Glossary
Over the years, Lynn and I have developed sort of our own language. That's what happens when folks are together as much and as long as we have been. Maybe language is not the correct term, I mean it is all in English (well, maybe American) but there are word, phrases and movie quotes that we use on a regular basis that probably only mean something to us. Since I tend to write like I talk, our special vernacular ends up in the journals as well, so I've tried to collect as many of these as possible in this glossary. This will help me keep track of the origins of these terms and hopefully help you readers understand what the heck I'm trying to say!
What we say...
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What it means and where it comes from...
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"As you wish."
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From The Princess Bride one of our favorite movies. Just a good line to indicate concurrence with a plan or suggestion.
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Baby
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This is the name for the smart phone. It comes from the Arizona golf trips. In the early days of the trip, Rich would bring his GPS to get us around the Valley of the Sun (this was before we had smart phones with mapping capability). The voice on the device was female and for whatever reason we called her "Baby." Somehow that got transferred to my smart phone once I got one, when Lynn and I were traveling and we regularly would ask Baby how to get from point A to point B or a myriad of other questions.
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Buddha Beach
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This is a section of the river bank along Oak Creek between Sedona and the Village of Oak Creek very near Red Rock Crossing where visitors have built hundreds of cairns and other sculptures using the river rocks strewn about the area. We now use this as a term to describe any such collection of cairns along a trail.
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Clicking Bugs
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Grasshoppers, but unlike these insects in the east, out west they distinctively click when they jump, so we call them "clicking bugs." I know, we're weird.
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Close enough for Government Work
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Good enough. The full definition is to measure with a micrometer, mark with a yardstick and cut with an ax. Yep, that's about right.
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Dinosaurs
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Earth moving equipment. You know, bulldozers, backhoes, front-end loaders, dump trucks. Heavy duty stuff. These things are big and sort of look like dinosaurs.
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"Fascinating, Captain."
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This is an obvious quote from Star Trek, a line that Spock said at least once to Captain Kirk. We (OK, probably me way more than Lynn) say this whenever we come across something, well, fascinating.
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Girl Dragon
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This is our name for a female anything. The term comes from Shrek when Donkey first encounters Dragon and realizes that she is a she. "You're a girl dragon! Oh, sure! I mean of course you're a girl dragon!"
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Gone Birds
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I think we coined this phrase during our 2011 trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton. It came from a bit of frustration with the birds we were spotting along the trails not sitting still long enough for a good look, much less posing for a picture. They were gone before we could get the camera focused on them. Thus "Gone Birds."
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"He chose….poorly."
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From Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, how the ancient knight describes Donavan's choice of which Grail from which to drink. Needless to say, it did not go well for Donavan.
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Hen House
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We first used this term during the 2015 UTAH meet-up in Sedona. Max is our Mother Hen since she tries her best to take care of all us chickens. The Sedona meet-up was the first that she and Rick took the lead on renting a house and it was big enough for several other Herd members to stay at as well. The original plan was to host a dinner to two at that location (although logistically it turned out not a good fit so all the dinners were held at the Ware House), so "the Hen House" was the name that we dubbed the place. The name stuck and was used for all subsequent meet-ups to indicate where our Mother Hen was setting up camp.
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"How wude!"
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Jar Jar Binks from Star Wars, Episode I - The Phantom Menace. We use this just like Jar Jar did, when someone did some that was rude or uncalled for.
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"Inconceivable!"
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Another The Princess Bride reference. This was Vizzini's standard quote whenever something just did not seem to go as expected.
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"I wrote it down so I don't have to remember."
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Henry Jones Sr. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Actual quote is: "I wrote them down in my diary so that I wouldn't *have* to remember." We use this all the time (again, mostly me) to indicate that I know the answer but not off the top of my head; the information is in the written plan.
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Look for Bison!
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This is from our first trip to Yellowstone back in 2011. As soon as we got in the park, it was time to start looking for critter and this was my call to get the animal radar going. It is now our standard reminder to keep an eye out for big critters, whether there are bison in the area or not.
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"Mostly dead."
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Again from The Princess Bride. This is a quote from Miracle Max when the lifeless Wesley is brought to his house. We use it all the time, unfortunately usually in reference to road kill.
