WILD WILD WEST

Last week, Tuesday thru Sunday (May 13-18), we took off in Albatross for one of the monthly Lazy Daze Caravan Club outings, this time held at Live Oak Camp, a Santa Barbara County dry camping facility for large groups.  It’s located in the Santa Ynez Mountains, just off SR 154 a few miles south of Lake Cachuma.  It’s basically 40 acres of Oak Trees, sparse grass, and dusty soil that is hell when it blows.  We were there last December for the winter meetup, when the overnite temps hit 18 degrees and we froze our buns off.  This time, the daytime temps went over 100, an 80 degree swing.  I much prefer camping in heat than cold, and we got our money’s worth of Fahrenheit.  But I get ahead of myself.

The overall club has hundreds of members, not all of whom are regular attendees.  Within the club are a handful of subgroups of members who have gravitated to each other as compatible friends.  Our subgroup is called the Past Tents, as most segued  to RVing after years of tent camping.  In rotation, each subgroup is the “host” group for one or more of the nine monthly meetups through the year.  Mostly this involves setting up the reception/registration tent and related cash box, CB equipment, direction signs, forms, etc., and then manning the tent as rigs check in and doing the morning announcements over the CB.  Our group got bored with this routine a few years back, and tried to inject a little more life to the proceedings.  We started with a few jokes and “routines” during the announcements, then added music selections to punch things up.  Then we thought up “themes” for the meetups. Our outing last year at Lake Perris became “April in Paris” with everyone wearing berets (see Mom, at right) and spouting bad accents, along with a lot of clever props, including a nine-foot Eiffel Tower.  Each morning the announcements started with French music (“La Vie En Rose” etc.).  We thought this would spur the other groups on to similar efforts, but no luck.  When it’s our turn to host, yours truly has been stuck with the announcer job ever since, following my cancer treatments, my voice dropped and I was told it sounded “professional” over the air.  Hah!  Not buying it.  No one else wants to roll out of their warm rig in the a.m. to trudge to the host tent and do it.  I did have fun last December with a knockoff of Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater broadcast of the “War of the Worlds.” It went pretty well, despite me having to do most of the voices.  This time around, we came up with a theme of the Wild Wild West.  This was a much bigger production, and we and another couple, Steve and Nancy, put in a lot of hours planning, designing, buying, painting, and constructing various props and decorations.  Other members helped out with a lot of neat additional decorations, but the grunt work was mostly the four of us plus Steve’s artist sister-in-law, Di. 

First thing we did was to make a lot of “Wanted” posters of various Past Tents and a few of the Caravan mucky-mucks.  Loni came up with the idea of a tea bath to “age” them, followed by a few minutes in the oven.  They came out pretty well.  Hardest thing was thinking of monikers for the various desperados.

I wanted to do a target shoot and a “drawdown” competition, so I bought several “nerf” guns at WalMart.  That’s one sitting on the counter.  They actually have a revolving chamber holding six “bullets.”  Kinda neat, but they’re rather bulky contraptions, so making holsters was a challenge.  We ended up using 3 liter soda bottles with the tops cut off, strengthened by wraps of duct tape, and fastened to the leg via long strips of Velcro.  The result is shown in the picture at the top of this post.  The holster kept sliding down my skinny leg, but when we got to the contests they seemed to work pretty well for everyone else.

Loni and Nancy painted up some murals of a Western sky, laying things out on our living room floor to do so.  I was worried about bleeding through to the wood, but it didn’t happen.  (That’s two murals, upside down against each other.)

We also went out to the Dollar Store and bought cowboy hats, which were surprisingly good, especially for a buck.  I’m sporting mine in the top picture.

One of the functions I wanted to put on was a poker night in the “saloon.”  We scrounged all over the house, but could only come up with a small set of chips, so online once again and came up with a nifty boxed set of 500.

