Month: September 2022

Charlie and I spent most of the past week visiting with old friends and relatives in the So Calif area.

Our son Jeff and wife Carol dropped by Paradise by the Sea for a few days in their old RV. The rig has some miles on it but it suffices for what the kids need right now… a place of refuge until Carol retires in a month or so. They are going to try to “full-time” in that 30-year-old relic. I will be surprised if that adventure lasts a year, but they are resourceful, frugal, and willing to get their hands dirty.

Vaya con Dios, Amigos.

Oldest son Tim and wife Shanon took over dog sitting duties on Saturday when we began a mini road trip to visit old friends. Our first stop was San Diego Harbor, where we cruised on Terry DeArmond’s 52’ yacht with old friends Jim and Nicole Houle. Terry is one of Charlie’s oldest bookkeeping clients (he’s a general contractor) and Jim is a CPA that Charlie works very closely with.

In his earlier life, Jim was a professional drummer with some marginal heavy metal groups. His group “opened” for some well-known bands. Back in the day, his performing name was “Jimmy Jam”.

We cruised the whole harbor, ate snacks, drank a lot, and exchanged stories. The weather was great and there were all manner of Navy warships being serviced. Typically, there will be one or maybe two of the Navy’s biggest ships (Nimitz class aircraft carriers) in port, but on that Saturday there were three. They are the largest warships in the world, at around 1,000 feet long, can travel at 30 knots, and have a crew compliment of 5,000 sailors.

The next day we drove about an hour up to Temecula to visit my sister Claudia and husband Ted. They have a very beautiful home there that is the result of a perfect blend of talents: Ted is the D.Y.I. expert and Claudia has the design gene.

Her house was gussied up for Halloween.

They are also estate sale junkies, so they find a lot of cool things for cheap. One example is the slot machines that they purchased for a total of about $100 because they were allegedly “inoperable”. Ted fixed them without much effort and now they grace the couple’s TV room: very cool.

Ted also collects and restores cars and motorcycles, and his small garage is filled with “projects”.

We spent part of the day visiting Old Town Temecula and Temecula Valley Wine Country. Wow, a lot has changed in the four years that we’ve been in Nevada!

Claudia served us up a huge breakfast one day.

We reciprocated with a nice dinner at the Lazy Dog in Temecula.

For the next couple of days we visited with old neighbors Clark and Karin Pace in Murrieta. We lived within a few feet of each other for twenty years in Bear Creek, traveled a lot together, and shared many adventures. Karin is retired and Clark is currently working for Amazon.

Karin is an ex-home decorator for a large developer in Southern California. Her house was Halloween-ed.

We spent a lot of our time playing cards: Hearts, Spades, Shit on your Neighbor, etc. I was incredibly lucky to win a bunch of games, as both Clark and Karin are very good card players.

We concluded our visit with the Paces by treating them to a nice meal at the Cheesecake Factory in the Temecula Mall, where I enjoyed my favorite dish, Cajun Jambalaya Pasta. Yummy!

The only bad part about this short reunion tour was the WALKING PNEUMONIA that we both acquired somehow. Case Zero of this small pandemic might have been our daughter-in-law Carol, who reported feeling crummy a day after we saw her in Paradise by the Sea. Anyway, this particular plague reminds me of the malady that both Charlie and I suffered from last year at about the same time. That beast took two months to defeat, and was the worst sickness that I’ve ever suffered from except AIDS. (Just checking to see if you’re awake!)

When we arrived at my sister Claudia’s house earlier in the week, we had already been to emergency care and had started antibiotic treatment. However, Claudia gave us a Covid test before welcoming us to her home… and we both passed.

It was a small consolation, though, as we spent a good deal of time sneezing, dripping, and coughing. No fever, though, so I don’t think we were contagious.

About a week into the illness, I am feeling better and Charlie is about two days behind me in the recovery. I think we will beat this thing. (Poor Charlie: she has a broken foot and now has to endure walking pneumonia! She’s a trooper.)

Our three dogs got a real workout while we were away. Tim and Shanon, and a host of visitors to our rig at Paradise, kept the dogs busy playing with them.

