CATCHING UP (AGAIN)

It’s been a month of scootin’ and rving.  Took the Vespa to the dealer for its 3k service, a tad in arrears at 3400 miles.  I think all they do is change the engine oil and filter, and change the drive oil, along with making sure nothing is falling off.  I nearly had a total body infarction when the bill was presented --$138!  Yikes!  Seems they have a $90/hr shop charge, minimum of one hour, plus the Piaggio filter and the mandatory synthetic oil of the Italian gods.  It did seem that they had to dismantle a significant portion of the scoot to get at the various parts.  I think I’d better take a course in Vespa maintenance.  It can’t be that tough.  In my youth (yes, I did have one) I managed to do the valves and sync the four carbs on my Honda 500.  Alas, the timidity of age.

Loni had a CBBS workshop to attend one Saturday, so I joined the LA Scooter Club on a ride from NoHo Scooters in North Hollywood to the site of the former (as in, it done burst) St. Francis Dam.  This was a fairly long ride (about 140 miles for me), but had great twisty back roads, mountains, canyons, views.  Once again, I forgot my camera, so no pics.  I also had the zipper stick (up by my throat) on my riding jacket so I couldn’t shed any layers the whole time.  Good thing the weather cooperated and stayed nth and ntc.  There were some excellent views from various mountain tops along the way, and I’d never been in this area before.

The St. Francis Dam was a concrete gravity-arch dam, designed to create a reservoir as a storage point of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. The dam was located 40 miles (64 km) northwest of Los Angeles, California, near the present city of Santa Clarita. The dam was built between 1924 and 1926. Three minutes before midnight on March 12, 1928, the dam catastrophically failed, and the resulting flood killed more than 450 people. The collapse of the St. Francis Dam is one of the worst American civil engineering failures of the 20th century and remains the second-greatest loss of life in California's history, after the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and fire. As the dam collapsed, twelve billion U.S. gallons (45 billion liters) of water surged down San Francisquito Canyon in a dam break wave. The deluge then turned west into the Santa Clara River bed, flooding the towns of Castaic Junction, Fillmore, and Bardsdale. The flood continued west through Santa Paula in Ventura County, emptying its victims and debris into the Pacific Ocean at Montalvo, 54 miles (87 km) from the reservoir and dam site! When it reached the ocean at 5:30 a.m., the flood was almost two miles (3 km) wide, traveling at a speed of 5 miles (8 km) per hour. Bodies of victims were recovered from the Pacific Ocean, some as far south as the Mexican border.

Never trust the Department of Water & Power. This is all that remains today:

 

The following week we packed up the RV and took off for the Vail Lake caravan of the LazyDaze club.  Vail is located near Temecula, which is between LA and San Diego, but inland quite a ways.  The weather was perfect.  This caravan was being hosted by our subgroup, the PastTents.  As in, we been there, done that, and will never sleep in a tent again. 

Hosting mostly includes setting up the entry tent to check people in (we had 99 rigs show up), and giving the 8 a.m. announcements over the CB.  I got tagged to do it the second day.  Thanks to my rad treatments, my voice now gives Barry White a run for his money, and my mellifluous ("the dulcet tones of the cello") rumblings were well received, judging by the “who the heck was that?” comments later that day.  A new career?  Hardly.  We broke out the scoot and took a 90 mile ramble up to Mt. Palomar

where we toured the big scope, the museum, and had lunch on the grounds.  That’s one twisty, switchback-happy road up there.  We encountered a troop of CHPs, ten of them riding in formation (5x2) out in the middle of nowhere.  We waved as we passed, but they didn’t move a muscle.  Someone later said they take their new MC officers on these group rides on tricky roads to test their skills.  Hmmm.  They were riding side-by-side, and not staggered, as is the basic safety rule.  So much for taking lessons from our finest.  We had some great vistas from various points along the way:

This is facing west, and amid the haze out there is the Pacific.  We decided to make a big loop drive, so continued south from Palomar.  Lots of vineyards and cattle ranches back there.  I think these have to be some of the most contented cows in the world.  Nice pasture!

Once back, we settled down to stuffing ourselves at the potlucks, vino-ing, and playing the caravan pastime of ring-toss.  You throw the rings onto an elevated board with three holes in it.  With 5% skill, and the rest luck, the ring might go in one of the 3 (scoring 1, 3, or 5 points depending on which).  Bizarre scoring rules and penalties spice things up.  Loni, who avoided this like the plague during our first couple of years of caravans, got dragooned at Buena Vista earlier this year, and has become a convert. Nice style!  (that’s the disc, on edge, just above her hand)

We also went into town on Saturday and poked around the shops, had great Mexican for lunch, and listened to the bluegrass festival.  We heard (among others) the Alan Munde guys from Texas who were outstanding.

SoCal is really in good shape this year.  Lots of rain, so everything is green, with snow still on the major mountains.  We took a hike from camp and overlooked Vail Lake with, we think, San Gorgonio Mountain in the background.  Part of our scoot ride was in those foothills behind the lake.  Yes, this is SoCal!

Here’s the motley Past Tents crew, courtesy of Barbara B’s camera work (oh, yeah, it was St. Patrick’s day during our stay).

No sooner we were back from Vail Lake when we restocked and took off for a smaller gathering (non-caravan) of LazyDazes at Lake Cachuma, in the mountains behind Santa Barbara, near Solvang.  We again had great weather, except for wind the first day.  A group of three jeeps and us on the scoot went out looking for wildflowers.  One of the jeeps was piloted by Art & Barbara, who live in nearby Solvang and who know the back roads.  Did we ever get on back roads!  I doubt I could retrace the route, but we found some spectacular Central Coast scenery like this view:

We stopped for lunch and bird watching along the way.

 

And we DID find the wildflowers.  We both think this is one of the best displays we’ve ever seen.  California golden poppies and lupen.

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Like all of these get-togethers (26 rigs at this one), we ate ourselves silly.  The scoot and carry-rack drew some interest from a couple of folks.  Yesterday, we got a call from one of them – Audrey – who said she had gotten so enthused she went out and bought a classic Vespa and signed up for rider training.  Wow!  Maybe we can get the Jeep contingent to switch.  Nah.

March ended on a good note with my not getting called in at all during my week of jury duty.  Hoorah!  My last time ended in a five-day trial that didn’t start until my fifth day of “on-call.”  Two weeks shot!