Why is Barack Obama black? A union of Kenya and Kansas. Half Anglo; half African. Why is half-black a black person? He’s half white. Why isn’t he a white person?
Yellowstone
Cold and blustery. No adventures today. We stayed home. Surprise visit from Skip and Connie last night. They live in Louisville but happened to be in Yellowstone. They’re on the trip list, so they knew we were here somewhere. They wandered the RV park and found us. Got a good evening’s visit out of that. Surprise visit from Rick this morning. His guide trip for the day got cancelled so he hung out with us for a while. We’re such social animals. Love this part about running into friends in unexpected places.
Southern California rant
While we were there we drove on freeways with four, six, eight, and more lanes going each way. They’re all packed with cars; and all of Southern California is covered by freeways. But know what’s really crazy about freeways in Southern California? The entire Southern California freeway system was created within our lifetime. Remember every trip from Long Beach to Lake Wohlford was on the Pacific Coast Highway; Highway 101? All the way down the coast through all those beach towns. It was the only way to get there. I think it was Laguna that had the old guy on the corner waving to cars as they went by. For years we would watch for that old guy on the corner and he was reliable. He was always there and he waved at us every time. South on PCH to the bird sanctuary in Oceanside. Turn left for Escondido, then up to the lake. The bird sanctuary is still there at Oceanside. All those freeways now, filled with all those cars, and Pacific Coast Highway still has as many cars on it now as it did fifty years ago. That’s crazy. There are so many cool things to draw a person to California, but every time we go back, we feel like we just got dropped into an anthill. It’s that crowded. There is a square mile in Long Beach that has 22,000 people in it. For us, every single attractive thing about Southern California is overpowered by the crushing weight of the crowd. We’ve been gone so long we forget we really were city people when we were kids. We’re not city people now. California oddity: Joe’s Crab Shack in Newport Beach has valet parking only. When it was time to leave the crowded Long Beach campground, the right outside mirror didn’t look right. Took a look and found a scuff mark on it. It had been forcibly folded back. The front end of our coach was so close to the road in the RV Park there, someone clipped it on the way by. They probably have a scuff mark on their mirror too. Newport Dunes, a five start vacation destination resort, was about the worst place we have ever stayed. It was more crowded than the place in Long Beach. Our coach didn’t even fit in the site. It hung out onto the street. After our mirror scraping experience in Long Beach, that felt vulnerable. We totally filled the length of the site and the sites were so tight side-to-side, we couldn’t park the jeep next to us without encroaching on our neighbor. No offsite parking so everyone just parked in the street. We had to coordinate with our neighbor the day before we left so he could move his truck out of the way so we could get out. When we first saw the size of the site, for $90 a night, we protested to the office. They volunteered that we could upgrade to a premium site right on the Lagoon for $250 a night. We decided to stay in the poor part of town. It was only for a week. But then Memorial Day Weekend happened. The premium sites all filled up with oversized rigs. The outside entertainment centers opened up and turned on. A big screen television got set up on a picnic table for the Nascar blast. The park turned into a giant party for everyone, whether they wanted to party or not. Total anarchy. Were we glad we stayed where we were. We’d have been really disappointed with that $250 a night “premium” experience. This brings to mind our experience at Gulf Waters over Spring Break. A party of related rigs all set up at the west end of the park. That end of Gulf Waters got turned into an open block party with no regard for its effect on the year round residents or other visitors. They must have been from California. After a couple days of escalating disregard, the entire group got evicted. It was ugly, but we’re so glad we live at Gulf Waters. We’re all for people enjoying themselves, especially people on vacation, but they should have some regard for the comfort of others while they do. Gulf Waters has a few rules to protect the comfort of all, and they enforce them. Thank you Gulf Waters.
Bicycle
Been riding the bicycle. Breckenridge, Glenwood Springs, Yellowstone. It feels good. It’s never perfectly flat. Not in these places. Flat is easy. Downhill is easy. Uphill is a little slow. I don’t mind the uphill though. It’s an investment. The energy you’ve put into it is still there when you get to the top. It’s just stored as elevation gain. Elevation is power. I’ll spend the stored energy on the way back down. Let gravity take me back to where I started. What makes me crazy though, is to have to apply brakes on the downhill. Hard-won energy stores wasted on friction generated heat? Not what I want. I want regenerative braking on my bicycle. I want to store and reuse all the energy I put into it.
Geyser Day
Old Faithful, Castle, Daisy, Riverside, Grand. That’s a dayfull.