (I just realized typing this column added another 200 mg of sodium to my diet.)

But I must remember to take it easy on myself. The point isn’t to get too extreme about all this nutritional stuff, but to keep taking important steps, even little, gradual ones. To search for balance and moderation in my diet. To become more aware and responsible. We could all do that.

I am feeling better, even healthier, because of it. And I don’t glow in the dark anymore. My insides don’t feel so pickled, and I’m transferring responsible eating habits to the next generation. That’s a plus. But I’ll tell you this: you won’t be prying those peanut butter pretzels out of my hand, no matter how much sodium they contain.

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.

It was commissioned back in 1986, has a nuclear reactor on board to drive its mighty propeller and, at 560 feet, is almost two football fields long.

You don’t realize how big a modern-day sub is through photos. Even standing on shore, only about a third of the boat pokes up out of the water. But as you climb down into its belly, clutching a perilous ladder that connects all four decks, you understand very quickly its massive scale.

I got to take the tour thanks to the St. Augustine Navy League, which invited a cohort of mine named Barry Sand. Barry, a former executive producer for David Letterman, teaches at Flagler College where I’ve been lucky enough to team up with him on various projects. And I’m also smart enough to know when Barry calls, you answer! A couple of years back he got us on a flight to an aircraft carrier where we spent the night and watched flight operations.

It’s like being a kid again when he calls: “Hey Brian,” the voice on the other end of the line asked me. “You want to go tour a nuclear-powered sub?”

Really? Hold on while I go ask my mom.

So off we went to see the sleek black sea monster — like a giant metallic whale complete with bad attitude and warheads jammed down his blowhole. I’ve been aboard World War II-era subs before. They were big boilers with propellers. A jumble of pipes and dials crammed in what must have been a miserable experience for the crew.

But the modern nuclear-powered submarine is a marvel — a technological wonder that is like climbing through a space station. You need air when you’re underwater, so they make their own. Everywhere there are switches and computers and little scary signs that say things akin to: “Do this and your head will explode.”

When you get to the bottom of that ladder, you pop out in a forest of ballistic missile tubes. Tucked inside the metallic cocoons sleep the Tridents, which stand 44 feet tall, weigh 130,000 pounds, fly 4,600 miles and cost, oh, somewhere in the neighborhood of $30 million each. “Sleep tight, little buddies,” I whispered while tip-toeing by. Never disturb a sleeping intercontinental ballistic missile.

“Do they carry nuclear warheads?” someone inevitably asked. The cool answer everyone on board is well-trained to tell you is this: “I can neither confirm nor deny that.” The cold, sea chill runs down your spine again.

And again when you inadvertently lean your arm against a torpedo. I still can’t believe I did that. There were four green ones in the torpedo room, which is tucked in the bow of the boat. They looked angry to me, and antsy. They sit on racks and wait. I petted one.

About 150 dedicated, bright and incredibly focused crewmen live, work and prowl the seas in sleek, floating cigar tubes like the Alaska. This is a job for the brave, and thank goodness someone does it. I don’t think I could.

On average, they go about 77 days and much of that might be below the surface. Mind you, this is no cruise ship. It’s tight quarters. Even the captain sleeps in a space smaller than my bedroom closet. There isn’t a porthole to be found, and the only way you’re going to see daylight is by closing your eyes and dreaming of home. That is, if there is room to close your eyes. The enlisted men sleep in bunks about the size of an economy fridge nestled amongst the missile tubes.

I thought a great bumper sticker for submariners would be, “I sleep with nuclear missiles (not that I can confirm or deny it.)” Maybe I should make them one and they could put it on those terrifying missile doors.

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.)

He rides his vintage bikes on off-road trails — the kind that would scare off the hardiest of mountain goats — and enters vintage motorcycle races.

“We had to run up to West Virginia for a race last weekend because our team was down in the points,” he said. His team’s name is something like the “Festering Lugnuts” or the “Broken Spokes.” I can’t recall. But long story short, it was very important that they compete. So off they went for hobby fulfillment.