It’s more than 24 hours later now and the dogs are still trying to recharge their batteries. They’re dog-tired.

We’re in Oceanside, California now, just in time for the great Fall weather at the beach.

Unfortunately, we arrived just as the big HEAT WAVE was in full force, with temps at the beach in the friggin’ 90’s. Very unusual for the Southern California coast, it was. Then, we got the wind, high humidity, and rain from Hurricane Kay. Only the second time in twenty-five years that a Baja hurricane has ventured this far north.

The night before the big blow, we attended a “reunion” party/Rams game event at our granddaughter Jessica’s house in Vista, which is only a dozen miles from Oceanside. Lots of kids and grandkids were there, Jessica’s (and Abe’s, her boyfriend) house was nice, the pizza was good, and the Ram’s got their asses handed to them by the Buffalo Bills. Our sons Jeff and Tim were there (with wives Carol and Shanon), as were grandkids Jessica, Joshua, Craig, and Dakota. Good times.

It was miserable for a few days… reminded us of godawful Miami Beach. (There’s a reason that sun-loving East coasters frolic in Miami… because Southern California is too far away.) Anyway, lots of perspiration, sticky tee shirts, uncomfortable sleeping, body odor, and such. No bueno. Now I know what Hell is like… and why I hate Florida.

The mini storm has passed and the temps are dropping… only high 70’s today. Still high humidity, but tolerable. I miss Oregon.

Our son Jeff and wife Carol dropped by Paradise by the Sea for a few days in their ancient 1999 Damon Daybreak Class Z motorhome. It is not their long-term solution but will suffice until they hit the road in 2023 as full-time RVers. They’ve begun to amass RV “adventures” already, with inoperative entry step, generator, refrig (only runs on LP), broken exhaust pipe, etc. If you own an RV, then you know the drill.

(Speaking of that, my TV satellite dish is on the fritz… we’ll probably replace it this week. The good news: the Starlink satellite internet system is working fine. Hallelujah, thank you Jesus. In addition, my laptop computer, which is getting pretty old, experienced some problems recently. I took it to Best Buy and the prognosis was grim: the CPU is failing. So, I bit the bullet and bought a new HP laptop that I will now have to configure like my old one. Another project. Where’s is that Economic Stimulus money when I need it?)

Jeff and Carol have a “rescue” dog named Chongo. He is an 80-pound Pit Bull mix with a very mellow temperament.

Chongo got along well with our dogs and only had to put Vinny in his place one time (as in, “There’s a new Sheriff in town, Vinnie, and it ain’t you!!”) This is exactly what the little troublemaker needs, because he is a little too energetic when approaching strange dogs. Chongo could have eaten him for a snack but settled for a figurative ass chewing… which little Vinnie accepted in fine fashion, seeing as how he is the number three dude in our own pack.

Our friends Reed and Linda are situated in the space next to us and have a new addition this year: a Golden Doodle dog names “Lucy”. She’s about five months old, 18 pounds, and is a firecracker who loves to rumble (bitey face wrestling) with Baby. They wear each other out!

Our other neighbors, Mike and Diane Hernandez, got sucker-punched by the remnants of Hurricane Kay, when some high winds destroyed their RV awning. That will cost them. We saw the trouble coming and retracted ours, saving us a few thousand dollars. Ya gotta keep your eyes open and ears to the ground when RVing, that’s for sure.

Poor Charlie and her f’d up left foot! She’s been dragging that thing around since our first week in Coos Bay (she injured it while walking the dogs on the beach). The docs up there x-rayed it and found no fracture. That was almost two months ago. Charlie’s client Doctor Robert Steele, who lives a few blocks from here in Oceanside, dropped by one morning to examine the foot. He ordered a CT scan. The results are in: comminuted fracture of a bone in her instep, which will require surgery when we get back to Mesquite.

What a trooper she has been to put up with the pain for the past two months!!!

