We knew our cousin Joey was an Armstrong. But he proved it when over an Xbox game he was playing against his brother he said, “Okay, I’ll be there in three hours.”

Tyler and I had made it to Portland and were staying with our Aunt JoAnn. Joey and his wife live near Seattle. But upon hearing that we were going to be around his mom’s for the weekend, decided to change whatever plans he had and jump into his car to come see us.

Joey, whose Tyler’s age, has shared his fair share of adventures with us over the years. Luckily, for our lives and criminal rap sheets, that sect of Armstrongs never lived nearby and our adventures were only occasional.

When our parents asked us what we’d done during the day, we ussually answered with something like, “Oh not much, just walked around the golf course.” Had we told our parents the truth, our answer would have gone a little more like this:

Well, first, we looked for golf balls in the marsh. But since we didn’t find any, we hid in the bushes by the third hole. Then, after a group of golfers teed off, we sprinted to the green, stole their golf balls and ran away. The golfers chased us, yelling various threats and words that are not allowed in your house. But we could barely hear them. We had already dissapeared into the culvert and gone underground into the sewer. 

We emerged from the sewer on the seventh green and sold the just stolen golf balls to a group of golfers for a few dollars. Then we went back underground, this time entering the sewer (We called it the sewer, but really, it was just an underground piping system that channeled the street water.) that led underneath the city. Then we spent a few hours underground, setting of fire crackers below the city streets. Sometimes throwing them into the streets through the storm water inlets. 

When we heard people walking around above the storm water inlets, we used to shout things up to them like, “Help, we’re trapped down here!” Sometimes people came up and said things like, “Don’t worry little boy, we’ll get you out. I’ll call 911 and help is on the way!”

Then we’d run through the tunnels to a new part underneath the city, laughing our young asses off. For their sanity’s sake, good our parents had no idea what we were up to.

So Joey arrived and the next morning the four of us headed to the Cannon Beach on the coast of Oregon. This was a familiar family reunion stomping ground,  and was redolent of times we shared as kids.

Along the way we picked up a hitch hiker named Garret. I think this is the first hitch hiker Caleb had ever been this close to. He didn’t smell too bad, and we thanked him for that.

But he did tell us a few things about tramping. He, for instance, prefered hitch-hiking to train hopping. Train hoppers he said, were dirty and they often rolled with dogs that were trained to kill other people.

“If you steal from them,” he told us, “They’ll kill you, without even thinking about it.”

“Some of them,” he continued, “are ex Green Barrets and they have night vision goggles, so they’re always watching you.”

Then he told us about his friend who was ex-military who had revealed to him a little known fact about the US Army. “They put small amounts of meth in the soldier’s canteens, to keep them awake during combat.” His friend, he admitted, did “use meth on his own sometimes,” an addiction he blamed on the US Army for spiking his canteen.

I exchanged a glance with my cousin Joey, who had an amused expression on his face. He’s currently a sergeant in the army.

At the beach we enjoyed the sun, a bit of surf, lunch, and with a bottle of grog in hand, hiked our way up a sand dune to enjoy, well, the grog (everyone but 14-year-old Caleb) and smoke cigars. Caleb’s vice was a pound of salt-water taffy. He surprised us all (and his pancreas) by eating all of it.

I couldn’t help but think that our fathers were proud of us. Mine, when he saw the pictures on Facebook, and Joey and Caleb’s from wherever he is (he passed away last year). This had once been their beach. The beach where they smoked cigars and drank grog. Now it was ours, as we carried their tradition to the next generation.

Before we left we took turns writing messages that we placed in the empty bottle of grog. We let Caleb do the honors of tossing it into the sea–to be found be who-knows-when, by who-knows-who.

The day crescendo’d as we sped back to meet our grandpa and aunt for pizza. But we enjoyed everyone moment in the car.

After dinner the night settled into all of us playing music together, Caleb is remarkably talented at the piano for a 14-year-old and kept up just fine with Tyler and I.

It was a good day, the last chapter in Tyler and I’s road-trip, and also and another adventure to chalk up for the cousins. I thought about how it all seemed to Caleb. Back when we were laughing in the drainage tunnels, he was and infant. But now he was here with us, just one of the guys, and just like I remember when I started getting included in “older kid stuff ” with my older brother Aaron, it must have felt pretty darn good.