As I listened to him talk about his bikes and the exploits of the “Horny Handlebars,” or whatever the team is called, it made me realize something: I don’t have any hobbies. Not a single one. And I’m not sure I ever have.

My brother has had hobbies his whole life. Ever since he was a kid. For a while he collected old carbide mining lamps or built replicas of battleships and submarines that actually floated. He’s collected World War I-era rifles, and some would say his day job — working as a blacksmith for an ornamental iron company — is just an extension of his hobbies. (Although, that would violate rule No. 1 of the Hobby Code: “Money shall never come in from a hobby. It may only rush out like a raging river.”)

My dictionary defines a hobby this way: “An activity done regularly in one’s leisure time for pleasure.” Most wives define them this way: “That jackass thing my husband stays up until 3 a.m. every night working on.” An additional, “Jackass!” is usually tacked on the end for added effect.

I certainly have nothing like that. So am I missing out on something? Am I shorting myself?

I don’t work on cars or make fishing lures. I don’t golf or build miniature cities out of matchsticks or cat hair.

Maybe you could consider my various house projects hobbies, but they clearly fail the “pleasure” test. I run quite a bit, but certainly that isn’t leisurely. And about the only thing I do regularly is gulp air. But even that bores me and I sometimes forget to do it.

Once, as a kid, I collected comic books. But was that a hobby? I would read a comic book, slide it into a plastic sleeve and throw it in a box. Rule No. 2 of the Hobby Code: “If you’re going to be nonchalant about it, you’re a sad sack of processed cheese, but not a hobbyist.”

Maybe I don’t have the patience for hobbies, or the time. Honestly, I would rather be with my wife and kid than working on some little “pleasure-filled” project. (Although, making beer could be cool!)

Still, I worry. Aren’t men supposed to have hobbies? Isn’t that part of what defines them? Sets them apart? Gets them divorced? Lets them spend countless hours in smelly garages tinkering on this and that? Is it my duty as a man to find a hobby! ANY hobby.

I don’t know. Could be it’s time. I’ll have to think about it. In the meantime, I’ll just sit and half-listen to my brother tell me about leaking gas tanks and grueling races. Just another day for an extreme hobbyist.

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.

I know this because I think it’s her way of telling the old man, “Hey mister, I love you!”

Whack!

Truth is, I can’t believe I even want a “snuggle.” I despise the word. It sounds silly and juvenile, and I’ve never been a “snuggler.” I don’t even like to hold my pillow too tight.

But something happens when I see that little critter — I just want to scoop her up and squeeze her until her hair curls. Nothing feels better than one of my cheeks pressed against hers.

She won’t have anything of it, though. She’ll use those powerful limbs to free herself like the jaws of life, complaining that “my face is scratchy” and that she doesn’t “hug boys.”

“Boys!” I blurt out. “You think boys have hair on their chest like me?” (Hopefully she doesn’t know the answer to that.)

Don’t get me wrong: She’s an affectionate kid. I see it all the time. During a story before bed she will press her body up against my wife, kissing her arm and burying her face wherever she can comfortably cram it. Then she peeks over at me with a wry smile to see if I notice.

Of course I notice! Stinker!

“Come over here,” I say, grabbing a foot or whatever I can snag. “I want some of that love, too.”

“Never!” she tells me. It’s like I’m some kind of pirate trying to recruit her into my band.
“Let me go, you,” she says, squirming out like an acrobat, sometimes violating the laws of gravity.

Then … whack!

But I’m starting to figure her out — her little quirks and, mainly, how full of it she is. She was crashing into me one day, shoving me with her outstretched arms. Funny at first, I quickly grew tired of being a punching bag and thought up a way to get her to stop.

“Look here, little one,” I said. “You shove me one more time and I’m going to hug you.”