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Pine Cone Massacre
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We saw the aftermath of several and finally witnessed our first of these on the High Sierra Trail as we were hiking to and from the Bearpaw Camp in Sequoia National Park in 2015. The initial sightings were just pines of debris where a pine cone had been torn apart so that some critter could access the nuts. I commented that something had massacred that pine cone. We saw several along the trail and the name stuck. Finally we saw a squirrel in the act of a pine cone massacre. Turns out that Clark's Nutcrackers are also guilty of pine cone massacres as well (saw a few of those on the trial up Mount Lassen in Lassen Volcanic National Park).
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"Sit, Ubu!"
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This is one of those movie and TV show production company slogans that we'll see after a show. I think the entire think is "Sit, Ubu. Good dog." We use this many times when traffic at an intersection or animals along the side of the road appear to be ready to run out in front of us. The traffic had better wait their turn, but the animals get the right-of-way.
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Stupid people tricks
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A play on David Letterman's "stupid pet tricks." Unfortunately we see too many stupid people tricks in the parks as many tourists tend to think that the rules are meant for everyone except them.
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"Taking dinosaurs off this island is the worst idea in the long, sad history of bad ideas."
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I love this quote and use it often, usually paraphrasing by inserting some other really bad idea for the dinosaur plan. In case you don't recall, this is a quote by Dr. Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park II, explaining his feelings about Ingen's plan to bring dinosaurs to San Diego.
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That's a bye-bye.
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Not sure where this actually comes from, but it is a favorite Haas saying. Basically a reference to something going wrong and unrecoverable.
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The Nothing
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The The Never Ending Story. We use this any time we are driving into fog or a storm or just the black unknown.
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"You frighten me."
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From We're no Angels.
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In addition to these terms that are more colloquialisms, we have a couple of definitions that are on the technical side referring to how we describe the hiking trails.
The first is the "Friendliness Rating" of the trail and is really just that, a rating of how friendly our fellow hikers are in general on a given trail. This one originated in Yosemite during our 2012 visit when we hiked from Glacier point back to the valley via the Mist Trail. Great hike but once we were below Nevada Falls the character of the hike changed dramatically due to the rude nature of the hiker's coming up the trail. Most of these folks were kids (20-something mainly) on their way to the beach party at the falls and they crowded the trail, cut off the designated path, were inconsiderate...basically not a very nice group of folks. So a low "friendliness" for that trail.
There is also a tendency to rate a hike (easy, moderate, strenuous, etc.) but I think that the trail itself needs a rating. For example the hike up Mount Washburn in Yellowstone (where we came up with this idea), is strenuous (maybe moderately strenuous) due to the elevation and the constant uphill route. However, the trail is along a well maintained, gravel road, so the trail is easy (well marked, easy to follow, no trip hazardous, wide, no abrupt drop-offs...you get the picture). Conversely,every trail we hiked in Rocky Mountain National Park had a lot of rocks and roots in the trail and the trails were on the narrow side, so you really had to watch were you were putting your feet (plenty of trip hazards) as well as watching out for traffic. There were some hikes that were easy but the trails were hard.
The first is the "Friendliness Rating" of the trail and is really just that, a rating of how friendly our fellow hikers are in general on a given trail. This one originated in Yosemite during our 2012 visit when we hiked from Glacier point back to the valley via the Mist Trail. Great hike but once we were below Nevada Falls the character of the hike changed dramatically due to the rude nature of the hiker's coming up the trail. Most of these folks were kids (20-something mainly) on their way to the beach party at the falls and they crowded the trail, cut off the designated path, were inconsiderate...basically not a very nice group of folks. So a low "friendliness" for that trail.
There is also a tendency to rate a hike (easy, moderate, strenuous, etc.) but I think that the trail itself needs a rating. For example the hike up Mount Washburn in Yellowstone (where we came up with this idea), is strenuous (maybe moderately strenuous) due to the elevation and the constant uphill route. However, the trail is along a well maintained, gravel road, so the trail is easy (well marked, easy to follow, no trip hazardous, wide, no abrupt drop-offs...you get the picture). Conversely,every trail we hiked in Rocky Mountain National Park had a lot of rocks and roots in the trail and the trails were on the narrow side, so you really had to watch were you were putting your feet (plenty of trip hazards) as well as watching out for traffic. There were some hikes that were easy but the trails were hard.