Growing up, that’s what I had to scream to get my older, more muscle-brained brother to temporarily stop pulverizing me. The other night, the youngest, the oldest-Betrothed, and I streamed an episode of Wonder Years. I said to youngest daughter, “Every time you watch Wayne, think Uncle D because they’re one and the same.” If you don’t know Wonder Years and aren’t familiar with Wayne, fix that.

One time, in my late elementary or junior high years, I frantically called my mom, a secretary, at work, “This time he means it! He’s really gonna kill me!” Her somewhat shaken co-worker said, “Aren’t you going to go home?” To which she replied, “No, he’ll be fine.” Yeah, if by “fine” you mean found unconscious in the fetal position on the kitchen floor. Once, when the most mad I had ever been, I remember “Wayne” saying to me, “If you hit me, you better knock me out, because if I get up I’m going to kill you.” What’s the statue of limitations on something like that?

Our last fight was when he was 19 or 20 and I was 16 or 17. All I remember is flying across the family room. My girlfriend was aghast. Everyone of the innumerable beatdowns will fuel me when racing Iron-person Canada in late August as I desperately try to level the score by beating Wayne’s time.

But I digress. My most recent reason for crying uncle has nothing to do with my knumbskull older brother. It has everything to do with this picture, taken while on the Eastern Sierra climbing trip I blogged about a month ago.

Living REALLY large

If you’re a regular reader, you know I’ve been going through a transformation of sorts—a reordering of my life based upon an amalgam of ancient philosophy, minimalism, and discontent with mindless consumerism. All of that exhausting, status quo fighting non-sense is now in my RV rearview mirror, thanks to a reverse Paul of Tarsus-like conversion inspired by seeing this badass rig up close and personal.

Uncle! I give up on trying to live more simply so that others may more simply live. My new motto is “You only live once. Embrace the bling. Less is less, more is more.” Admittedly, a tad wordy, but in the spirit of my conversion, if some words are good, more are better!

My plan is to find a similarly equipped rig on Craigslist. Well, maybe a little bigger. If you know of one that has a flip down plasma t.v. built in so that I can watch Will Smith movies outdoors, holla’.

A smaller ecological footprint be damned. Greater energy independence be damned. As one of my friends says, “Only when we’ve used up all the carbon-based energy, will we have real incentive to find alternatives.”

If you’ll excuse me. I’ve got a lot of shopping to do for the inside of my new rig-to-be. And no bro, you can’t roadtrip with me. You should have considered the possibility I’d end up living really large when you were floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee.