February 2014

VERN

Vern at Omaha Beach American cemetery in  Normandy

Five years ago, Janice's mother Loraine, remarried at age 85 after her husband had passed. For their honeymoon, she and brand-new-right-out-of-the-box Vern went snorkeling off the Great Barrier Reef. In 2009, they came to visit us in France and we toured the region with them.  Earlier this month we lost 92 year old Vern after he had a stroke, fell and struck his head on the cement driveway. He was taken to the hospital by ambulance but within hours it became apparent that due to the extent of his internal injuries his condition would be fatal.

While unconscious, he was medicated to keep him comfortable but he never woke and passed 3 days later on January 26th. While helping us clear out his desk, his son came across 3 explosive devices in a drawer. They were WWII igniters, initiators, triggers and the like that he had undoubtedly brought back as souvenirs as he had been a combat engineer during the war.

The fact that they were in a small box with a note on it that said "DANGER: live percussion igniters" got our undivided attention. (Spoiler alert: everyone lived) Like a primer, they are designed to set off a larger charge or explosive. Knowing that the Sheriffs department would go ballistic if I just waltzed in and laid them on the counter at the station, I called to let let them know what I had and to ask how they would like me to handle this.

Live percussion ignitor. Pull the pin, step on the plunger and let the party begin!

It being a small town with little action for the officers, they got all dramatic and put out a radio call "LIVE BOMB REPORTED IN A SENIOR TRAILER PARK!!!!" Four police cars from the city police and Sheriff's department showed up.  Not one of them had a clue what the devices were, but began discussing the possible need to evacuate the area. 

Meanwhile, the officers told passing pedestrians to go around the block to get home. They in turn (over) reacted by burning up the phone lines to all their neighbors and friends, telling them there were "9 police cars and snarling dogs" and that they should lock their doors and "shelter in place".

I persuaded the officers to let cooler heads prevail and call someone from the bomb squad to come out and have a look. They did, he came and identified them as 'live percussion igniters' ( Duh, he read the note!) then put them in a metal box and drove off with them in his car. He said they would dismantle them at their next training session. 

The next day, I was helping my mother in law clear out more stuff from their storage shed / workshop when I came across 6 more devices that were in the bottom drawer of his tool cabinet. I took the new 'demolition firing devices' home as I wasn't about to call the circus again. I quietly called the bomb squad Sergeant and had him drop by the house to pick them up.

You can see the one below with the pin attached and a timing device. The one at the top of the page has a convenient plunger so you can bury it, allowing someone to walk over it to trigger it or to set it up behind a door for someone to open, pushing the plunger.

Vern, you wild man you! He is now on the "no fly" list. Still, I can't be too harsh on him considering how tame these are compared to the souvenirs I have from my days in the military.....

As we continued to dispose of his property, I was struck by the fact that all the 'important' papers, souvenirs and things we save up for decades end up having so little value to those around us. In a matter of hours, the bulk of our earthly life is disposed of with nary a thought by those left behind. Meanwhile, what ever we do save will probably get disposed of by those who follow us. Only the memories remain.

Tough winter

As everyone knows, this has been a tough winter, especially for global warming zealots whose persuasions are so deeply entrenched you need spelunking gear to go after them. This month we got a few pictures from friends in the great white north, that we wanted to share with you.

Over the years, people have asked us how we could get to our island in the winter when the river is frozen. Personally, we choose not to, but some hardy neighbors apparently do by using a Canadian  Icebreaker.

We sure don't want to appear insensitive to our Eastern family and neighbors, as we have  seen the endless horrendous winter storms that have ravaged the East coast. We want them to know that we feel their pain. They maybe up to their eyeballs in snow, ice, power shortages and freeeeeeeezing temperatures, but they should know that it has not been a picnic here in California this winter either. In fact, just the other day there was a gust of wind so strong, I had to comb my hair. It was absolutely brutal.

Did you know...

