California, Here We Come (Again)

Albert has been away for a couple of weeks, which has left me home alone. Just me and the little doggos. I LOVE being by myself, especially in my own house. I did whatever I wanted, none of which is very exciting. I cleaned up the house, got ahead on my schoolwork, took my time at the gym, cooked nothing, watched some movies that I knew Albert wouldn’t like. Turns out *I* didn’t much like two-thirds of these movies either. At least I only have to tolerate one of us complaining about those wasted hours. BTW, the one I liked was called “Bad Education,” starring Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney.

I’m not always this boring. I’ll be taking a trip this upcoming week with Audrey down to California. I’m super excited to see my sister and my parents for the first time in over a year. But since there’s very little to write about this week besides the marginally remarkable fact that I can be completely content eating avocado toast for dinner ten times in a row.

I thought I’d share another road trip adventure with you. This is another two-week period when Albert was off for his Navy Reserve training, and I took an adventure with the kids down to Southern California. Since we took the obvious, direct route the first time in 2010, I concocted this more creative route in 2011.

On our way to Medford, we stopped in Albany to see the Foam Volcano House. Steve Fletcher, the founder of Sprayfoam, Inc., used to live in this house. I suppose he had access to all the Sprayfoam a guy could want, and this is how he decided to use it. It looks a little bit Flinstsone-ish, plus there are a couple of pretend wild animals and a little fish pond with (not pretend) fish you can feed for a quarter.

After that brief stop, we headed to Brownsville to visit the Living Rock Studio. This quaint art studio and museum is run by the artist’s two daughters. I wasn’t sure whether the kids would like it, but the rock art was quite amazing, and they especially enjoyed pointing flashlights and making some of the luminescent rocks light up. You just can’t believe that THERE ARE ROCKS EVERYWHERE.

After an overnight stop in Medford, we headed toward Redding with a stop at Shasta Caverns. I never cease to be amazed by caves, even though they mostly look alike. We boarded a little boat that ferries us across beautiful Lake Shasta, and we took in all the wonders that hide inside Mount Shasta. Here’s a picture of Audrey and me waiting for the little boat.

After a night in Redding, we took our time and headed to Sacramento. We stopped at the National Yo-yo Museum in Chico where we saw a yo-yo that cost $300. It's probably still there ten years later. Who in their right mind would spend so much on a little yo-yo? Here is a picture of Audrey and Chris with the biggest yo-yo. Check out Chris’s gorilla feet in those Fivefingers shoes.

I was excited to stop at Madison Bear Garden in Chico to try their Jiffy Burger, which is topped with peanut butter, mayo, cheese, and bacon. Alas, it was not lunchtime by the time we passed through, and chances are slim that I will be passing through Chico any time ever again. If you have ever tried this burger, please let me know how it was.

We took a detour to El Dorado to visit Barber Jon’s Room of Oddities and Curiosities. This place surprised us, because it is literally a regular barber shop where people were getting their hair cut. The four of us must have looked perplexed, because the barber just looked at us and pointed his scissors toward a little room off to the side filled with wack-out weirdo things from big balls of twine, which I never really understood the remarkable-ness of…..

To a bikini-clad roller derby mannequin covered in gum.

The next day, we enjoyed the farmers market in Alameda where Audrey ate blackberries as big as her little 11-year-old hand.

We spent a couple of days in the Bay Area visiting the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda…

And the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Little did we know that the day we visited was one of the four days per year that the museum was available free to the public. That sounds super lucky that we could save over a hundred bucks on tickets, but the line to get in was CUH-RAY-ZEE! I told the kids to wait in the line while I ran to the front to see what was going on. Except while I was running, the line started moving, and I totally lost all three of them! Did they go in? Were they outside? Welp, sorry, Albert. I made it a solid three days before losing all of your children in San Francisco.

In my panic, I heard someone call my name. A childhood friend, Elliot, FROM CAMARILLO was way in front of the line telling me to come take cuts. Man, what an opportunity! But alas, I couldn’t go in without finding my kids. I eventually found them, and miraculously we all got in for free and had a swell time.

Did you know there is a Museum of Pez Memorabilia in Burlingame, just south of San Francisco? It houses so much Pez. It was way more interesting than it sounds and admission was just three bucks.

This is the trip I introduced the kids some of my favorite pizza of all time, Zachary’s. Zach’s makes this deep dish spinach tomato pizza that is to die for.

From San Francisco, we made our way toward Santa Cruz where we visited the infamous Boardwalk...