Loni also washed and de-labeled about 50 beer bottles to use as decorations and as support props for the target shooting.  I also wanted to do an ice cream social which, given the eventual heat, turned out to be the best attended function.  But how to get 180 units of ice cream up there?  We toyed with the idea of coolers and dry ice, but that was a logistical nightmare.  Ultimately, we farmed it out to four or five rigs, and everyone bought 30-40 units each and packed them into the freezer compartments of the rig fridges.  Worked well in the end.  Our last task was to buy a bale of straw to use as a prop.  Fortunately, the Malibu Feed Bin is just up the road, and they stock it.  Ten bucks a bale.  We stopped off there on our way North and strapped a bale onto our scoot carrier (left the scoot home).  We already were packing three large tubs of host tent materials, so the interior of our rig was loaded to the max.  Couldn’t walk around in the back for all the  junk.  That’s an old headboard upside down on the left that we stripped of a few panels to make it into a section of fence/hitching post, to which we tied up the rocking horse and the far back left. 

We spent the first night (Tues) at Lake Cachuma, as we weren’t permitted to enter Live Oak until Wednesday morning.  Of course, with all this junk, Loni “couldn’t” cook, so we drove over to Solvang to get some  dinner. On a Tuesday nite, the place was pretty deserted, so we just picked the closest place to where we could park the rig.  This turned out to be “Chomp,” a supposedly high-end burger chain, and what a mistake we made.  I was drawn in by the fact they advertised milkshakes and malts, because, as is obvious from previous posts, I am a sucker for butterfat.  I will say that the shake was very good (although I actually ordered a malt), and they even give you the metal mix-cup for seconds. But the “burger.”  Oye.  Perhaps the single worst “fancy” burger I have ever eaten.  I say fancy (pretentious?) in order to distinguish it from McDonald’s, etc., where you don’t expect much for a couple of bucks.  The patty, if you can call it that, had this strange smooth consistency as if they had pureed some meat, poured it into a round form, then baked it.  Utterly tasteless and textureless.  Maybe it was an example of what they do with the “pink slime” byproduct that got so much press last year.  Anyway, avoid Chomp like the plague unless, of course, you just want a shake.

Back at Cachuma, I made the trek over to the check-in station to pay our fees.  In doing so, I crossed the plains of hell and picked up every foxtail that ever existed from the beginning of time.  They were also under my foot, and really wedged in there.  Pluck, pluck, pluck . . .

At Live Oak the next morning we unloaded all of the gear we’d been carrying, set up the host tent, and erected/hung the rest of the decorations.

Steve and Nancy on the left, Barbara and Loni on the right.  Note cowboy Howdy marionette on table.  I picked that up at a local garage sale during one of our morning walks.

Loni’s bartender and the good use of all those beer bottles and posters.

We set up the poker night in the “saloon” room behind the faux swinging doors.  Unfortunately, it was not well attended, but we did get two full tables with a few more players rotating in as someone went bust.  I had downloaded an album of honky tonk piano music that we played in the background.  Love that iPod.

The target shooting and the drawdowns went off pretty well.  The nerf bullets fly surprisingly fast, and relatively straight.  But the trajectories weren’t always true, so a lot of cans remained standing.

For a while, everyone was 7 years old again, sort of like that Twilight Zone story about the old folks home and kick the can.  For this stuff, I had downloaded music from “High Noon,” “Good Bad & The Ugly,” “OK Corral,” and the “Magnificent Seven.”

It was nice on Saturday to have all the theme stuff behind us and we could just kick back and relax with the usual excellent Past Tents spread.  We are really fortunate to have so many talented cooks that come up with inventive dishes.

The Past Tents Gang does it again!  (Missing many members.)

TAHOE, FAMILY

Can’t believe it’s been two months since I last posted an entry.  It’s not that we’ve been just sitting around, but sheer laziness on my part.  Guess I’ll combine a couple of things in this post.

