July 4, 2023 (Song #2012): “Top of The Rollercoaster” by David Wilcox. No Lyric Video, today; just listen a bunch of times and you’ll catch on, especially if you click here to read the lyrics: LYRICS APPLE MUSIC SPOTIFY T-30* brings me to 1993 when Peter and I took off on a year-long honeymoon, traveling for two months** before ending up in Alta to work at the Alta Lodge for the 1992-93 Ski Season. This song (and the whole album) was a joyful staple for us, until we were robbed in Albuquerque; our car was broken into and the thieves took all of our carefully-curated cassettes, our camera and candy; they only stole things that started with the letter “c”, which is why they left our guitars, lucky us.
**OUR TRIP: Gedney Farm to Nantucket (4 days on Children’s Beach) back to Westport (to hug Ruthie & Larry goodbye) to Albany (to hug Richard & Vera goodbye) to Gambier, Ohio (to see Kenyon and Julie Owen) to the Upper Peninsula, Michigan (for ice cream), to Sturgeon Bay in Door County, Wisconsin (to see Sears Carpenter and his family on their farm), to Blue Mound State Park in Minnesota, to Badlands in South Dakota (where we found a mail drop to send a care package with clean socks for Caroline, Alex, Russell and Bones on their cross-country bike trip) to Bozeman, Montana to Glacier National Park (where we did a gruelling 18-mile hike without enough water, but plenty of singing to keep the bears away) to Whitefish to Calispell to Calgary (where we ate peaches as big as our heads), to Hotel Lake Louise in Banff (where the “honeymoon” suite looked onto the parking lot), to Jasper Park Lodge (where I got the white hotel slippers that I still wear today), to Muncho Lake in British Columbia (so many bugs!), to Haines, Alaska (via an 11-hour drive), to the ferry that took us to Prince Rupert (sleeping on the deck and brushing our teeth with 100 other travellers), to Vancouver Island in Victoria to Seattle to Portland to Weed, California (to see my dad’s cousin Karen and her husband and her mom, my Aunt Sally and their goats) to San Francisco (to see Lee, Lori, Amy, Uncle Donny, Aunt Maggie and other friends) to Big Sur to San Simeon (where we slept on the side of the road and woke up to noxious smells coming from the seals surrounding our car; seals are smelly mammals, folks) to Los Angeles (to see Melissa & Adam and Cindy and Auntie Dee & Uncle Sam and Peter’s aunts & uncles & cousins), then to Albuquerque, (where our car was broken into) to Las Vegas, New Mexico (where we stayed and hiked and rode horses with Lauren Addario and her husband and sisters, Lisa, Lesley & Lynsey and her mom Camille and MY mom, Ruthie, who was also visiting – while the car door was fixed) then to Moab and finally, to Alta for the 1992-93 ski season (Peter worked at the front desk and skied for 100 days and I worked upstairs in reservations with Mimi Muray).
Like everyone’s lives, our trip and our first year together had many ups & downs, but I wouldn’t change anything – not the bugs on Muncho Lake, not the 18-mile hike without enough water, not the robbery in Albuquerque, not the quarrels and sad days (my papa died in November of that year). It was (and has continued to be) a sturdy, surprising, stimulating, safe, sweet rollercoaster and a beautiful ride (#callback).