I drove up to Los Angeles on Tuesday to see my brother Terry. He’s lived in the same house for fifty years with his wife Kay, while the whole town (Monterey Park) has morphed into Little Shanghai. They’ve remodeled their home a few times, have a very nice property, and a backyard that features a Koi pond, steep landscaped cliffs, and varmints. The last time I was there I had to remove a raccoon that my brother had just shot. It is not one of my favorite memories.

Terry has health issues to the point that he can’t do much more than eat, sleep, watch TV, count his money, and doodle around on his computer. He is all hunched-over and uses a cane: it’s sad. His wife Kay is a college professor whom I have known since high school. We talked and reminisced a bit and then I took Terry out for lunch at his favorite Mexican joint near Santa Anita racetrack.

My little trip up to see my brother was only 77 miles in length but it took me 2-1/2 hours of intense freeway driving, sharing the road with a half-million impatient motorists and 18-wheelers. What a nightmare! Now I recall why we moved to Nevada… too many people!!!

My trip back to Oceanside took about 3 hours because I had to stop by Temecula Valley RV and pick up a replacement King Tailgater Pro (for Dish satellite TV service). We’ve been having reception problems, and the Dish and King techs finally came to the conclusion that the well-used satellite dish was the culprit. Another $500 … what the Hell.

On a positive note, Charlie’s foot injury means that she will not be going back to New York in October to visit her long-lost relatives on her father’s side. Accordingly, I was able to cancel airline flights, hotel rooms and such to the tune of about $1,700 which we’d already paid.

You win some, you lose some.

We are on the move again, making the annual slog from the Oregon Coast all the way south to Oceanside, California.

It is a roughly 900-mile trip that we are doing in several stops over a seven-day period.

First stop was Friendly RV Park in Weed, California. We’ve been there several times before, going to and coming from Oregon. The park itself is maybe a 5 on a scale of 10: fairly crude set up, gravel sites, only 30 amp service (in 90 degree weather!), and zero amenities. However, this park rates a 10 when it comes to location, as it is located just off I-15, within a couple hundred yards of a Pilot truck stop, several restaurants, and a nice discount grocery store. In addition, the glory of Mount Shasta is right in your face: the most prominent geological landmark in Northern California, a 14,000’ volcano. Normally, Mt. Shasta is covered with snow. However, in the midst of the decade-long heat wave, there is barely any snow up top.

Speaking of that, the trip south on I-5 toward our next overnight stop was a gut-wrencher. Lake Shasta, which is one of the prettiest man-made reservoirs in America, is a shell of its former self, with the current level down 133’ from capacity. Vast portions of the reservoir are now dirt and rock, a long way from navigable water. Charlie and I vacationed at this lake about twenty years ago in a houseboat with two other couples: what a beautiful experience. Today, there isn’t a whole lot of that water to houseboat on. What a shame!

Speaking again of water, on our way to Orland, in the Sacramento Valley, there are actually vast plots of land that have recently been planted in orchard crops. WTF, farmers, have you not heard of GLOBAL WARMING? Have you not noticed your water reservoir (Lake Shasta) drying up? It’s hard to understand, to tell you the truth. Farmers in California have been getting almost free water for the past fifty years and, like junkies used to getting their “fix”, are having a heck of a time putting down the needle.

BTW, as we headed south on I-5, we received news that a forest fire just sprang up in Weed. Talk about timing! The authorities may be seeking us out, thinking that we could have tossed a lit cigarette into the brush. Except that we… don’t smoke.

We stopped at The Parkway RV Resort in Orland, California for a night. It is a very nice park, with mature shade trees, a pool, a nice store and friendly staff, and conveniently located a mile down the road from I-5. It’s in the boondocks, to be sure, in the midst of the orchards and farms of the Sacramento Valley. Lots of hayseeds making good money in this agricultural paradise. It’s one of the biggest rice producing areas in the United States. Rice, fruit, and nuts require LOTS of water, something that is becoming harder and harder to find in California.