She stopped and thought about it. I could see little sparks in the pupils of her eyes. Gears in that noggin were mulling it over.

Then, just like that, she gave me a shove that would stop a semi.

So I made good on my threat and hugged her. She tried to fight me off, complaining the whole time. When she got free, she gave me the evil eye and growled. Then with a huff and a smile, she shoved me again and braced for the hug she knew was coming.

Little stinker!

So I’ll take my affection however I can get it. No sugar in my coffee. Part love and part wrestling match will do for me. If that’s what it takes, so be it. It might start with a poke or a tickle, and then involve chasing around the house and screaming, but I’ll get my hug and I’ll get my “snuggle.”

Whoever knew a little affection would hurt so good.

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.”)

I call it the “moron gene,” and all men have it. Look it up. You’ll find evidence. Gustave Eiffel, the engineer behind the great Parisian landmark, figured his giant erector set could be constructed in 20 minutes with a break for an aperitif and a baguette.

But five minutes into a project we always realize: 1) frozen corn has more sense than we do; 2) it’s probably going to take an extra 10 minutes; 3) a dust cloud larger than the one that choked off the dinosaurs will erupt; 4) and that we are in deep doo-doo with the lady of the house.

The “moron gene” strikes again.

It struck at my house when I told my wife last weekend that taking down the chimney in the dining room would be easy and clean.

“No worries,” I told her. “It’ll be over quick. No major mess. Less dust than baking a cake. I betcha’ we’ll have time to catch an afternoon movie.”

(I don’t need to tell you we were still mopping floors at 10 p.m.)

My little historic house has always had a chimney, but never a fireplace. The stack of bricks buried in a wall between the kitchen and the dining room had once served potbelly stoves back in the olden days, before central heat and electric stoves. But today it just took up a hunk of space and caused traffic jams in the kitchen. Nothing like boning a chicken and getting bumped by someone opening the refrigerator door. “Oh, no, I’m fine. Let me just pull the salmonella-laden blade out of my forearm!”

I had already removed the top of the chimney, precariously perched up on my terrifying roof. It was being held together by some cobwebs, paint and static electricity. The mortar was a fine powder, and I feared a good storm might topple it.

And I had already removed the stack from inside the attic … in temperatures that would bake a turkey. I carted bricks out in buckets, which compressed my spine by three inches.

So all that was left — really, a piece of cake — was the stack downstairs. How hard could that be? I mean, the ceilings are only 10-feet, 4-inches. There’s breakable china everywhere. We only use the kitchen and the walk-through dining room 95 percent of the day. And it was a mere 4-to-1 odds that a colony of grumpy chimney bats had taken up residence inside.

I built a plastic tent around the chimney and went to work.

The good news? No bats. The bad news? They wouldn’t fit thanks to the six feet — let me repeat this — the SIX FREAKIN’ FEET of finely packed soot and ash stopped up inside the brick.

Decades worth of it. I had to scoop it out with a hand shovel as I went. But careful as you might be, ash is a fine particle that leaps ecstatically into the air at the slightest disturbance. It looked like Mount St. Helens erupted inside my plastic tent.

“Are you OK in there?” my wife, daughter and brother-in-law would ask as they poked their noses up close to the plastic, trying to catch a glimpse through the storm.

“Oh yeah, just a little black lung,” I would hack out. “But I’ll never watch ‘Mary Poppins’ again.”

When I emerged from the tent covered in soot, my wife mistook me for a charcoal briquette. It took me five showers to come clean, and by then it was well into the evening.

Plumes of ash had sneaked out the tent, streaking along the walls, coating furniture and staining the floors. Tar, we found, is easier to clean than soot, and we spent the rest of the night scrubbing.

“Man, I’m sorry,” I told my wife. “I never thought there would be all that ash in there, or that it would take so long.”

“That’s OK,” she said, knowing it wasn’t really my fault. It was all in my DNA. Thanks, “moron gene.”

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.