In 1933 when banking failures made hard currency scarce, Americans turned to script. Most was printed on paper, but some towns used whatever was at hand, even old tires and fish skin to keep the economy going. In Pismo Beach (city limits 1/4 mile from our driveway) the chamber of Commerce and 11 local businesses traded the plentiful Pismo clam shell. This .50c piece was numbered and signed in India ink. It changed hands as change and was later redeemed as cash became available. Others fetched more "clams", up to $20.00 Some of this emergency money was later donated to the Smithsonian. 

Speaking of Pismo Beach, each year thousands of vibrant orange and black Monarch Butterflies flock here, seeking shelter like us from the freezing northern winters. From late October to February, the butterflies cluster in the limbs of a grove of Eucalyptus trees. 

Spectators come from all over to view the Monarchs. The butterflies form dense clusters with each one hanging with its wing down over the one below it to form a shingle effect. This provides shelter from the rain and warmth for the group. The weight of the cluster help keeps it from whipping in the wind and dislodging the butterflies. 

Our colony is one of the largest in the country, having an average of 25,000 butterflies over the last five years. The Monarchs that visit are a special variety. They have a life span of six months as opposed to that of common Monarchs who live only six weeks. This is apparently due to a unique fat storing system. Even with an extended life span, those butterflies that leave in March will never return.

Show and tell 

As we go to press, we are three days from flying out of here for the season. We will take a nap and wake up in Paris. Whatever has not gotten done by now won't get done until our return next October. We have accomplished the "absolutely must get it done's", so all that remained were the "we would really like to get it done's" and the "we wish we could get it done's". Its been a great winter here but it is time to go. Besides, we are completely out of sunscreen.

Michael's place when we arrived October 1st

Janice's place at our departure in February

Janice pretending to paint the fort for upcoming grand kids visit, 
but really just having fun herself

Come on kids, time to play!

Sedona Arizona

Twenty years ago or so, Janice and I were visiting Sedona Arizona, (where they shoot a lot of the cowboy movies) when we stumbled into a shop that had the largest handmade Indian drum I had ever seen. Sedona is a very chi-chi town with shops brimming with one of a kind artsy fartsy pieces. You know, the price-is-no-object kind of places. With my showing the appropriate amount of interest, the shop owner was only too happy to tell me they were hand made by an Pueblo Indian tribe in Taos, New Mexico.

Later travels brought us to Taos, and we were eager to look up the workshop where these drums were made by native craftsmen. Over the years we have learned that when you are a poor American, the LAST place you purchase art is in a gallery, so we always go straight to the source to the artist him or herself. Besides, the drum we wanted was a spiritual ceremonial drum that lacked the gaudy painted figures tourists seem to love.

Built over a hollowed out cottonwood log frame, it is left to slowly dry for a year to prevent cracking. The walls are thinned from the hollow center to a thickness between 1 1/4 to 2 1/2" (3 to 8cm), with a hand cut Elk hide over each end. The hide is hand-scalloped, stretched and secured with rawhide lacing to the frame. The depth and diameter of the frame, the thickness of the walls, temperature and humidity-all affect the tone, so each drum has its own distinct sound.

Luck was with us, as they had an enormous drum that would fit perfectly in our home in California and was to become a coffee table. It was not the first time we had picked up some piece that was totally impractical to travel with, but to pass on it was completely out of the question. The volume of the inside of a dome home is so overwhelming that any conventionally sized art piece would appear diminutive and be lost. Conversely, some of the pieces we have acquired would overwhelm a conventional setting.

I negotiated like a madman, and when we finally agreed on a price, I ran out to the car to get my checkbook to pay for it. I was gone less than 20 seconds, but it was long enough for the owner to find out about the sale and put a stop to the whole transaction. The new and improved price was an out of the question budget buster for a young family and so we left, furious and drumless. I barely resisted calling him an Indian giver.

I know the bible says that we should not covet things but I could have gone to confession a hundred times and I would still have coveted that sucker. [I prefer to rationalize it as being ambitious and having good taste] It has been a thorn in my side and on my bucket list ever since. The thing is, that the diameter (4 feet, 1.3M) is so large that very few cottonwood trees of that size are available to harvest.

