Big City Lights

Dreadford.  Methford.  The City.  Love it or hate it, and whatever we call it, trips to Medford, Oregon, are as unavoidable as belly shirts at the county fair.  And, like belly shirts, no one wants to see them, but no one can look away, either.  I'm not sure that analogy works perfectly, but it's pretty close.  I shoot for every-other-month supply runs to Medford.  I hold out as long as I can for whatever it is I might need -- arrows, chonies, cowboy boots, belly shirts, fish sauce -- before I break down and dash north.

This is not Dylan at my doctor's appointment.
It's her checking the pulse on a dog.
Trust me, that's way better than a photo of
us at the dermatologist's office.

Last week, I went twice.  I pulled the kids out of school early for the first trip and it was a mixture of pleasure and pain.  The good part was the trip to The Sportsman's Warehouse to pick up Dylan's bow. Standing around with a bunch of dudes while we discussed stabilizers and 5-pin sights for her pink bow was nothing less than a joy.  Three employees all helped Dylan while she flung arrows at deer targets and we came out of there with her tricked-out bow and a $10/2 lb. bag of gut cramping beef sticks.  That was the pleasure.

We also had to visit my dermatologist.  I'm the third whitest dude in the Pacific Northwest and, thus, go see Dr. T once a year.  I hold my shirt up like I'm a single mom at a Mötley Crüe reunion concert while he spot burns off weird bits from my body with liquid nitrogen.  At one point he put down the liquid pain and picked up a scalpel and cauterizer pen and went to work.  The kids looked on in both fascination and horror.  The room smelled like a branding.  I'm pretty sure they both immediately scratched "dermatologist" off their list of possible career choices.

Not the puppy we looked at, but still cute.

Trip Two was a little easier on the body, but more crushing on the soul as it was strictly a slam up to Costco.  It's a new Costco, so it's supposed to be nice, but I don't know what that means except I'm equally as lost there as I was in the old one.

Like Trip One, there has to be good with the bad, and one thing that Medford does exceedingly well is cheap Mexican food.  My second-favorite spot sits behind the sign-spinning asshole dressed as Lady Liberty and is adjacent to a Quick Cash store.  The burritos are the size of healthy babies and the horchata is fresh.  It melted away all the Costco induced anxiety and replaced it with happiness and gas.

From there we took the back way home.  By that I mean we drove two hours out of our way and went to Klamath Falls to "look" at puppies.  But that's another town, and another story.