TOTO, I DON’T THINK WE’RE IN NEVADA ANYMORE

Armed with a tip from Uncle Lee and Kelly, we headed east across the wastes of Nevada with Lamoille Canyon in the Ruby Mountains of eastern NV as our destination.  Wastes is too harsh a word, as it is simply desert with its own form of beauty.

We got all the way across to Elko, then turned south to find Lamoille.  Garmin was not our friend, as it kept insisting we keep going on one road when the signs all said to turn on another.  We ignored her, and came down into a stunningly beautiful valley in which lay the town of Lamoille.  The canyon itself was across the valley and the road became a narrow, winding gem that snaked through sheer cliffs.  It almost is, as it has been called, the Yosemite of Nevada. 

We had a couple of moments when we thought we’d missed the campground somehow, as it never seemed to appear and we had traveled quite a few miles in.  But we kept going and voila, there it was.  As pretty as the drive in was, it was hard put to match the campsite setting. 

From a slightly different angle, you can see a glacier patch on that center mountain.  In Nevada.  In September!  The view out the back of our site wasn’t too shabby either.

We were walking around the camp when we met an older woman walking her dog.  She asked where we were from.  We said L.A.  What part?  We told her our small town name.  Ah, she said, I lived there for many years and was in the first graduating class of the high school (about 1966, I think).  I asked if she had “Mama G” as her English teacher.  Her jaw dropped and she said “yes.”  Well, says I, she’s still around and is still teaching honors English at age 91!  What are the odds of this encounter?  As the sun went down, it was setting in alignment with the length of the canyon, so the walls started glowing intensely.  Whouda thunk something this dramatic was parked in Nevada?   And we’d never heard of it until Lee and Kelly mentioned it.  Thanks, guys.

CLARTER FARMS

Sunday morning after the reception, we did not get up bright and early, but eventually fortified ourselves for the arduous journey east at the local nosherie around the corner from Mike & Alia’s.

Yes, alas, this again is turning into a food blog.  Hey, there’s lots of vicarious eaters out there.  Yes, the banana pecan waffle was mine.  Mea culpa.

We managed to get out of SF, across the bridge, and out of the Bay Area with remarkably little traffic, especially as there was an Indy car race that day just a bit north.  In fact, our drive went surprisingly smoothly all the way.  Our destination was Carson City, NV, and the local-block-famous Clarter Farms, owned and operated by my old high-school and fraternity bro, Uncle Lee and his delightful bride, Kelly.  We took I-80 to Truckee, then turned south to the north shore of Lake Tahoe, which was as beautiful as ever.  We spend a week every summer down at the south end, just about where that snowpeak is. 

From there, we went around the north and east shores, which were absolutely packed with the parked cars of the end-of-summer vacationers flocking to the water.  On the east shore, we picked up highway 50 to go over the pass to the Carson Valley.  With less options to screw up, the Garmin got us right to the Farms.  It truly is an impressive operation.

Not pictured is THE peach tree, nor the tomato plants.  All two of them.  This beehive of industry puts out 4 or 5 fresh eggs a day, and the tree will ripen any week now.  Regardless (warning:  more food pics coming), we ate like kings at Clarter Farms.  Garden-fresh salad, wild Alaskan salmon that Kelly got up there, and Conundrum wine.  Oh, yes, it all was good!  In the morning, we had those fresh eggs, and there’s nothing like one hot from the roost.  We were piggies.

That next day we bundled into the Clarter Prius and sipped our way up to Reno for a visit to the Harrah auto collection.  At one time, Harrah, an early casino mogul in Northern Nevada, had over 1500 cars.  At his death, the collection was broken up, but a core group was retained for this museum.  Thank goodness, for it is a superb gathering of American marks, even those that had European roots.  Who knew that Fiat once had a factory here, or that Rolls chassis were fitted with American bodies?  All very cool stuff.  Here’s a smattering of things that caught my eye.

L to R, clockwise:  don’t remember the mark, but this open-bodied monster with two rows of seats was the biggest thing in the display; a four-row station wagon; group shot; a bizarre Dali-esque redo of one of my favorites, a Citroen Deux-Chevaux; a 1956 Chrysler 300, slightly hotter than my old ‘56 Chrysler Newport, but full of nostalgia for Loni and I (our first date car); and the unimaginable solid copper Rolls.  Egad! 

My favorite car in the whole place was this pretty little Franklin.  I’m just astonished at the smooth and graceful flow of the lines for that era.

But, after all, this IS a blog about RV-ing, when it’s not about food, so we have to include one of the earliest RV’s, a 1921 Ford-based rig, with beds that folded out.  Naturally air-conditioned.