...and The Mystery Spot. As amazed as we were at the Oregon Vortex the year before, this Mystery Spot was suspiciously similar. Are they both truly magnetic vortexes? Perhaps.

On our way out of Santa Cruz, we visited the Bigfoot Discovery Museum in Felton. The founder, Mike, spent hours telling us stories about his Bigfoot encounters and experiences. We learned that these elusive creatures love Snickers Bars. Mike showed off his Bigfoot poop which was displayed in a plexiglass box.

Along the way, we tried to find places that Guy Fieri had featured on Diners, Drive-ins & Dives. Here was quite a yummy find in Santa Cruz!

The Universe must have decided that we needed a break after all this excitement. After spending the night in Atascadero, we came out to our van to see that we had picked up a nail and had a completely flat tire.

But here’s where the blessings really start piling up. There was a super nice gentleman at the hotel who helped me take the flat tire off and put the spare tire on. We drove less than 20 minutes to the Costco in San Luis Obispo which was on our way anyhow. The bad news was that the tire was not reparable, so I sank a hundred bucks into a new tire. There happened to be some mobile puppy adoption going on in the parking lot, so the wait wasn’t even terrible. This little girl’s name is Ivy.

The fun continued in Southern California. We spent time at the beach with all the cousins and even visited Legoland and Sea World. Our trip back to Oregon had much fewer stops. Our first day, we made it all the way to Fresno, stopping in the tiny town of Lindsay to see the Giant Olive. You know Lindsay Olives? This is where they’re from! Their Giant Olive holds a place of honor in the parking lot of a Super 8 Motel. (Trust me, we didn’t go inside.)

The next day, we visited the Forestiere Underground Gardens. This is a fellow’s HOME that he built COMPLETELY UNDERGROUND. It was over 100 degrees the day we visited, but underground it was nice and cool. And also dark, so I guess this is why I don’t have many good pictures of this place.

We drove through the town of Locke, CA, looking for this remarkable toilet garden.

We did find some weird, old Chinese things which leads me to believe that this little town has some Chinese American history linked to it. But when we passed through, there were only VERY white people there, and we got some looks that made me feel uncomfortable, so we headed out without stopping, never finding that toilet garden.

After a couple of days of hitting the road pretty hard, we spent a day in Sacramento at the water park. Thinking back, this is probably one of the last times I could really enjoy a water park with the kids. After a certain age, they don’t want Old Mom tagging along anymore. We had so much fun in the hot, Sacramento sun. We’d be completely dry before getting on the next slide. We were so tired at the end of the day that Chris left his flip flops in the parking lot and nobody noticed until we got to the restaurant for dinner. Fortunately we weren’t very far away, and those flip flops were still right there in the middle of the abandoned parking lot when we drove back to retrieve them.

The following day, we rambled back toward Medford, stopping only for some free olive tasting at the Olive Pit in Corning. There is everything olive there, including earrings.

Before turning in for the night, we stopped to see a real, live Bigfoot trap in Applegate. This place was built by a couple of guys in the 70’s and is a little hike off the road. See the little Bigfoot stamp on the trailhead sign?

There were the telltale oddly-fallen trees that we learned about at the Bigfoot Discovery Museum.

As well as Snickers wrappers! Now we all know why!!

It was warm and muggy and we all got about a million mosquito bites.

There was lots of graffiti inside and outside the trap. It looked like folks had enjoyed some campfires in the area, so there was lots of charcoaled sticks.

Of course, we took the opportunity to leave our marks.

Itchy and tired and almost out of gas, we planned for a stop at the Medford Costco before dinner and bed when WHAMMO! I totally saw it coming. The guy in front of me stopped suddenly. A reflexive glance in the rearview mirror showed me a big Ford truck barreling toward us. “Oh, no!” I managed to squeak. I saw the kids’ faces look up with concern for just a spilt second before we were rear-ended.

We were pushed into the OTHER big Ford truck in front of us. Those big trucks were barely dented, but our poor little minivan was now an accordion.

The guy in front of us had a big trailer hitch on his backside that split our frontside in two, piercing our radiator.

Now we were REALLY in a pickle. We were 300 miles from home with a van full of supplies for a two-week road trip. A SUPER nice chaplain from the police department stayed with us for hours until a tow truck arrived. Then this SUPER nice tow truck driver was so kind to make a special stop at the Medford Airport where we had rented a car. He stayed with us until I could pick up the car and helped us offload all our crap from the van.

There was only one seat in the tow truck, so the police chaplain followed behind with the kids in the back seat of his police car.

