Our SoCal LazyDaze owner’s club has monthly outings (called Caravans) from September through June (Nov-Dec are combined) each year. Attendance rarely drops below 60+ rigs, and sometimes tops 100. Within the SoCal Caravan are 8 or 9 informal subgroups composed of folks who like to get together during these meetings for potlucks, campfires, etc. Each subgroup takes a turn in “hosting” a monthly Caravan, consisting of registering each rig as it arrives, handing out schedules and info, doing the morning announcements via CB, and taking care of all the gear that goes with the group. When Loni and I attended our first Caravan after picking up Albatross nearly 5 years ago (!), the host subgroup was the “Past-Tents.” That turned out to be a fortunate bit of serendipity, as we have enjoyed newfound close friendships ever since.
The outing for this month (January) was held at Lake Perris State Park in the Perris Valley, about 50 miles east and 20 miles south of downtown LA. Loni’s and my recent trip to Paris sparked the idea to make this Caravan a “Lake Paris” theme. All the Past-Tents pitched in and brought theme materials, including a ten-foot Eiffel Tower, French posters, French flags, cheezy French café accordion music, and, of course, berets. That’s Loni in her red beret under the canopy, manning the welcome tent.
I once again got dragooned into doing the morning announcements over the CB, so Loni and I ginned up a “Pierre and Fifi” routine with a few bad jokes* and an atrocious French accent that fooled no one. Still, it was better than a dry recitation of daily events.
* As in: Q: “What do you get when you throw a grenade into a French kitchen”
A: “Linoleum Blownapart. (Groans)
OK, there are precious few jokes about the French on the internet, other than about their military ineptitude, which I didn’t want to use. So the pickings were slim.
Loni, who missed it last year, got to go on the tour of the local county morgue and viewed an autopsy. She was only mildly impressed, having seen much the same on a number of occasions at work over the years. I went last year and thought it was pretty cool. While Loni was doing that, Mom and I went with a group to the March ARB (formerly AFB) Air Museum which is just north of Lake Perris. As many of you know, I’m a sucker for air museums, and we’ve been to quite a few in our travels around the country. Mom is an old Navy Wave from WWII, and was stationed at Jacksonville NAS in Florida where she worked with the flyboys, so she also has had a long interest in military planes. At nearly 89, she was the oldest person there and the only one with WWII service. The museum is low key, but has some very interesting stuff, including an SR71 Blackbird high-altitude reconnaissance plane, one of the few remaining that has both engines intact. It’s a mach-3+ machine and still holds the speed record for air-breathing aircraft. They entered service in 1964 and continued in Air Force service until 1998. Because they flew so high and fast, none were ever shot down although 12 were lost to crashes. Mom is way down the body on the left.
These things were flying gas tanks, with the fuel stored within the fuselage. Because it was made of a titanium alloy, it had a high coefficient of expansion. When on the ground, it leaked fuel like a sieve; when flying, everything tightened up. The fuel was some special composition that had an extremely high flash (ignition) point. They had to use a sodium-based explosive to ignite the main fuel. Our docent told us of an incident where a non-fuel fire broke out near one of these things. A maintenance man took a jerry-can of the SR71 fuel and used it to douse the flames! This thing was created before the days of computer-aided design, using slide rules. And it still holds the speed record. Amazing. Kudos, Lockheed “Skunk Works.”
They also had a nice set of MIG fighters, from early to late models, a bunch of huge bombers, Phantoms and dozens of familiar as well as obscure craft.
They even had a kindred soul to our own rig:
They do restoration work here, and we had a nice chat with one of the guys working to restore this old B-17 Flying Fortress. They’ve stripped all the paint off, patched up the holes, fabricated parts that were missing, and now they’re about to paint it. Mom was a real trouper, walking pretty good distances to get to all the planes that were displayed outdoors.
She also got right in there in the bomb bay underneath this B-29 Superfortress, like the Enola Gay that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, but she eventually pooped out and had to take a break.
Back at the Caravan, we did the usual round of activities. Mom and I broke out our set of bocce balls and, in a nod to the French, played a game of boules. The ground, however, was very hard and bumpy, so success was due more to luck than skill. Some of the best parts of any Caravan are the Past-Tents’ potlucks, and this outing was no different. We even had a magnifique boeuf Bourguignon, and Loni made a yummy French green lentils dish. The lady with the beret and sunglasses is Agnes, mother of fellow camper Nancy, and she’s even older than Mom – 91! They had a fun time trying to hear one another.
A little campfire to end the day. Despite the coats in these later-in-the-day pictures, we had sunny daily weather in the 70’s until Saturday, when we had rain in the morning. All in all, a good Caravan with 95 rigs in attendance.
That’s the three of us, right in the middle. Good job, Past-Tents!
[Photo by Art]
