Cooling with the Bishop's Cooler

If only the bishop's cooler (pictured above with bishop on Pioneer Trek) could talk! Slightly larger than a lunch box, the blue, side-zip cooler has witnessed the following:

The bishop's children going where they are not supposed to go. In Maine (above) and Ireland (below).

• The Cliffs of Moher in Ireland, also known as the Cliffs of Insanity in "The Princess Bride" movie. Our hosts at a nearby bed and breakfast told us later that people were blown off these cliffs every year.
  
  
  
  
• Almost an international incident when crossing the border back from Prince Edward Island, home of Anne of Green Gables (pictured above), back into Maine. Our driver had "lost" her license. We found it in the bishop's wife's purse. Ay! We almost became Canadians.
  

• Too many layovers in JFK to count---always, an exhausting and frightening experience.
  
  
  
  



• The bishop wearing shorts---an event witnessed only thrice in the bishop's wife's life. Pictured here disembarking from a cruise in Ensenada, Mexico. Trip included a 19 hour drive home from LA wherein daughter #2 (taking the picture above) coughed for 18 1/2 hours in the bishop's wife's ear, because daughter #3 threw up so she could sit in the front seat.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Jelly fish stings in the Cabo San Lucas surf.
  
  
• A near mugging in the bowels of the New York Subway system in 2004.
  

The cooler's shoulder strap slipped off the bishop's wife's arm, and the cooler rolled down three flights of escalator stairs and was grabbed by an angry man---angry when the bishop's wife "assumed" he was holding it for her and grabbed it back! We lived to see Central Park, pictured above.

• And barely avoid a riot in Boston when the Red Sox won the World Series, pictured below.

In fact, the bishop's rental car and cooler were parked at Fenway Park when the Series ended. Fenway Park is next to the Boston Museum of Arts where the bishop had a hard time getting the bishop's wife out of the Museum (they had silver artifacts made by Paul Revere! and an entire gallery of Impressionist Art!) before Bostonians stormed the baseball field. The museum doesn't close for another hour, I said. The bishop replied, "Someone died at the last riot when Boston advanced to the Series---now they have won!

As we hurried out, a homeless man asked us for money. We just kept going around the museum to the back, in the dark, when we realized he was chasing us with his shopping cart. In the dark, the bishop triumphantly produced the keys to the car---parked at the Salt Lake Airport! We could hear the heavy breathing coming closer and the rocks skittering under the shopping cart when the keys to the rental car finally were found. The bishop jumped in, locked his door, started the car, and then realized the rest of the family was still locked outside with the homeless man. But the bishop and the cooler were waiting patiently inside.

• Three (count 'em, bishop!) treks back in time to pioneer days. (See prior post: Antelopes, Anthills, and Arid Desert, Oh My! for more info on what the cooler and the bishop's wife has endured or enjoyed (pick the adverb of your choice).

• Finally, the capsizing of the bishop and his boat! We saved the cooler, which floated to shore, and accompanied us on all the above adventures, and the bishop, who was underneath said boat.