I volunteer with a local railroad museum, and have for some time. I am the group’s curator, and lead most of the restoration projects. The railroad museum is in the same park as the Patterson House Museum, my place of work. This is both good and bad… I have a short commute from my workplace to my hobby/volunteer site. I can handle little issues for the railroad museum while at work… I have incorporated the railroad into the camps I offer at Patterson House.
The railroad museum consumes (too) much of my free time… It has for many years. Generally I don’t mind... but late last week I found myself becoming frustrated and angered by some of the membership, particularly one board member… He can’t find the time to show up at a board meeting (so far he has missed 8, and attended… drumroll… none,) but he is very ready to claim authority, legitimate or not, if there is a steam train to play with… The museum held its Railfair this weekend with visiting steam engines, model railroad layouts and such… Generally I would have been there all day, all weekend… working and playing…
But this time I decided to sit railfair out.
There was an upside to the decision. In place of playing with trains, I had a weekend to start to unwind, and play…
Saturday I ran errands. The birds needed food… I visited a couple of book stores… I found some books, particularly an 1899 copy of The Life and Achievements of Admiral Dewey… hero of Manila… (the book says so.) I drank too much beer.
Sunday, Tina (aka T, the wife) & I & Steph (aka, the daughter) went sailing with Erik T’s brother and his wife Mia… Erik’s boat is a 65’ MacGregor, big, fast, nice… We sailed from Tiburon, under the Golden Gate Bridge, along San Francisco’s waterfront. It was a spectacular day, a bit cool in the morning, but quite warm by midday… We saw dolphins and sea lions… We ducked into the Aquatic Park lagoon, under sail, then tacked out… (The Aquatic Park Lagoon is small and shallow, and the boat is huge… this was showing off… people on the piers applauded.) We ate lunch sitting in the bay, off the ferry building, then motored into McCovey Cove, then back into the bay… The wind picked up off Treasure Island, and we flew along as we passed between Alcatraz and Angel Island. We dropped the sails and motored into the Yacht club in Tiburon, where we reclaimed our car, and left Erik and Mia to motor off to Sausalito. It was a perfect summer day, in one of the most beautiful places in the world… Tourists on sightseeing boats were watching us have fun. I will accept that we may be spoiled.
Monday, a rare holiday with no plans gave me time to pull out the camping equipment and get everything ready for the trip… The Escape is packed… I have a couple of jacks… three gallons of water for the car, oil, tools, a shovel, tie downs, at least two rolls of duct tape and some hose clamps. I have a compressor and a jump box. There are tie down straps, 50’ of climbing rope, and an axe. There are 50 CD’s, after all we need our music. Then there is camping stuff… the tent, an awning, two folding chairs, two cots, a carpet for the tent floor, a bag of tent pegs and rope and a two mantle Coleman lantern.
Of course I need the drybox… a steamer trunk with pots and pans, dishes, a cook stove, a gallon of white gas, dish soap and matches. It lives in the attic, ready to go… along with a cheap ice chest and a plastic bin of food and booze, we have our equivalent of a chuck wagon.
The Escape being mostly loaded we once again set off for the coast… the local coast… at Half Moon Bay and Princeton Harbor… Again it was a spectacular summer day… again there were tourists and traffic, lots of both. Only 20 miles from home (only 7 if we could fly instead of following the somewhat curvy road) we (T, Steph, Emma the dog and yours truly) found ourselves sitting in a beach bar, watching the surf, sitting in the sun, relaxing. (“Found ourselves” may be an overstatement… we knew where we were going… we knew what we would find…)
We found Sam’s Chowder House… home of the Lobster roll sandwich… There was beer and wine involved. There was desert… Emma found a stray shrimp on the ground.
Having eaten, and relaxed, we fought the traffic back across the mountain…
I returned to my packing… now the other stuff… clothing and stuff… two duffles… one with camping clothing… the other for motels and places with showers…
I am taking 4 cameras (two digital, two film, along with my last two rolls of Kodachrome, and 4 rolls of B&W) The cameras demand support equipment battery chargers and spare batteries for the digitals, a tripod. I have a power inverter to run the battery chargers off the cars cigarette lighter… I will bring the laptop (both to download the photos and clear the memory cards, but also to update the blog (assuming I can find an internet connection… by no means a given in many of the places we will be)
Finally there are maps and a small library… maps of California, Nevada, Arizona… maps of Utah, two Utah atlases, maps for each of too many hikes planned to various Indian ruins, and four copies of my favorite map, the AAA Indian Country map, a map made famous by Tony Hillerman and his detective novels set against the backdrop of the Navajo Reservation…
Tomorrow, Tuesday, I will go to work at Patterson House… I will make sure everything is in order… I will return a projector I checked out from City Hall… I plan on loading a few pieces of hard dry eucalyptus for those really good camp fires… then I will point the Escape southward towards Pasadena, once my home… where Richard, my accomplice for the next trip resides… Wednesday we (Richard and I) will head east at high speed… headed for the Utah plateaus… Navajo National Monument, Comb Ridge, Cedar Mesa, and the land of The Old Ones….
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