From Orland, we headed south on I-5 toward the Bay Area. We drove past vast orchards of olives, nut crops, various fruit crops, and thousands of acres of rice paddies. Again, where is the water coming from? These crops use vast quantities of water. My guess is that the farmers are heavily mining the groundwater aquifers like they are in Nevada. It’s a desperation play that will work for a while but that will not deter Mother Nature and the long-term drought that we’re experiencing.

In order to get to the Monterey Peninsula (our next stop), we had to drive through the San Francisco Bay Area. I always hate this stretch of roads because they are the worst freeways/highways in the western United States. One of the reasons is that several very active seismic faults underlie the geography here (the San Andreas and Hayward Faults, to name a couple) and, therefore, the roads are constantly being undermined by shifting earth. The worst highways are those made of concrete: the effect is like driving over a washboard. It’s not so bad when the road surface turns to asphalt. Anyway, we bounced our way around the Bay Area on I-680 and, luckily, nothing in the RV came unglued. Except us. (I tell Charlie that driving the rig through the Bay Area probably takes a year off my life expectancy each time I do it!)

We arrived yesterday at Marina Dunes RV Resort. We’ve stayed here before because the RV park is very nice and is located near a lot of good stuff like stores, restaurants, and the ocean. Also, it is about a dozen miles north of Fisherman’s Wharf, Cannery Row, the Monterey Aquarium, and such. Pebble Beach is just down the road. Anyway, this park rates a 10 in terms of location and amenities. The only downside is the very mature trees in the park that make utilizing my Starlink satellite internet equipment impossible.

One of the amenities that we didn’t enjoy when we arrived was our PROPER SPACE. We booked this three-day stay about ten months ago, so they knew we were coming in our 40’ rig. When we got here, the folks in the office assigned us space 68, which is 30’ deep! No bueno, to say the least. I raised Hell, to be sure, and was told that there was a “computer glitch”. Supposedly, the online registration form said that I was arriving with a 24’ unit. That was/is bullshit, which was confirmed by the email from the resort I got before arriving which said that my space might not fit my rig. Question: How would the “system” know this unless I had given it the correct 40’ dimension in the first place?

Reality: it is Labor Day Weekend, probably the most sought-after days in the park’s calendar. What I suspect happened was that someone was late scheduling his Labor Day trip, called the resort (the owner or manager) and, as a favor, they gave these yahoos my spot and moved me to another. I raised Hell with the office staff and indicated that something smelled FISHY. The Resort Manager happened to be there and took some shit from me. He immediately directed staff to “fix the problem” and we were reassigned to a proper space… despite the fact that the park was 100 percent booked for the Labor Day Weekend.

Someone else got the shaft… they can deal with that guy when he arrives.

Our travails weren’t over, however. In the process of squeezing our rig into the small space (initially), Charlie re-injured her foot and some trees scraped the paint on my rig. Sonofabitch!

One of the really cool things about this park is the access to the coastal sand dune complex adjacent to the park. One can walk down a sandy path to the ocean (about ¼ mile) or go out a side gate into an iceplant/dune habitat where there are trails that goes for miles.

Our dogs have always loved this place because they can wander freely in this paradise, smell the foreign odors, chase rabbits, and meet other off-leash dogs. On our first journey out into the habitat area, we came across a guy with three Boston Terriers!

There is a State park just down the road, on the cliffs overlooking Monterey Bay, where fliers cruise effortlessly in their paragliders.

It’s a neat scene, made even better by the cool air temperature (61 degree high yesterday). If one was to drive 5 minutes inland, the air temperature would rise about 30 degrees.

Our plans on Saturday were to get Charlie’s nails worked on, go to Walgreens, and then have a lunch at Scales, an excellent seafood restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf in Monterey. But that didn’t happen. While I waited for Charlie’s salon session to end, I re-checked parking availability near Fisherman’s Wharf. To my dismay, I found out that Scales, an institution on the Wharf, closed its doors in July, 2021 in a dispute with the City of Monterey (which owns the Wharf). What a bummer!

We spent most of the day on Sunday driving down Highway 101, through the Salinas Valley and then over and into the San Joaquin Valley.

