The trail we chose was scarred by landslide after landslide; here Juniper has climbed up to regain the trail all by herself [full post on this hike soon].

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Just a few days ago we were staying in a house on the southern slopes of El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico, and we went for a twelve-mile hike through the jungle that really deserves its own post. We didn't see another hiker all day. The kid didn't walk much, but she did enjoy making her way through this sea of pink impatiens.

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We stumbled upon La Bombonera in San Francisco Street with about forty-five minutes before we had to leave for our flight and we were looking desperately for something to eat. The place has been in operation since 1902 and apparently it's in all the tourist books as an "authentic" place where locals eat. We had no idea. It was a great place to enjoy our last meal in Puerto Rico (miraculously nothing was FRIED).

The most awesome thing about this place: the 1898 coffee machine, originally built in Havana, in which they brew their own brand of coffee.

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We arrived in San Juan at 1:00 a.m. and headed straight to our hotel in Miramar, while the kids slept I went out desperate for food looking like such a schlub around the young Puerto Ricans eating at upscale restaurants and generally looking beautiful. The next morning while the baby napped I walked with Juniper all the way to Old San Juan and back. This was the first photograph I took in Puerto Rico, early that morning on Ave. Ponce de Leon in Miramar.

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The fact that this kid has been able to venture outside again has suddenly turned him into the happiest boy in the history of the universe.

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Factory, hawk. East-side Detroit.

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I like to think that schoolbus is there in case the whole gang needs to make a quick escape from the old compound, and that it is equipped with flamethrowers, tire-piercing spikes, deflector shields, and a cow catcher.

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I'll go along with this ballet thing until the day she brings home a boy named Boris who's got the whole Barishnacock thing going on.

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I took my daughter to the matinee ballet the other day at the Opera House. We walked there. In blue jeans and purple overalls we were definitely in the tiaraless minority. So when we got home, she naturally wanted to put on her fancy clothes, her mermaid crown, and ballet dance around the living room.

Luckily her mother knows all the ballet moves and their French names.

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Maybe one day Greg from Daddytypes will let me be his Detroit correspondent and I'll write about the kinds of strollers our local homeless guys use to cart around all their stuff: "Local transient pushes Graco Literider to his underpass shanty." We could call it "What Not to Push" and when I finally get the prizewinning shot of the hobo pushing a Bugaboo Frog filled with stolen copper wires to the scrapyard, the yuppies will all rush out to buy Orbits.

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At this point we know every building in the city of Detroit that is painted pink. She's four now. When will the tyranny of pink end?

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For some reason, this pair of Size 5 snow pants in the middle of one hallway was one of the most depressing things I saw in the entire vacant school.

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