I've been married to a native "Angelena" for over 3 years; I knew her for a few years before that. She's only been east of the Rockies a few times in her life, and never to the "East Coast", which for people out here generally means "east of the Appalachians". Carol's also heard of things like "party in Labs' field", "illegal station in my basement", "the Laugh of Death Ride", "the ballroom", and "doing a Clarendon." This poor woman, born, raised, married, divorced, and spent most of her child-rearing years stuck in the LA suburb of Inglewood, right under the LAX approach path, had a right to know about some of the lunacy I was either responsible for or involved in. In fact, I felt it might make her appreciate me more if she had direct knowledge of why I really shouldn't be here today. I really should've been in one of those Darwin Awards emails you get every so often and wonder if they're true (because they're so ridiculous). I'm living proof that Darwinism doesn't always work.

And yet, considering some of the tales so dumb or, even worse, blatantly morally wrong; incidents that I haven't completely forgiven myself for after almost 30 years, I still wouldn't trade most of them. They were stages I guess I had to go through. I remember being in Ann Hughes Gelgisser's kitchen 2 summers ago, she and I regaling Carol with big smiles and great laughter about "the Ballroom"; still good memories. I guess I could get away with things then that I can't and wouldn't want to attempt now. The wisdom of Age saves my butt, eh?

I used to go to Syracuse every Christmas to see my Mom, so I'd see people then. But, after Mom moved South for the winter (can you blame her?), I had no immediate reason (or airfare subsidy) to bring me to Syracuse and so I hadn't seen "The Guys" since 1994. Therefore, this trip had another reason for being. Plus, Carol had heard so much about the leaves changing. We timed it pretty well as they were in their first week of Fall Color. Funny; I never cared much about the trees turning when I lived in the midst of it, but now that I'm in Palm Tree overload, I couldn't take my eyes off of Nature's Feast of Colors (makes it hard to drive).

About this site

The goal is to share photos I took with my cool new Sony Mavica CD-1000 (thanks, Carol...) digital camera. I hope friends from Syracuse will enjoy seeing some pix from "home" if they're now far asunder like me. I'd be glad to link to the sites of other people I know from the Fayetteville-Manlius area. Please send URLs to phil at philwells.net and I'll add them when I can. I'm not going to mention everyone I ever knew! This is mostly about me (isn't EVERYTHING?) and Carol and our journey and the folks we saw.

My friends from my SECOND life, in So. Cal, won't understand most of the references, but I hope they'll enjoy some of the photos.

Photos herein are considerably reduced for the benefit of those with dialup Internet access. If you click on any photo you'll get a larger copy of the image. And, if anyone really wants to see it, the originals on the CD from the camera are huge and I can email them. All shots are (c)2000 Phil Wells.

I have digitally enhanced many of the pix; not to make my photo skills look better than they are but to compensate for lack of light, haze, and discoloration by the camera or from incandescent lights; OK, and to make my photo skills look better than they are.

I'm finding disparities in how the site displays; on the next page (syracuse.html) the picture of Crouse College is Center Aligned in IE5 Mac and Left Aligned in Netscape 4.76 Mac. Things look even worse with Netscape Win. Let me know if you have any suggestions about this. Bad code?

I've added MapBlast maps of some towns; look for town names displayed as hyperlinks and just click. Also, this has opened in a new browser window, so you can return to My Back Pages by simply closing this window.

I hope you enjoy the trip as much as we did.

First Stop: Syracuse

Thanks to:
Carol
Michael W. Tucker
Jimmy Hughes
Rick Labs
Terry & Frauke Beacham
Tony & Mary Pircio
Jon & Sally Selzer
Jack & Karen McKissick
Jan, Lydia, Mike, Lindsey, and Buster the Dog
Mom

This Site, Text, and Images (c)2000 Phil Wells, San Diego CA

Laugh of Death Ride (and Seat) (c)1973 G.E. Bockover, Crow's Nest Music, All Rights Reversed
   OK, it's a new millenium now. Will someone just please tell me what the hell Duebo is?

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