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Life in California

I have been meaning to describe where we are in Long Beach, California. It’s a very pleasant place. The RV spaces are a little close together, but considering we’re right on the edge of downtown in a big city, it’s very nice. Downtown is not old and shabby like it used to be when we were kids. It has been rebuilt with pedestrian malls and sidewalk cafes. The climate is mild; warm days, cool nights, but not cold. There is a pedestrian/bike trail that goes in both directions from here. The trail markers indicate that it goes fifty miles upstream along the Los Angeles River. We don’t really want to go fifty miles up the Los Angeles River though. The other direction, it goes past ports and marinas and ends up as a clean-swept cement path right on the beach. It’s an easy twenty minute bicycle ride to Cherry Beach from here, and only thirty minutes to Belmont Pier. Sister Sue’s house is just a few blocks past that on Roycroft, just off Second Street. But before I got to describing how nice and quiet it is here: major bust. Right here in the park. They descended in a swarm. Six police vehicles. A dozen officers. Guns drawn. Suspect apprehended while he was still trying to park his rig in the space opposite us. No shots fired. He went into cuffs immediately. High risk sex offender. Parole violation. She wasn’t in any trouble at all until they found the heroin and meth in her purse in the coach; then she went in cuffs too. I had a great view of the whole thing out the windshield. It took awhile to get the motorhome searched and the suspects removed. It didn’t take Judy long to get a conversation going with the police as they were wrapping up; offering them food and drink. One guy admired our motorhome from the outside, so he had to end up on the inside for a tour with a bottle of water to drink. Life in California.
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Happy Mother’s Day

We don’t have the same Mother’s Day experiences as we used to, because we don’t have small children around. Let me relate the start of our daughter’s morning. A small child waking her asks what she wants for breakfast.“I think I’d like eggs and sausage.”“You’re having cinnamon rolls.” And off zooms the child back downstairs. A little while later:“Do you want breakfast in bed or do you want to come downstairs and eat?”“I think I’d like to come downstairs and eat.”“You’re having breakfast in bed.” Zoom. It’s all good.
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Long beach

It’s a funny thing, reserving camp sites in California. You don’t reserve space where and when you want; they tell you what you can have. I have a couple weeks of work to do, so we only want to move on weekends. It ends up we’re staying at this park through a week from Thursday. That’s it. If you stay in this park on a Friday, you have to stay through, or at least pay for, the whole weekend. We only got into this park because there was a cancellation on the day Judy called. Thursday is as long as we can stay. On Thursday we move to another park. They had space for us, but that weekend is memorial day weekend. Their rule is that if you stay any part of memorial day weekend at their park, you stay the whole four days, Friday through Monday. Life’s pretty funny here in California.
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Long beach

We had Chinese food for dinner one night at Caesars. It seemed like a good idea and it was only twelve or fourteen dollars per item. We ordered three items. But there are surcharges when you order it sent up to the room. By the time they got all the surcharges tacked on, it was a hundred dollars. A hundred dollars for a Chinese food dinner. Guess I shouldn’t’ have had that eleven dollar bottle of beer; or Judy shouldn’t have had that eight dollar cup of coffee. It was damn good Chinese food though. Still screwed up on time. We were up at five this morning for our last sunrise over the parking lot at Circus Circus. We watch the construction cranes high in the air and wonder where all the cable goes. For some of the functions there really isn’t much net change in the length of cable required, but when they drop the hook all the way to the ground the extra cable has to be coming from somewhere. There doesn’t seem to be any giant spool of cable anywhere though. We beat the rush hour traffic out of Las Vegas, headed south. Stopped at the state line and topped off the tank at $4.20 per gallon. Over the state line in California it costs $4.50. We were through the Los Angeles basin traffic and settled by noon, just before the Friday afternoon crush. We’re downtown at Golden Shores RV Park right across from the Queen Mary; about where Rainbow Pier used to be. Judy’s sister Sue lives in Belmont Shore about four miles away down Ocean Boulevard.
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Las vegas

Serious culture shock, arriving in Las Vegas, compared to our remote existence on the beach. The conference has been great though. It’s for small firm practitioners, like Ken and me, and always provides interesting insights on ways to do what we do.