Author: Steve

Some days are better than others, but generally Helen is upbeat. We might
imagine ourselves sliding in sideways to the finish, or at least kicking and
screaming on the way out, but in reality, we often meet the end with calm
resignation, even a sense of relief that it has finally arrived. Helen
appears to have been prepared for this event for years, and is just ready
for it to be over. Remember the scene in Little Big Man where the old
Indian climbs to the top of the mountain, declares it to be a good day to
die, lies down on his back to wait, and wait, and wait? Then it starts to
rain. He finally has to get up and walk back to camp. Sometimes it doesn’t
happen quite as we would plan, or when we’re ready. We don’t know how much longer Helen has, but she is in a nice facility, well
cared for, and well medicated. She will be reasonably comfortable while she
waits.

101, 680, toll bridge, 680, 80, 505, to interstate 5 north. Didn’t have to
go through San Francisco or Sacramento. Split the difference. Sign in a window (a motorhome window): “Warning! Retired, knows it all,
has plenty of time to tell you about it.” That’s what I want to be when I
grow up. Easy day overall. Stopped at Premier Resorts RV Park in Redding. We like
it here. Crawling with white-crowned sparrows. Hadn’t picked up a new bird
since October 2. Walked around the park and picked up three new ones:
Nuttall’s woodpecker, oak titmouse, golden crowned sparrow. I really like
this place. Tomorrow, Bend.

The shame of it is, Southern California has so much great stuff. Oceans,
beaches, cliffs, tide pools, rolling brown grass savannah dotted with oaks.
Disneyland, Sea World, San Diego Zoo. It would be such a great place to be,
it is so good, if it hadn’t attracted so many people and become a victim of
its own success.

Today’s adventure, a birthday party. Our passing through NoCal happened to
coincide with a birthday celebration for Allison’s third birthday and
Jacob’s thirty-first birthday, and we got invited! We got to meet and hold
the new babies we haven’t seen before, meet Mason, visit with the Mike and
Jacob parts of the family, see Nina, Paula, Juanelle, Katie’s mom, some
other of their friends, and eat Pizza. Where else would you want to have a
birthday party but at a pizza parlor? We stopped and set up at Morgan Hill, a small town twenty miles south of San
Jose, typed the address of Stuft Pizza into the navigator in the Jeep, and
buzzed in for the visit. Thank you Mike and Katie, Jacob and Yousun, for
inviting us. What a charming bunch of kids. Tomorrow, we continue to Oregon. We hear there is some weather up that way.
We’ll be careful.

Enough of Southern California. Judy visited with her mom every day. Did
some errands. Took care of some stuff. What can be done has been done.
Our mission today was to escape the LA Basin. Mission accomplished. We’re
stopped for the night at the Lost Hills RV Park on Interstate 5 in the San
Joaquin Valley. One day, from Temecula, we drove to Anaheim for an errand, over to Belmont
Shore to see sister Sue, then back to Temecula. Another driving adventure.
Traffic considerations dictate every movement. We didn’t get on the road
before nine. We were careful to be back by four. Southern California
traffic is just like Denver rush hour traffic, stop and go, but over 100
times the area, and all day long, with concertina barbed wire around the
road signs on freeway overpasses. To get into the basin, we drove in from
the east through heavy traffic for a hundred miles. We drove out to the
north for a hundred fifty miles of heavy traffic. All that traffic breathing the air before we can. We’re breathing seconds,
air that has already been used. The cars turn it white. There are hills
all around, five miles away, but we only get glimpses of them through the
haze. We are such smog weenies. No tolerance. Eyes burn, lungs hurt,
headache. We listened to a Los Angeles traffic report. They listed ten
accidents, ten car fires, then switched to the weather report. The
meteorologist began her report with “A beautiful day in Los Angeles today,
eighty-four degrees, the reason we all live here.” We think we’re the only
ones who have noticed something is not right here. Something is just not
right. I know, I’m ranting, I’ll stop. But this experience is going to leave a
mark. The reasons we left here in the sixties have only compounded. A
fresher sharper appreciation of where we live and what we do.