Pueblo Indian ceremonial drum. Taos, New Mexico

 This month, though, Janice found one online and we snagged it. So now I will pray for forgiveness for my covetous nature... but doing it while sitting by our drum. ;-)   Patience, is it's own reward.

January, 2014

San Luis Obispo. Iconic California and home when we ...eh...are home (!)

On the road again...

We were on a 3 week road trip this past month. It was time to make the rounds to visit the kids and grand kids all over the North West, so we hopped into our pick up and drove the equivalent of going from Los Angeles to Bangor Maine. Our first stop was in Kelso, Washington where we spent several days over Christmas with Cassie and husband Steve, his parents Joel and Cathy and of course the star of the event, baby Ryan. Steve was recently promoted to head chef at the restaurant he works at while Cassie continues with her ASL (American Sign Language) classes. We are proud of them both.

No sooner had we left that the little man developed a case of RSV (a respiratory virus) causing him to spend a few days in the hospital, on and off, and scaring the living daylights out of us all with his labored breathing.  Ready to fly back up on a moments notice should the need arise, it seems that he is not out of the woods yet but doing marginally better.

Next up was making our way to Sandpoint Idaho to spend several days with #1 son Wesley and his significant other, Caitland. He was off for the week from working at his pharmaceutical manufacturing plant where he was recently promoted as a quality control inspector so we got to hang out together and get to know his girl also. What a sweetie! 

Speaking of promotions, I was also. I have gone from 'do nothing' to 'do little'. So now I do little or nothing.

Amy with James Wyatt

We drove back to the coast to the San Juan Islands to visit daughter Amy and Vance, all the kidlets and the newest addition to the family, James Wyatt. We celebrated New Years with their family and were invited to a monster truck jam. 

It was a first for Janice and I  and we got to see some of the craziest and dangerous extreme suicidal motorcycle jumps ever as seen in the short video sample above, then bunches of Monster trucks crushing cars, rolling over and jumping dirt mounds.

I have often told my grand children that they drive me to drink. This time 5 year old  Megan Grace told me I make her climb a wall.

Helping Vance drywall the laundry room

Dodging Christopher having the time of his life playing "let's run over grand pa"

Finally, we started the 3 day drive home via a required visit to The City. (The "City" is what Californians often call San Francisco, as if there is no other really worthy of the name). The irony did not escape us as we left 3 weeks of rain, cold, fog and clouds to arrive in the city on a glorious sunny 70 degree (21 c) day. In fact while there, a local sports bar had 2 snow machines running on its roof, showering pedestrians below. Inside, they added more ice to the drinks and left their freezer running full blast with the door wide open.

Our beloved San Francisco

Why? Because their beloved San Francisco 49ers were playing the Green Bay Packers in a raging Wisconsin snow storm and they wanted them to know that they "felt their pain" and were in solidarity with them. It should go without saying that our 49ers hammered their Packers.

We have bragging rights!

It would be depressing to live somewhere if there was absolutely nothing to brag about. Here we do, and we are as reticent to tell you about it as you are likely to find a bashful pole dancer. There is little point in not making the most of it and not beating our own drum so... drum roll please.....

Places that you have never heard of like our sleepy little town of San Luis Obispo, are not where you would expect to find 'cutting edge' anything. But you would be wrong. From medicine to wine, SLO as we locals call it is no slouch. If you were needing a medical MRI for instance, you could get one anywhere in the country. But if you wanted an ultra high end field MRI with many times the resolution of your facility's machine, you would have to find the very latest Siemens Magnetom Skyra 3T ultra high field MRI. Woah! How's that for a mouthful?

It is the only 'open bore' MRI in existence with an oversized opening, which is a godsend for the claustrophobic. To find one you could check with any of the major hospitals or medical centers like the Mayo clinic or the John Hopkins hospital, the Cleveland center, Mount Sinai, Stanford, or even the UCLA medical center.