Travel has become an exhausting, utilitarian experience — a bland, uninspiring relocation from here to there. It’s the equivalent of stale salt-free crackers. Zero flavor, no nutritional value and a chore just to chew.

But a road trip! Oh, my, a road trip is the way to experience everything. All the senses get a workout. Even your ass going numb in the car seat seems like a gift from above. “It happened again. Both cheeks, totally gone. See? Touch ‘em. Yippee.”

When was the last time you experienced a bathroom in an airport that looked like a herd of sheep just used it? But you’ll find roadside bathrooms like this all over the country. And for some reason I love them, just as much as I hate them. “Did you see what someone drew on the door of the stall? Could you even bend your legs around like that?”

How else could you experience the twists and the turns of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and all the amazing little rally-car roads that connect to it? I have never had so much fun driving in my life. One minute I’m zipping around a curve in a rush of adrenaline and the next I’m bracing to go over the side of a cliff as I frantically jam down on the brakes. If only I had a Porsche.

Maybe you’ve ridden in a New York taxi through commuter traffic on the beltway one early morning workday. But you just haven’t lived until you’ve driven it yourself, dodging potholes, out-of-control Towncars, and some little dude from Queens who ironically thinks driving 25 mph in that mayhem will help him live longer. It’s exhilarating. Like flying a spaceship through a meteor shower.

“You all right?” my wife asked.

“Ask me in a minute if we get through that broken refrigerator in the middle of the road.” I can’t remember ever having to use the parking brake … WHILE DRIVING!

Yip-eeeee!

A road trip doesn’t get you to the experience. A road trip IS the experience. You get there and you forget what it was you wanted to do. A road trip forces you to slowdown. To look out the window and explore with your eyes. To smell the smells (one minute it’s wildflowers and the next that indescribable fragrance of the New Jersey Turnpike.) To pull off in the middle of nowhere and have a picnic. To see some vista that makes you realize your life wouldn’t have been complete if you hadn’t shared it with your family. To watch your kid with her feet in a stream pretending to fish like she’s Huck Finn.

Did you know that the sound of an early-morning waterfall has the same effect on the body as 10 days worth of cheap coffee? I do. No airplane will ever give you that. But a road trip will. And if you just survive the beltway drivers and the mountainside cliffs, you might even write home about it.

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!

I got my first taste of World Cup mania in 2002. My wife and I were in Ireland, a country that was going a little nutsy-cookoo over their team. We flew over to newspaper headlines about a national crisis. By the size of the type, we thought the president had been shot or Martians had absconded with the sheep. But as it turned out, Irish Captain Roy Keane had been sent home for calling the manager a “wanker.” There was now to be a national referendum on closing Ireland and moving to Denmark.

Eventually things settled down and the excitement built to a fevered pitch.

We were in Dublin when Ireland played its opening match against Cameroon, and as I recall the big question on everyone’s mind had switched from Keane to whether the pubs would be open. See, in Ireland, it was 6:30 in the morning when the live games from Japan and Korea were broadcast and only a few pubs in the city were allowed to crack their doors. As luck would have it, the pub in the basement of our hotel was on the list.

“You know, I think I’m gonna’ go down there,” I told my wife.

She gave me one of those looks — crumpled eyebrows and cocked head — to signal that I’m the stupidest imbecile on the planet and would probably lose in “Scrabble” to pond scum.

But to me it was a once in a lifetime experience. “When you go to another country, you need to better understand their culture,” I told her. “Even if that means drinking beer at 6:30 in the morning.”

She just couldn’t understand. But I went anyway.

I remember the alarm clock going off at that ungodly hour. The first thought through my head was, “I must be the stupidest imbecile on the planet.” But I went anyway. Pride and curiosity will always drag you out of bed. Nervous and barely-awake, I made my way downstairs expecting a sedate scene of diehards and assorted hotel riffraff.

Instead it looked like an indoor riot. One where you don’t toss the Molotov cocktail, but pass it around while singing songs that sounded like, “… and then we’ll rip their arms off and feed them to the squirrels.”