Hwy 101 was formerly El Camino Real, or the King’s Road. It is the route that the Spanish military and Franciscan clergy used to settle coastal California. It goes from San Francisco all the way down to San Diego, and there are Catholic missions located all along the route, about a day’s horseback ride apart.

From Monterey to Paso Robles, the route we took on Sunday, the Salinas Valley is full to the brim with row crops, orchards, and grape vineyards. It’s quite a pretty ride, much of it memorialized in the movie, “Sideways”.

In the early afternoon on Sunday, we completed our 177-mile jaunt over to Lost Hills RV Resort in the San Joaquin Valley for a one-night stand. The temperature was 107 degrees when we arrived, so we hunkered down, put on the A/C to “max”, and watched TV, sweating like pigs.

Speaking of near-death heat, our sons Jonathan and Jeff visited our home in Mesquite this past week to do some golfing with one of Jon’s friends from Kentucky. They golfed at Coyote Springs and Wolf Creek and had a good time. Unfortunately for them, the air temp was around 115 degrees half-way through the rounds, so they were fairly miserable… like broasting chickens… but survived to tell the tale.

There’s a lot of HOT going on this Summer. The big Burning Man fest is going on right now in Black Rock City (northern Nevada desert), where tens of thousands of idiots are camping out in 105 degree temperatures… without A/C. Hopefully, they will be so drugged up that they won’t obsess about the heat and sweat. Even as bad as this might seem, it is worse this week in Death Valley, where the high temperature is hovering around 125 degrees, which is just shy of the world record.

Maybe it’s just me, but I like FOG.

On Monday, Labor Day, we drove several hundred miles down into Southern California to Paradise By The Sea RV Resort in Oceanside, California. It was a long, hot, steamy drive that just about killed the dogs. We had to wrap them in cold towels to keep them alive.

For many years, Paradise By The Sea has been our last stop on the annual RV tour. It’s located right near the beach, has a great park next door for the dogs to run around in, and is strategically located near a lot of our friends, relatives, and Charlie’s clients. Our month there is basically a reunion tour which we really look forward to.

Our neighbors on each side of our RV are old friends who come here each year for a month. Mike owns a big landscape maintenance business in the Palm Springs area and his wife Diane has some kind of an online sales business. On the other side of us, Reed is an ex-long-haul truck driver and I’m not sure what his wife Linda does or did for a living. I’m pretty sure they are both retired and they travel a lot in their RV.

Charlie’s left foot is still giving her fits, so one of her clients, Dr. Robert Steele, dropped by on Tuesday morning to check her out. He thinks she has a mid-foot fracture, so he arranged for Charlie to get a CT scan, prescribed some drugs, and told us to get a mid-ankle boot. Dr. Steele will check out the CT and determine where we go from here.

That wife of mine is a trooper: she’s been limping around on that crummy foot for almost two months. I wish the E.R in Coos Bay had picked up the fracture; however, they only took an x-ray and, according to Dr. Steele, it is easy to miss this kind of fracture. Hopefully, we are back on track and can get poor Charlie some relief.

I am having a dickens of a time finding a spot here in Paradise By The Sea where I can get reception from my Starlink equipment. There is an abundance of clear blue sky overhead, but there are Palm trees all over the place which foul up the Starlink signal. We may not be able to use the thing here!

Dammit.

It is very hot this week at the beach and humid, too. Yesterday, it was 87 degrees with 60 percent humidity… it felt like the sticky heat in New Orleans. The heat wave is supposed to last for another 3 or 4 days.

Buccaneer Beach, which is a couple of hundred yards from our coach, is improved from last year when most of the beach sand was absent due to some heavy winter storms. It appears that the City of Oceanside has trucked in quite a bit of sand to re-establish a nice “beach” for people to enjoy. Surf was decent yesterday… maybe a 3’-4’ swell.

We are going to take the dogs to the vet tomorrow (in Temecula, our old stomping grounds) and Charlie is going to get a haircut, as well.

Later in the week, we are going to attend a family reunion at our granddaughter Jessica’s house in Vista, which is a few miles from here.

Living the good life at the beach in Oceanside… it never gets old.