Unfortunately, you would be out of luck as there are only 3 of these devices in all of the USA. One in Virginia, one in Oregon and one right here in San Luis Obispo California. So how did I become such a smarty pants and learn about this? Well, I went for a ride in it this morning. Then again, if you are not shopping for an MRI, why would you care?

We also have a short video below that is on our web site that we feel is worth watching that touches on the high points of our area. Oprah Winfrey and ABC News describes it as the "Happiest Place on Earth". Dateline NBC rates it as the "Top Place In the World" while The Los Angeles Times calls it the "Favorite Vacation Spot". Travel and Leisure magazine readers voted San Luis Obispo the 3rd best college town in America. (#1 anywhere West of Virginia) and for lushes, there are more than 25 wineries within a 20-minute drive of our front door. 

 

See the video here

Speaking of wineries, while Napa valley wines are well known, wine production in nearby Paso Robles dates to the days of the Spanish missionaries, who planted the first vineyards at Mission San Miguel Archangel in the 1700's. European settlers followed, bringing with them their rich heritage of European wine making tradition.  Commercial wine making began in the late 1870's.

Paso Robles alone is now home to more than 200 wineries and 617,000 vineyard acres focusing on premium wine production and it is only one of several wine growing regions in our immediate area. The distinct micro climates and diverse soils combined with long warm growing seasons and cooling marine breezes from the nearby Pacific Ocean make growing conditions ideal for the production of our world-class wines.

Cabernet Sauvignon remains the leading variety, accounting for over a third of that region's acreage. Due to the intense varietal character of the wine grapes grown, it consistently garners national and international gold medals. As a result of the unique combination of inland heating and marine influence from the Pacific Ocean, we have the highest day/night temperature variance of any viticultural area of the United States, resulting in an unmatched intensity of flavor.

The diverse micro climates of the region provide ideal growing conditions for a wide variety of grapes: Pinot Noir and Zinfandel in the cooler areas; Rhone varietals, including Syrah, in the higher elevations, and Bordeaux varietals, including Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, in the warmest areas. Our winemakers utilize the full palette of this amazing potential to create wines among the finest in the world. No, this is not just bluster.

The venerable wine magazine, Wine Spectator, had its annual soirée in New York City spotlighting 264 of the best wines in the world. There, Paso Robles winemaker, Justin Smith of Saxum, took home the honor of Best Wine... Not best wine of the weekend, not best wine of San Luis Obispo County or the state of California or the USA for that matter, but rather, out of 15,000 wines reviewed from all over the world, Saxum James Berry Vineyard 2007 was rated the best wine on the planet...

This 'California wines are among the best in the world' thing is not new. In 1976, nine French wine experts in a blind taste test comparing California and French wine awarded first prize, to their own shock, to two bottles of California wines. The so called 'Judgement of Paris' led to the boom in California wineries from 330 in 1975 to 3,754 in 2012. The kicker was that the French thru down the gauntlet and demanded a rematch 10 years later....with the same outcome.

Our poor French friends are beside themselves.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch...

Being gone for 3 weeks limited what we could do around the house but we did finish our infamous roofing project and did a little more landscaping. We will have a little show-and-tell next month. The clock is ticking and we are on the downward slide for our our time here before we cast off for Europe again next month. We will wrap up a few odds and ends before we pull the plug for the season.

This months  riddle

What is so special about this building?
 The answer is at the bottom of the page

Better them than us!

Meanwhile, we got the pic below from friends in the great white north of Canada where our boats, car  and jet skis are stored for the winter near the island.

...How our summer toys hibernate in the winter

And the answer to the riddle is...

Yet another first for our San Luis Obispo, the photo is of the remains of the very first motel in the world. Created in 1925 and originally know as the Milestone M0-Tel (Now the Motel Inn). With automobile travel times between Los Angeles and San Francisco being two days at the time, San Luis Obispo was the half way mark and a convenient stop off point. A room for the night would set you back a whole $1.25

December, 2013

Care to join us for our beach walk or would you prefer to shovel snow?

 NEWSFLASH!

