It was over too soon, but having the better part of a weekend to spend with the latest & greatest in nephews and brothers-in-law is something one can enjoy in any quantity. With the time we did have, and with a 3-year old boy in tow, I would say we did things proper. Naturally, this is made somewhat easier by the fact that I - the Unk With Tha Funk - basically like trains, planes, and boats as much as I did when I was a 3-year old boy.

Our visit began in earnest at the ferry slip across from my office. I still find taking a boat to/from work to be highly exotic and pleasurable, and I know the kid liked being able to take a boat passed Alcatraz, San Quentin, Mare Island Naval Base, and all the big tankers and container ships. Being easy to please makes life much more fun doesn't it?

Far more exotic for me is being able to spend our time on an Air Force base. Since the kid lives on one, it isn't always an epic event, but for me, being able to go on base and see all the great historical planes and exhibits in the base museum is quite awesome.

One thing I definitely noticed is that it is still relatively uncommon for me to be able to point to many family occasions in which it is "just the doods" hanging out. Men are outnumbered by the ladies in our family several times over. It is quite uncommon to find an occasion where there is more than one or two family males present, and here it was that it was JUST us 3 big buck alpha males having the chance to hang out and do like we do, knowotI'msayin'? Checking the hydraulics on a B52's landing gear? Check? Eating from a bucket of chicken over the sink? Check? There really is no substitute for comfort friends...

As if boating the bay and checking out vintage bombers weren't enough, we decided we would take it just-that-much over the top and go to the Western Electric Train Museum in Fairfield to round out our day.

I think we would have been happy just seeing the choo-choos, but we were able to ride not one, but TWO trolleys during our visit. Pretty intense stuff. Male bonding forged in the white hot heat of an air horn and a clickity-clack.

Because grandpa is a railroad man, all little boys in the family get a crash course in locomotive love. It enters the bloodstream early and is very slow to leave, if indeed it leaves at all. To this day, I have a deep love of the rails which is not really all that far removed from the type of love I had for them as a kid. The conductor and engineer are like Gods! Every piece of rolling stock is big and bad! Every train we ride is the fastest and is in a particular hurry once we climb aboard. There are simply too many train museums left in the country for this pattern to be present only in our family, but even so, we do have a pretty deep bond with all things choo-choo. I feel as if I am handing down an heirloom of sorts to being among those all aboard.

The visit was open-ended in the sense that nephew and bro-in-law didn't know when a seat on a flight home would be available. As it turned out, they were able to get out in the early morning hours on Sunday, so we really only were able to pull off a day or two of free-n-clear visiting. I would have loved more, but was lucky to get what I had! I was worried they'd come to the states and head home and I wouldn't get to see any of the visitors at all. Thankfully, it didn't go down that way. I am not exactly sure when I will get to see the Japanese branch of the family tree again, but it is likely it will be sometime this year. The best possible news is that there is to be a new nephew/niece to join the fold sometime this summer, and so it is most likely that when I do get to see them, it will be a visit with a slightly bigger crew than I got to see on this trip. What could be better?

I am a lucky uncle all the way around, and it looks like I will be getting even more so. The dream is to be able to take the US nephew crew over to see the Nippon crew - particularly if we can all meet the new addition. That is a big undertaking, and I am not sure if we will be able to pull it off this summer. I am up for trying. The truth is, the kids grow very quickly, and missing even a few months means missing major leaps forward in the development of the kids. When the kids in question are as smart and as much fun as those I am uncle of, that means missing a lot.

That said, I wouldn't say I parted company with the nephew feeling bad about what is missed, but rather joyful over what wasn't.