At the end of April, we trekked on up highway 395 on the eastern slope of the Sierras to Incline Village at Lake Tahoe, where we would stay for five nights at the Hyatt Regency for Loni’s CBBS (California Blood Bank Society) convention.  This always is a favorite venue and the weather cooperated beautifully.  We hit a week-long seam between snow and wind on one end and much colder temps on the other.  The trip up 395 was long (454 miles) but we made it in a fairly easy 8.5 hour drive, including stops for lunch, gas, and bathroom breaks.  We listened to some books on CD, which made it a lot easier.  Plenty of snow still on the peaks, so it was a gorgeous drive, but we were bushed when we finally got in.  Our room was excellent, with this pretty view out the window.  We were staying here, of course, because the room was paid for by the CBBS in return for our working to set up the conference and to man the registration desk for four days.  In this setting, that’s a great deal.  That first night, we just went down to the sports bar for an easy burger meal, which turned out to be excellent.  Big, juicy burgers with quality toppings.  Paired with a beer, we were primed to crash early.  I’ll spare you the meeting details, but all went smoothly, with good attendance and surprisingly delicious catering by the hotel for the lunches and cocktail hours.  No complaints at all, especially since it was all essentially free! 

The weather, as I said, was perfect.  60’s to 70’s, no wind.  The resort has a dock which we took advantage of in the evening as the sun set.  This is looking about due south.

For our dinners on the remaining nights, we went across the street to the much more reasonably priced local diners.  The highly recommended French place that I wanted to try -- Le Bistro -- was closed for another month.  The Frogs must have thought it was August.  The posted menu made the pain all the worse.  We will have to try it if we’re ever up there again.  We settled for much less glamorous fare, although quite good in its own right, at each of Tomaatos and Austin's.  We ate at Tomaatos twice, and I must confess I had the shrimp scampi both times.  I’m a sucker for properly cooked shrimp and lots of garlic.  Austin’s also was excellent, and I have no reservations about recommending both of these places.

We did, of course, work hard.

I about passed out blowing up that happy blood drop.  Stupid tiny inflation valves!

On Saturday, the conference ended at noon, and we finished the packing up shortly thereafter, said our good-byes, and were on our way to the Bay Area to see the family.  These good-byes were a bit poignant, as this will be our last conference as worker bees.  Judy, the organization’s secretary and organizer of the conferences, retired after the meeting and future events will be run by some corporate entity.  So, no more freebies for us.  We’ve had good times doing this here, Vegas, Huntington Beach, San Francisco, and more.

Our trip down the hill on I-80 to the Bay was unremarkable save for the relatively light traffic and the 48 mpg we got.  Nice to go downhill most of the time.  We barely got 40 on the trip up, which was indeed a lot of climbing.  In S.F., we stayed with John & Meghan & Isla at their place in Noe Valley, where Poppy (OK, now you know) got to play with the cutest 5 month old on the planet.

Ah, nothing like a grandchild that you can leave behind when it’s diaper time.  Sunday, we all trekked over the Bay Bridge to Jack London Square to join Mike and Alia for brunch at Lungomare.  I don’t know about their other meals, but the brunch menu was very inventive and absolutely delicious.  I had the organic duck eggs over a pork shoulder-onions-peppers polenta.  Sounds weird, but ooooh my.  Loni had the poached eggs over sausage arancini with a citrus hollandaise. The kids boozed it up but I had one of their very good non-A concoctions.

We all were happy campers.

 

Hey, I could take this Bay Area living!  Except for the housing prices, of course.  And the rain.  After brunch, Mike, Alia and we strolled around the area, then drove over to where the USS Hornet was set up as a museum.  We had a fun tour of the crew quarters, hangar bay, and the flight deck.  Mike and I are in front of an A-4 Skyhawk.  I don’t have a clue as to what the prop job is.  We had A-4’s on the Kittyhawk and the Connie during my deployments back in the day (1969).  2,960 of these workhorses were built over a 25 year production run from 1954 to 1979!  That’s a pretty robust design.  And the first 500 were all built for about $700,000 each.  Compare that with the final program unit cost of the problem-plagued F-22A Raptor:  $412 million!  Apiece!

As always, a great visit.