We have the pleasure of announcing the birth of Mr. Ryan Stuckey who joined us on December 6th. Ryan is the baby brother of Ms. Kayla and the proud son of Steve and our daughter Cassie. They have requested a short delay in our arrival so that we could join them for Christmas, when we will be making the rounds to visit some of the kids and all the grand kids on the West Coast.

Ryan becomes # 8 on the grand kid pecking order and it seems that we are at that phase in our lives where they are being popped out like...well...pop tarts! He will be one of two grandsons we will introduce ourselves to, when we finally get to see James Wyatt also.

Mr. Ryan

We need to talk.

Last month I wrote that we decided to hire some outfit to re re-roof the house. Several of you wrote back saying how happy you were that I was not going to do it myself, especially at my age. 

Excuse me?  

AT MY AGE? Since when does MY AGE have anything to do with it? What am I, some old crotchety washed up flame out, some has been girly man?  What next? Should I  go coffin shopping? Get a box of Attends? Look into getting one of those walk in tubs? A rocking chair and a cane, maybe? I will slow down when I get old but gimme a break, I am nowhere near there. I simply chose not to participate. If I hear one more crack about my age, somebody is going to get hurt!!! And I don't want to hear anything about being oversensitive about my age either. Because I'm not, I'm not, I'm not,  I'm NOT @#&^!*!!!  One more thing. I don't need anger management, people just have to stop pis**** me off.


While we are on the subject, we hired someone to come prune our Palm trees also. This hiring people to do stuff is getting to be a bad habit but more fun than a half priced bikini car wash.

Janice asked why I couldn't trim them myself. I said as soon 
as she bought me a cherry picker, a chipper and a dump truck, I would.

Whats new around here? 

Stripping the old shake and solar panels

How to lower three 125 lb (57 Kilo) solar panels alone 
when all your friends are hiding, without breaking a sweat.

Whistle while you work...

Well this month, I quit goofing around an re-roofed my workshop. Janice continued landscaping up a storm and we burned a bunch of junk. The junk we burned ranged from old lumber to dead limbs to the wood shake from the shop roof. Years ago I started building an outdoor BBQ which to this day I have not quite gotten around to finishing.

The landscape goddess at it again

The thing is 40" high and 4' X 8' long (1M10cm X 1M 30cm X 2M 60 cm) and is intended to hold a pizza oven at one end and a BBQ at the other. This past month it served as an unofficial burn bin. We are not permitted to burn at this time of the year but there is no law against having a 'BBQ' and we had whoppers. In all, I figure that we filled it approximately 30 times. It takes quite a while to cut, gather, transport and load that much junk. In fact, we burned so much that we had to shovel the ash out several times to make room for more.

Burn baby, burn

I bet your glad your place doesn't look like this for Christmas

As seen below, the roofers were stripping the old wood shake when they came upon a secret message that had been hidden for 30 years. Janice was on her way home from work at the time, when she spotted her 24 foot high (8M) Valentine's day message from the freeway a mile from the house ( 2 Km) when I was building it. Once uncovered they began to refer it as the "Love shack".

Reminiscing

December 2013

Under construction 1985

C-IJQP, I miss you

I miss my plane. Hard to believe that it's been 3 months since I have flown but I am suffering from altitude sickness. No, not from too much altitude but too little. I miss the heart stopping exhilaration of putting the pedal to the metal and lifting off in a matter of seconds. While I understand the physics of lift I never stop marveling how it works every single time. I miss the thrill of looking down on the world from a thousand feet and crossing over every fence, road, back yard, field, factory or whatever with no restrictions, permission or anyone having any say in where I go or what I chose to see. I miss the adrenalin rush of forever looking for the next potential place to land in the event of the need to make an "unscheduled landing" or what non pilots hysterically call an emergency. 

I know people have all kinds of hobbies and get all wrapped up in them but flying is different. There is something to the lifestyle that can hardly be explained but is as significant in ones life as learning a new language, traveling the world or getting a degree. It's not like learning to drive or getting a new toy that can occupy you for a while. It's a whole new level in your consciousness of what the world has to offer.