 

We had a great time with Lee and Kelly, and were sorry to leave those chickens, but they sent us on our way with a couple days’ supply.  We went up through Reno, and east again on I-80.  Destination:  Salt Lake City.

Yeah, right.  In our dreams.

WEDDING, REDUX IN SF

Summer finally over, almost, so it’s time to hit the road for our Fall trip.  The rig has been sitting in storage for several months now, and the first order of business is washing and polymering it.  This is a major piece of work as you first have to clean the roof thoroughly to avoid having dirty streaks run down whenever it gets wet.  The wash and coating took all day, but it was worth it.

Besides getting it looking good, the polymer coating does a great job when it comes time to clean off the various bugs, butterflies, dragonflies, etc. that we murder as we cruise along.  Mostly, I can get away with just a wet sponge and they come right off.  As I write this, much after the fact, we’ve had some horrendous splats that have washed right off.  It also rids us of another nuisance: wasps and yellowjackets.  They seem to love feasting on the splatty bodies. 

Our first destination was San Francisco for a couple of days to attend John & Meghan’s stateside reception after the wedding in Puerto Vallarta in June.  At 60mph, it’s a long day’s slog up the scenic I-5.

Sorry, California, I know it’s the end of summer, and this area isn’t irrigated, but this has to be the ugliest terrain we will travel on our entire trip.

We made it in about 8 hours or so, and, ignoring completely the deranged routings of our Garmin, we checked into our stealth RV park adjacent to SF.  Nope, I’m not spilling the beans.  I don’t want it clogging up!  First order of business was to be a Giants game that night.  Younger son Mike picked us up as we were staying at his place rather than in the rig, for convenience.  Even though the Giants are having a mediocre season, the fans are true fanatics.  Like NY, Boston, or Chicago, which all have functioning mass transit systems and compact areas, SF enjoys a sense of community identity that LA can’t match.  Riding the BART to the stadium was a hoot.  It was packed with fans wearing home team orange.  The only thing missing from the experience were the Tokyo pushers who pack riders into the cars like sardines.

The BART runs above ground in various areas, so we can see the sights as we motor along.  This Friday night happened to be Critical Mass ride night, the last Friday of the month.  Thousands of bicyclists take to the streets to “assert their rights to the road.”  While perhaps originally undertaken with noble intentions, it seems to have degenerated into an ignore-the-rules-of-the-road free-for-all that simply clogs traffic and angers everyone not on two wheels.  Here, it also is opportunity for, ah, free expression.

Yes, he’s totally in the buff, and he wasn’t the only one.  Sorry for the blurring (or maybe we should be grateful for it), but this was taken from the moving train.  I think this is something that would have warmed the hearts of the old SF columnists, Stan Delaplane and Lucius Beebe.  Anyway, we got to the park and gathered to await the arrival of the other guests.

L to R:  Meghan’s sis, Ashley, Alia, Meghan, John, Mike, M’s mom, Janet, Loni, the twins, and Kevin, A’s hubby.  We eventually had another ten or so.

All ball parks are beautiful when you first come up out of the tunnels or ramps and see that bright green field.  Of course, SF’s park looks out onto the Bay, so it’s even prettier.  However, SF is the yin and yang city par excellence, and that lovely atmosphere can turn on a brass monkey’s dime.

Oooh, baby, the coldest winter you will ever spend is a summer night in San Francisco!  We ate pretty good ballpark food, including garlic fries(!), got great Gordon Biersch beer, and the home team won in a thriller.  An excellent evening, enjoyed by the newlyweds and all.

The next evening was the reception, held in a fancy bar setting down in the city center.  The gals had visited the flower mart earlier in the day, and made bouquets for the do.

The bride and groom posed for some pics on the grounds, and then made a strolling entrance.  Think they’re happy?

The venue was a glass atrium bar that did a bang-up job.  I’d hate to see the tab, and I didn’t have to!  This is early on, before most of the guests arrived.  It was packed later.

Last time we saw Mike, he was clean-shaven and sporting the same close-cropped hair he has had for years.  Well, things change!  Here’s young hirsute with Alia and her folks, Lynne and Bill. 

The cake was quirky and cool, and the spread was scrumptious.

The cutting of the cake was accomplished without any mashing in the face, etc.  It was as good as it looked!

Everybody partied until long after dark, when the management had to, um, “suggest” that the evening was over.  A great time had by all.  Now, they’re old married folks, off on their five week honeymoon to Israel, Jordan, Turkey, and Greece.  Somebody is sure living right!

