I Didn't Say Banana - Erich

The title of this post is a reference to the universally-funny-to-all-seven-year-olds knock knock joke that ends when the joke teller finally says “orange.” My nephew recently told me this joke, and I was eager to get to the orange.

That is what I’m doing now. Alrica, Syarra, and I are crossing the country to reach Syracuse University where Syarra will be a student in the fall. If you don’t already know, Syracuse students are oranges. Yes, their mascot, Otto, is an orange. With legs.

At least an orange is a count noun. Harvard is the crimson? What do you call just one Harvard student? A crimson? Well, only if the student is male. I suspect a female student is a crimdaughter.

My son, while at University of Nevada Reno was a wolf pack. How does that work? That’s already plural. Besides, there are no wolves in Northern Nevada. Of course, there are no oranges grown in Syracuse, New York. But there must be some oranges in the region’s grocery stores.

Now, Carver has shed his wolf pack’s clothing to become a duck. We saw ducks in the Willamette River while we were visiting Eugene. So they do definitely have ducks there. We also saw turkeys (not in the river) but I guess the founders of the school didn’t want their fighting cheer to be “gobble gobble gobble.”

Back to the present trip. We emptied the house and left Reno on Sunday afternoon. We made it as far as Elko, Nevada that day. Along the way we experienced the Mormon crickets that had until recently infested Elko. Mormon cricket is a complete misnomer. They’re not Mormons! In a recent survey, 97% of those questions expressed no religious affiliation. Of the 3% who consider themselves spiritual, most aligned themselves with the worship of Quetzalcoatl. Go figure. Oh, also, they aren’t crickets. They’re katydids and they’re huge! For katydids. Not like bigger than humans. Or even human shoes.

Mormon cricket and shoe
For size comparison

 

From Elko we traveled to Lehi, Utah. That’s just a bit south of Salt Lake City. And we took a much needed chill day after the frantic work of clearing and cleaning the Reno house. We enjoyed pool of two forms, the swimming kind and the hit balls with sticks kind.

The mountains around the Salt Lake City area are beautiful. This is also true of Reno, but the beauties are different. Certainly the mountains in Utah were more green. That was surprising and maybe isn’t always the case, but is only a function of a very snowy winter this past year. I only get the one snapshot that I get. Though as I write this, rain is falling. So maybe it is more than just one winter.

Our next stop is Grand Junction, Colorado. I can’t want to find out what is joining so grandly.

That’s pretty much all I wanted to say in this post. Though if I had the humor of a seven-year-old, I would restart at the beginning and post the whole thing again. Lucky for you, I am slightly more mature than that – emphasis on the slightly – I will just leave you with this: Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?