Sometimes, I wonder...

Kirsten and I don't have kids. We were waiting until we were more stable (in every sense of the word) then I got sick, and well, that was all she wrote. I'm mostly good with that. I'm comfortable being the "cool weird uncle" to the the kids of friends and family, and Halford knows our lives have been enough of a roller-coaster without children, but sometimes I think about what might have been.

Anyone who has known me for any length of time knows that my father and I rarely got along. In fact, we barely spoke for years until my cancer gave cause for a reconciliation. One of my biggest fears about fatherhood was ending up like him. Remote, demanding, not at all able to connect with what was important in my kids lives.Don't get me wrong, I owe my dad a lot (my ability to skin people at poker comes from his lessons) but when it came to the important things, he didn't get it.

To illustrate this, I took my mom to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Grateful Dead. Any of you reading these who actually knew my father, try to picture Peter Berry at a Dead concert. (Sound of brains exploding) Yeah, my point. My mom didn't really get either of them, but she was willing to try.

So I wonder about what would happened if Kirsten and I had kids. That's the problem with not doing it, you'll never know how it would have turned out. I like to think that my kid(s) would turn out to be be inquisitive and open-minded, but who knows? We might have ended up with a jock, or worse, someone exactly like my sister! (No offense Ann, but can you picture Kirsten and me dealing with you as a teen?)

Oh, well. The Road Less Traveled always seems more inviting after you've walked a ways down the other path. Guess I'll just have to focus on spoiling the heck out of Niece Prime, the Emergency Back-Up Niece, and the Niece of Last Resort.

And now, because I'm dangerously insane...

Walking to Worldcon courtesy of Google Maps.

3,010 miles – about 40 days 23 hours. That assumes a constant speed of about 3mph, 24 hours a day. Let's do this on bikes, and assume a more reasonable 8 hours a day moving. Average speed we'll set at 10mph, so 80 miles each riding day. That gives us 37 days, 15 hours.

Damn. If I were in much better shape, and had the money and friends to ride with me and provide support services along the way, I'd do this in a hot second.