THE OLD BOY’S STILL GOT IT

Meet Stan Wilson.  89 years young with a memory, sadly, better than mine.  He was “Mr. Wilson,” in our  youth, never Stan to his face.  But, now that we’re all near geezers ourselves, we allow ourselves a little familiarity.  He’s Stan now, with as much affection today as we had respect back then.  Stan was our honors English teacher at Thomas Downey High in Modesto for our sophomore and junior years in (ouch) 1960-1962.  To a man, and woman, we all rate him as the most influential teacher of our lives.  We didn’t just read literature in his class; he taught us to write with clarity (this blog notwithstanding), to think critically, and to act as civil human beings (mostly).  We all recognize that we have applied his teachings throughout our careers and lives.  We are incredibly glad that we got the chance to tell him so.

Thanks to Patty and Merry as organizers, and Consuelo and Bob as our long-suffering and ultra-gracious hosts, many of the “gang” got together at a mini-reunion in Modesto this Saturday.  Short notice meant a number of the group weren’t able to make it, but we had a party of twenty show up.  They hadn’t all arrived yet for this shot.

Yikes!  The gray brigade!  For Modesto in August, we really got lucky.  Barely 80 degrees, light breeze.  Couldn’t have been better.  The plantings throughout C&B’s back yard are lush and tropical.  We could have been at a resort.  (OK, now can we come back next year?)

The reason this get-together was so special is that we had “lost” Stan for the last 40 years.  No one had had any contact with him, and he had moved on for several careers, a marriage, and multiple locales.  We’ve had these mini-reunions off and on for decades, and Stan’s name always came up in the “I wonder whatever happened to . . .” musings.  We tried locating him by calling around this area and in Santa Cruz (his last known location) to all the S. Wilson’s, etc., but no luck.  When the internet came around we tried Googling, but no joy.  By chance, last summer we had a gathering, and just before it there was an article in the Modesto Bee about a 70th reunion of Modesto High grads.  There were only three, and one was named Stanley Wilson!  Bob saw the article, used totally illegal means at his disposal to try to locate him, and got a number in Turlock, a town just south of Modesto.  Throughout the night of that reunion we tried to call him, but no answer.  The next day, Loni and I drove to his address, found it shut tight, but kept asking and eventually tracked him down in a nursing rehabilitation facility.  Since then, he’s had a stream of calls and visits from the group, but it took until now to get a party together to celebrate his upcoming 89th birthday in September.  Do you think he was having a good time?

 

The T-shirt was put together by Claudia who, unfortunately, was in the wilds of Washington at this time.  But she had visited Stan earlier this summer, along with Patty and Merry.  Keith stunned the crowd with the news that the Pope himself had recognized Stan’s invaluable contributions to setting us on the straight and narrow, and presented him with the proof.

The students and their mentor.  Those tags have our high school senior yearbook photos.  Nothing’s changed that I can see.  L to R, for when Mom gets to view this:  Lee, Patty, Tom, Me, Will, Keith, Mark, Merry (standing), Barbara, Jim, and Bob.  And, of course, Stan!

Now, this is my blog, after all, so you know there’s gotta be a food report.  Calling Michelin!  Get some stars over here.

Thanks to C&B for the grilled meats, and to everyone else for the scrumptious sides.  Plenty of wine was brought and consumed.  I didn’t even have to drink the cheapo that I dragged in.  Thanks, gang!

Stan was on a short leash by the rehab facility after his escape last year (aided by, hmmm, now who was that?), so we had to get him back reasonably early.  He needs some help walking now, and we scooted him around in the wheelchair when we could.  Knowing his sweet tooth from examining his refrigerator last year (appalling), Loni had baked him some chocolate chip cookies which she gave him as he was leaving.  He had barely fastened his seat belt before he got the tin open.  Hey, he’s entitled.

 

All too often, we leave behind those who meant so much to us in our formative years without so much as a thank you or second thought, both in our eagerness to get on with the next stage of our lives and in our ignorance then of just how much we actually were using what we had been taught.  How lucky we are to be able to tell Stan after all these years how much he really meant to us.  It’s never too late.  Keep on trucking, Mr. Wilson!

MOVIE STAH

Well, not exactly the Big Screen.  When we got back from Camp, there was an email message from a casting ‘wrangler’ via our scooter club.  They were looking for scooter owners to appear in a commercial they were shooting.  Well, all right!  $120 bucks for the “talent” and $75 for the scoot.  All these years of living in LaLa land and finally my big break.  After some email exchanges (I was supposed to bring 3 changes of “hipster” clothes; say, What?  Do they really want ME?  Actually, they really wanted the scoot, I was just a necessary evil.), I accepted, and Tuesday morning, with Loni off to work at UCLA, I motored all the way across town to East LA where the shoot was to be done.  I’m not a big fan of freeway traffic, so it was on surface streets the whole way and took me about 1 1/2 hours.  Thanks to Google Maps the night before, I found my way there without any drama.  Checked in about 9:30 with the cast manager, and plunked down to wait.  And wait.  It appears that about 90% of a shoot is down time.  I and one other guy were at least a generation older than the rest of the cast, but everyone was very cool, if not exactly “hip.”  They announced they also wanted us to act as non-scooterist crowd-extras.  Beats sitting around.  We were called to wardrobe, and apparently I’m unhip, because they outfitted me with a shirt that escaped from Kramer’s closet.  I thought I was already hip.

