It wasn't the dawn's early light, but it was good.

Advantage: Oldness. At age 62 you become eligible for a $10 lifetime Senior Pass which will admit you (and the other ≤ 3 people in your car) to National Parks and Federal wildlife areas all over the country

Yesterday's goal was to obtain one. National Park Service information online made it clear that such a thing could be obtained in person only, and--being of the get-it-done-now school of thought--I wanted to, well, get it done now.

I had not visited Fort McHenry, right down the road in Baltimore, since one of my kids formed a star, or a fraction of a stripe, or--I don't know--maybe a grommet, in the annual "human flag" event where they try to convince a couple hundred third-graders to sit still long enough for a picture to be snapped from a helicopter. It isn't easy. I don't remember this as a particularly fun field trip as these things go!

Wednesday was jacket weather, but the sun was a trooper. And for once I actually appreciated the informative video which described exactly why Francis Scott Key was aboard a ship in the harbor and thus excellently positioned to see the bombs bursting in air. (he was supposed to talk the British into releasing a prisoner--his friend Dr. Beanes--who was not, as far as I can tell, Rowan Atkinson. If he had been, no negotiator would have been required. It would have been The Ransom of Red Chief--at sea edition.)

This time I paid the kind of attention you can't pay when your companions are under 14...i.e. I read the descriptive plaques and stood still long enough to listen to the recorded commentary in places such as enlisted men's bunk room or officer's poorly lit, but better appointed, chamber. The voice of the recorded commentary, btw, was Alan Walden--a longtime WBAL radio voice--and Jeff named that tune, I mean voice, rather quickly. I couldn't come up with it, though I did concur. I could however walk in a hunched posture up and down the cramped steps into the "bomb-safe" chamber without bumping my head 3 times on the way up, and I could take pictures without the photographic subject having to guide me in pointing the camera in the right direction.

Here's the thing about Jeff--even with an increasingly bewildered and slightly askew expression as a regular feature of his face, he manages to not look his age. It has always been thus, and his recent boyish haircut reduced the unruly sticking-out grey-haired factor, so when we walked into the Fort McHenry visitors' center and I declared that we'd like a $10 lifetime pass please, the reaction of the two rangers on duty was a rapid but kindly protestation that it was only for those age 62 and up. At which point I grinned knowingly, pointed at Jeff, and said "That's why we brought his i.d."

Fortunately I had thought to ask Jeff if he had his wallet just after we walked out our front door. He did not. He hadn't seen it for a couple of days, he said, which left me two options: Get his passport from where it's safely stowed in a filing cabinet, or look for the wallet. I started with the latter and--after patting down several pairs of pants, awkwardly hanging in the closet--it paid off. Wallet recovered. And i.d. ready to move into my wallet, next to the National Park Senior Pass which will, by the way, get us into the Grand Canyon next October without the usual $25 entrance fee.