I haven't been as introspective lately. As summer returns I find myself more interested in the external world, in all the things that feel like a distant dream in the throes of winter.

It's my favorite time of year, personally. I remember yearning so deeply for the end of the school year every spring, almost literally counting down the minutes of each school day. Someone probably should have noticed how unhappy I was to be there, but in those days unhappy children were just relegated to being weird and they left it at that.

But when that final bell rang out on the last day, I felt a freedom that has been rare in my life since those school days, and looking back on it now, I swear I could almost fly.

Summertime meant three very important things back in those days. The first was late nights. I would be up watching Cartoon Network until the wee hours of the morning, fascinated by the strange cartoons they didn't show during the day, like Snorks (like Smurfs but underwater for some reason, and marginally gayer despite having more women).

On Friday nights they would show old 70s cartoons that weren't shown anywhere else, like the Globetrotters (with superpowers 'cause why not) and Josie and Pussycats (sometimes in space) and Wait 'Til Your Father Gets Home (a bizarrely mature series not appropriate for kids but what can you do).

In the late 90s, at around 4 or 5 in the morning, one of the cable channels would show the Raccoons, a Canadian cartoon about the suburban doings of some anthropomorphic animals with a weirdly dramatic soundtrack. And afterwards classic Donald Duck cartoons, which were hard to come by at the time.

On top of that, I would find myself watching strange movies on the Science Fiction Channel (yeah they used to say the whole thing, and spell it right, too). I remember one night my Dad couldn't sleep, so we watched a bunch of odd low budget time travel movies with plots I couldn't really understand. I had this odd fear of the end of the world as a kid, so I would become very invested in such plots, and remember feeling such a relief when the day would be saved.

Later on it became more about videogames. I'd be up all night playing Shining Force or Phantasy Star, and by the late 90s it was StarCraft. My Mom would sometimes be up all night watching TV and having various episodes while I would play on Battle.Net with some internet friends. I used to find these really cool maps with storylines and complicated scenarios and rules and we'd rarely ever finish a game before it crashed or froze (back in those 56k modem days). The end of the night would always have a sadness attached to it, and then I'd sleep until the afternoon.

The second Summertime thing was the snacks. So very often my folks would get ice cream, order pizza, they'd ask me to microwave some popcorn all the time while we watched whatever we rented from Blockbuster. My Dad preferred vanilla, which always disappointed me, but he eventually started getting mint for me after my Mom complained that not everyone liked vanilla. She was a strawberry person, herself.

When I was in middle school, my parents would sometimes send me all the way across town to get a Papa Murphy's take-and-bake. Trudging it back was always a hassle. My brother would sometimes come on Wednesdays and take us to this cute Italian place hidden in the corner of town near its excuse for a movie theater.

And there was a little candy shop near there too, with a girl who worked there who was part of a group of people who would do some really unsafe unsanctioned sparring and she was always really nice to me. During the Beanie Baby craze, the shop had a line extending a couple blocks out through the parking lot.

The third, and perhaps the most important thing from the Summer was the annual trip to the Boardwalk. The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk is the shining jewel of my hometown, a hub of fun and games that has become a symbol in my deepest dreams of a Mecca to seek out but is rarely achieved.

Every Summer, during particular evenings, every ride would be only one quarter, and my folks would take me out to ride everything to my heart's content.

I was terrified of the rollercoasters. The Boardwalk had two, the Hurricane and the Giant Dipper. I rode the Hurricane first with my brother because it was smaller, but because it was much newer, it was actually the more intense of the two. The Giant Dipper, when I eventually was brave enough to ride it, it was a much more mellow experience being an old wooden rollercoaster (and one of the icons of the California coast).

My Dad and I rode it together sometime around 1996 or so, I think. He got it on video camera and you can tell he is having a bad time. It wouldn't be the very last time I rode on a ride with him (that would be Splash Mountain in Disneyland) but it would be our last in my childhood hometown.

In 1999 my folks were very distracted with buying a house and leaving the coast, and I guess the yearly trip had just fallen by the wayside. So on the 4th of July I took my bike and rode it down from the mountains through the backroads and went to the Boardwalk by myself and got a day pass. I met an old man who was weirdly trying to one up me (by saying he rode his bike from San Jose) and seemed to revel in the rollercoasters himself. I remember feeling oddly free in a terrified way, unsure as to the wide open world I had set myself into.

These days the summer doesn't bring too much of that. Obviously the warm months aren't going to bring too much time off as an office drone, and I generally spend my days watching old movies and cartoons anyway. Late nights aren't what they used to be, and are more fun with company anyway. All the healthy living's got me watching my junk food intake.

But there are rollercoasters! In July a couple dear friends of mine and I are going to take the two hour trip up to Sandusky to visit Cedar Point. We did it for the first time last year and it was a sublime moment of release for my soul.

This year we're all putting in PTO to see if the lines are short on a Thursday. I gotta say, it feels like the last summer delight, and one that I haven't had a chance to look forward to for many years.

And y'know, for the moment I am free.