Being such a smarty pants I thought that I would pick the skill up quickly, probably much faster than most. Yea, right. Most people, when asked, believe that they are better drivers than the average also. I thought I would be the same way with flying but I was wrong. Heck, it is arguable that I am even an average pilot relative to the hours I have. No matter, if I improve my landings before trashing my plane, I will get much better because I will work at it until I do. Determination is not my weak point.

Every warm sunny calm day here I am thinking how great it would be to be flying over the beaches, hills and valleys in our area. Alas, it is not to be. All I can ask is for Claude* to save me some airspace in the Islands to play in when I return in June.

* [ My friend Claude is my flight instructor and a regular reader of our little newsletter]
 .

A stroll down memory lane

It's never a good sign when you reach an age when your friends begin to drop off, but this month I lost one. Hopefully, we will continue do this alphabetically. I first meet him when I was 16 in high school. My girlfriend and I were making out by the river near my school while on our lunch break, when this big brute of a man suddenly shoved me, snarled and said "Let her breathe!"

What on earth potential did he see in this kid?

Testosterone was flying all over the place and I had visions of beating whoever this clown was to a pulp. The fact that he was twice my size helped me decide to give him a break. Besides, he had a point as I was so enthusiastically involved that she really did need to come up for air. Still, he was muscling in on my action and I didn't appreciate it. I looked up to see who this nut was, but he was walking back to his car which he had stopped in the middle of the road when he spotted us. As he got in, he turned and I could see his white collar.

A priest? He was a priest? This raving lunatic was a PRIEST? My jaw dropped and I worried that he would tell the principal or call my parents except that he didn't even know who I was. I figured he was jealous that I had not taken a vow of abstinence but my better judgment kept me from saying anything that would get me knocked into the middle of next week. Within a few weeks, I ran into him again while working on a volunteer project but he never mentioned the incident. I was hoping that he didn't remember me but more likely he was saving me from my own humiliation.

Soon he was involving me in all kinds of projects. He was a priest but I was in the "humanist" phase of my life. I refused to call him "father" but would only call him by his first name: Allan. He never balked at my insolence but kept on drawing me in further. He was the police chaplain so he had a radio and siren in his car and would respond to all domestic dispute calls. I remember on a number of occasions while eating dinner at home with my family, we would suddenly hear an approaching siren. 

The phone would ring and when I answered, he would only say "Be on your sidewalk in 10 seconds". As cell phones did not yet exist, he had the police dispatcher patch him through from his car radio. I had not hung up when we could hear the screeching of his tires as he pulled up to the front of the house with his siren still blaring. He was early. I was barely in the car as he burned rubber pulling away, leaving my parents at the kitchen window, gobsmacked.

We would arrive at some house where there would be two police cars already at the scene. He had me follow him in the house where the officers were only too happy to turn these 'no win' situations over to him. He told me to take care of the kids while he went straight for the husband and gave him the same kind of love and affection he had shown me the day we meet. It was my introduction to law enforcement and the experience would serve me well when I later became a police officer and had to deal with men who had beaten their wives, or in prison after they had killed them.

The man had far more influence on who I became that my own father. While initially pleased that I was hanging out with a priest, my parents began to resent my growing independence leading to my eventual departure from home at 18. Meanwhile, Father Cox exposed me to the world by taking a few of us to Europe several times. He didn't just preach the bible, he lived it. He was a religious Che Guevara, a commando for Christ and as such an outcast of the religious hierarchy. 

He was uncontrollable in the administrative sense, but a mentor to hundreds of teenagers over the years. I can remember him saying mass on an rocky outcrop thousands of feet up a Swiss mountain. There were 3 of us, including him. He told us that for some people, the sky was the limit but that was why they were underachievers. He expected much more of us.

With the help of a copy machine and whiteout, he even fudged my grades to allow me entrance to University. And, more than once, included me as a guest speaker when he was invited to address large businessman's meetings. I loved him and I have always been very grateful for his influence. I can only aspire to be half the man he was. Rest in peace, Father.

Californians: It's not an easy life we lead