It was a sea of Irish green, except for the crew of Scots in kilts who had been up all night at a bachelor party and saw this as their shot to keep the revelry going.

It didn’t take long to get swept up in it. Soccer is a brotherly sport (as long as you’re rooting for the same team), and the Irish are some of the most friendly people on the planet (as long as you’re rooting for the same team.) They won’t let you feel left out, and with a clink of a pint glass — presto! — you’re baptized Irish. This meant I was expected to yell and groan and sing, then curse Keane or McCarthy, depending on how the game was going.

Ireland tied it up 1-1 in the 52nd minute, and you could literally feel the ground shake. I thought the whole island might break loose from its moorings and tumble into the sea.

It was infectious — an unbelievable and indescribable experience. I’ve spent a good part of my formative years playing soccer, and the rest watching it. But until then, I had never known what it meant to be a real fan — a fanatic! To be so passionate about the game. To have it surge through your veins (or maybe that was the Guinness) and get your blood boiling.

I’ve felt it every World Cup since, and now … well … it’s started again! Just like fizzy pop.

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.”

There are certain things you must know if you’re going to make it out alive. Like, if you’re pushing a stroller, always stay on the offensive. If the wheels stop turning, you die.

My child — now four and a half — rides in a standard-issue, gray umbrella stroller that is light, agile and designed for speed. It can be maneuvered quickly, and used as a weapon if need be. “On guard. Face the wrath of my umbrella stroller,” is also encoded into us Floridians’ genes. (You find yourself involuntarily saying this over and over again as you navigate the park.)

I don’t push a stroller through the park. I CHARGE a stroller through the park. Like I’m Teddy Roosevelt taking San Juan Hill. My wife — not being a Floridian — doesn’t naturally understand this. She often falls behind, swallowed up by the hordes until I leap into action and drag her out while swinging the stroller, sometimes with the kid still strapped in.

“Unhand her you scurvy dogs!” I shout.

Then I explain to her how to survive. Your feet must never stop moving. If they do, you die. (Or at least you get suckered in to buying a $12 Mickey balloon or some kind of cartoon themed ice cream. Same difference.) You never smile — a mob will always see this as a sign of weakness. Or insanity. Either way, they’ll eat you alive and you die. Never follow a straight line. A straight line will get you pinned against a wall, blocked from your route by a 12-member family from Kansas discussing whether “The Haunted Mansion” is too scary for little Jimmy. Or, worst of all, stuck behind someone in a motorized scooter. Then you might as well make a cell phone call to the Coast Guard to come get you out.

No, you survive (and actually get somewhere) by bobbing and weaving. Keeping your options open. By always moving at full speed. By thinking four and five moves ahead — “There! See it? A kid about to drop his ice cream. Traffic about to stop. Take evasive action! Pull hard to starboard and accelerate over that woman’s toes.”

Disaster averted.

Always know where you’re going. If not, look like you know where you’re going. Confidence — even dumb, blind confidence — will win the day. Point a lot and say things like, “It’s just up there,” even if it’s not. It keeps morale high. Never doubt yourself. Never flinch or yield the right of way. Never falter or cry in the face of the enemy. Never sweat more than your body weight (that’s bad.) Drink lots of water, even if from a rain puddle littered with leaves and ice cream wrappers. Scream things like, “Clear a path, you mongrels!” And never — Never! — stop to ask directions.

A theme park is not about fun or enjoyment — quite simply, it’s about survival. It’s that one chance to prove your mettle — to run with the bulls. To go on safari. To take on the Roman empire or the Viking hordes. It is how the modern man tests himself. Proves that he is still a warrior. That he can provide for his family and keep them safe.

And most of all: that with fancy footwork, and a good umbrella stroller, he might get them to the Peter Pan ride before the Fastpass expires. All on a Memorial Day weekend, in the pale moonlight.