[Click on any pic to enlarge]Wrong place at the
wrong time. On our way to the Caravan at Buena Vista Aquatic Recreation Area (whew! BV, from now on), we were tooling along in the northbound slow lane on the I-405 just before it gets to the junction with the I-5. A trash truck was parked on the shoulder and I could see the driver hanging on to the side where the cab met the bed. I could only drift to the leftmost side of my lane as there was a car next to me. Just as we passed the truck, the driver gave a mighty pull and yanked something from the space behind the cab. Unfortunately, the prodigious pull flung his arm all the way into the traffic lane and his hand collided with the front
housing of our right mirror. KaBAM! We stopped and backed up, inspected the damage (broken glass in the mirror, and who knows what with his hand). We exchanged information, but he had called his supervisor, so we waited around for him to arrive. The driver seemed to be writing all right with the hand, but that might have been adrenalin working. Supervisor arrived, he took his pictures, told me to get an estimate for repair, gave me his card and that was that. I hope. If the driver tries to make a claim against my insurance he's in for a fight.
BV, once we got there, was a very nice place in the middle of nowhere. It's 23 miles SW of Bakersfield, to the west of the I-5, towards Taft. Two lakes, one quite big, allowing powerboating, fishing, etc. Huge pull-through
sites with full hookups. Trees for shade and plenty of open area for games, etc. Who knew? I guess the LD Caravaners did. We've been up I-5 many dozens of times and never had a clue anything was out in this remote corner of the Valley.
I inveigled Loni into participating in the washer toss tournament, with the usual protests of not being any good at that stuff, etc. etc. Turns out she did just as well as anyone, and loved it! I know, I know, washer toss? Sounds like the
quintessential geriatric pastime, and I guess that's what it looks like.
But, all smirking aside, it's a lot of fun. The weird scoring keeps it interesting, and the luck factor accounting for 75% of what happens keeps everyone in the game.
We went exploring on the scoot, intent on going over the mountains
to the west to another lake. We ended up in a sea of oil rigs dating back to the early 1900's. When we pushed on, the paved road turned to dirt, and then to mud
in the low parts. We forded one mire, but turned back as we were sinking up to the rims. The Vespa isn't made for off-roading. We did stumble across the hamlet of Tupman. Since that's the last name of Mom's friends in Indy, we took a picture and later sent it on to them. Offered to steal a sign. :)
At the gathering I told my tale of mirror woe and was offered a free set of replacement mirrors by the resident go-to guy for all things dealing with LD repairs. He had a number of them in his garage resulting from others upgrading to the
bigger wide-view mirrors. When we got back to L.A., I picked them up and installed the right one in about 90 seconds. Bingo, and no claim against the trash company.
porch and put everything together to make sure it held air, etc. Actually, the only things to put together were the paddles, which had snap-button connections, easy as pie. The kayak is one 
long piece that has three inflatable sections: both sides, and the bottom. It comes with a foot pump that was all set to go. Just insert the nozzle into one of the three fill valves and start pumping. Each filled quite fast, probably a minute or two for each. There are two inflatable seats
that took only a couple of pumps each and they were ready. It really was simple to set up. Too bad we don't have a lake close by. I'm not ready to try to launch it in the waves down at Will 
Rogers Beach! It's rated for class 3 rapids (uh-huh, not for me, I think) and is said to do better in the ocean than on lakes. We'll give that proposition a tryout when we go to Morro Bay in a couple
of weeks. I'll have to get cracking and buy some life vests or we're sure to get nailed by the harbor patrol. Everything folds up quite nicely in the big bag, although we opted to keep the paddles in a separate one. Now, where are we going to stuff this thing in the RV?