Hmph.  I had to give the wardrobe lady my driver’s license as security.  As if I was going to run off with that?  It’s all for naught, anyway.  The commercial being shot was for a Russian cell phone company, and will never be seen over here unless it gets posted to uTube or something.  Not a great loss, from what I saw.  The conceit was that this was supposed to be a fancy club, red carpet and all, with “celebs” posing for “paparazzi,” with us “crowdies” jumping all over and waving to the hotties. 

Well, they thought they were hot.  The poor girl in the white dress had to keep tugging it down about every ten seconds.

Finally, it was time for the real stars.  Scooters!  Man your machines and form up over here.  And wait.  And wait . . .  Hmmm.  Look how “hip” my fellows are dressed.  I needn’t have worried.

OK!  Lights!  Camera!  Action!  Scooters, get on your machines and mass up down the end of the drive.  And . . . wait.

So, after all this, what did we end up doing?  Bunching up like you see above, then, on cue, ride about 100 feet toward the camera and come to a stop.  That’s great!  One more time!  That’s great!  One more time!  That’s great!  One . . . , well, you get the picture.  This went on ad nauseum about 15 times.  Each time we went back to group up, we had to sit there for five minutes, engines idling and overheating (two dropped out).  Did I mention it was 94 degrees?  No?  Well, it was a sauna.  At last we were done, and they fed us lunch at about 3:30.  Of course, we extras had to wait while all the crew got to cut in front of the line.  This, as it turns out, was a non-union job, with all participants being paid in cash so there’s no paper trail.  There were a lot of union folks there on the QT, picking up a little rent money. 

They were packing up all the gear, so I thought we were done.  Silly me.  The email DID say it was a 10 hour shoot.  They were just done at this location.  Now we were moving about 7 or 8 miles to the warehouse district downtown.  Actually, it was the abandoned warehouse district, as in mean streets.  Yikes, this is where the tv cop shows all film their dumped body scenes.

 

The producer popped up and warned everyone to stay within the fenced area as there were crazy types out there.  Everyone began to close ranks and we looked like a herd circling to protect its young.  We were here to film something inside the abandoned warehouse, but no one knew what.

Once again we did a lot of standing around and waiting for something to happen.  All it did was to get dark.  Some old hack starting extolling acting wisdom to the desperate wanna-bees, and they gathered around hoping for the pearl that would unlock their careers.

I drifted over to listen and heard him say:  “There’s text and subtext.  You know what I mean?  The text is the written words.  Ah, but the subtext is between the lines.  It’s what WE bring to the role.”  That’s when I promptly drifted away.  No one’s career would be made this night.

With darkness approaching, and me in a place I’m not quite sure how to navigate home from (I’d never been in this part of LA before), I was glad to finally get the call to enter the warehouse.  Or so I thought.  Ugh.  Peeling paint, tons of dust kicked into the air aggravated by a fog machine of all things.  This was supposed to be a rave site, with a DJ on a platform and the most irritating strobe lights I’ve ever had to endure.  Our mission was to jump about and wave our arms over our heads while music blared, and to continue to do so when the music stopped while they did the dialogue parts (with us gyrating in the background).  It was hilarious.  During the silences we could hear the Russian-speaking actors doing their lines as we pantomimed discoing our brains out.  Sorry, no photos of this insanity.  What I really wanted was a respirator.  All I could think about was that peeling paint in this ancient warehouse being from the lead era for sure.  I was sorely tempted to abandon the dough and cut out.  But we persevered and, at about 9:30, came the final “cut!” 

I made a beeline for the door and a fast trot to the paywagon.  I didn’t want to be at the end of a long line waiting one by one to get paid.  At least they didn’t abscond.  I duly signed the release, held it and the cash up for a photo to prove I got both, and boogied.  By now it’s pitch black.  I could see the downtown LA skyline off in the distance (we were way to the east), so I simply kept zigging and zagging until I got over that way and to familiar ground.  I have to say you really feel vulnerable riding out in the open on a scooter on deserted warehouse streets with few lights and fewer signs.  But all was good once I got to downtown business area and heading west.  Another hour, and home.  Rest assured, my fans, this was not a career move.