I know angels were following us on this road trip. Nobody was hurt, and we weren’t even terribly inconvenienced. By the time the whole ordeal was done, it was 11pm, and we were STARVING. Final treat of the trip: First experience eating at Shari’s.

Have you ever seen the Big Olive? If so, I wanna see pics. Thank you for reading!

How to Win Friends and InFUence People

 

There are so many people in this world, in a community. What is that switch that turns some of these folks into friends? Sometimes it’s a common project, like kids’ sports or volunteer jobs with the PTA. Sometimes it’s just happening to be around to support each other through hard times like a divorce, the death of a spouse, or some really tough shit that our kids go through these days. Sometimes it’s shared underwear.

I probably met my friend, Christy, shortly after we moved to Oregon in 2004. She’s an exercise instructor at my gym, so I have probably seen her at least once a week for the past 17 years. She’s super friendly but I never really talked to her until 2016 when she forgot her bra.

The women’s locker room is such an interesting place. I have written about some odd encounters and aggressive nakedness. I have also written about the time I was almost farted to death in the sauna. But there is a reassuring vibe of sisterhood when a bunch of women regularly get ready in the same space. There’s always someone to save you when you forget to bring hair gel or if your necklace gets impossibly tangled in your hair. The day I became friends with Christy, I heard her frustrated voice say to nobody in particular, “I forgot my bra.”

I HAVE BEEN THERE, Sister! I have been there so often, in fact, that I keep a spare set of underpants, a bra, and a pair of socks in my gym bag at all times. I hesitated for just a moment before saying, “I have an extra bra if you want to use it.”

That’s so super creepy, isn’t it?? I immediately felt like a giant weirdo and regretted it. But I felt so uncomfortable that I couldn’t stop talking, and I also wanted to do a good deed for someone who brings so much joy to my days when she leads me in fitness classes.

Christy is so nice and didn’t shut me down right away, so I kept talking.

Me: "You’re welcome to use it. I keep an extra Handful bra in my bag because I’m always afraid of forgetting my bra."

She: "Oh, it’s OK. I’ll just go buy one from the Pro Shop."

Me: "That’s exactly what I did, but I bought a medium and it’s too big, so I keep it in my bag. I’ve only worn it once. It’s my Emergency Bra. It’s totally OK if you don’t want to use it."

She: "That is actually perfect. I can buy it off you."

Me: "If you want. Whatever. It’s silly for you to buy a bra that you don’t need."

And that is what I consider the beginning of our friendship. This was kind of at the beginning of a really hard time with Alex. He had just squeaked through high school and was struggling to find his way. Our family life was full of daily uncertainty and a lot of sadness and fear. My time at the gym was a reliable hour of respite. Christy was an empathetic listener, offering prayers that were surprisingly so comforting.

She retuned my clean bra some time later along with a prayer journal, a little book called “Jesus Calling” with short passages that seem to offer me magical encouragement or inspiration just when I need it. Christy and I are different in so many ways, but I will always be grateful to her for enriching my prayer life and always offering me her honest perspective.

Christy thanked me profusely as I handed over my spare underwear. We both acknowledged how it feels a little weird to wear someone else’s underwear, but I think we both decided that it’s just a bra. I assured her that I probably wouldn’t have volunteered my Emergency Underpants if she found herself in that kind of trouble.

But get this. Albert has been in Alaska for his Navy Reserve training all week. He has been telling me about sketchy weather and regular delays in flying into and out of remote villages in Osprey helicopters. His team has been stranded in his current location for two extra days, but there is another doctor who arrived last week who has been stranded there for even longer. This morning they were served grilled cheese sandwiches for breakfast because food supplies can’t be delivered either. They’re running out of stuff. And this doctor who arrived last week…..ran out of underpants.

It seems like the doc could have washed his undies by hand, but I think the weather delays were so unpredictable that they thought for sure they’d be out of there by now. Albert told me that the doctor seemed so uncomfortable that Albert offered up his own underpants. Albert is super squeamish about things like this, so it surprised me that he volunteered his skivvies. But what surprised me more is that THE OTHER GUY ACCEPTED THEM.

Is he going to give them back or just keep them? If he gives them back, will Albert ever wear them again? Albert told me he didn’t know the answers to any of my questions. “We didn’t talk about it.”

But Albert told me, “He’s a good guy.” Well, he must be if you loaned him your underpants, Mister. And now you’re going to be friends forever. Because after you’ve worn someone else’s underwear, you are bound to be special friends for life.

Here’s to you, all my special friends! Thank you for reading!