Chaos Leaves Town

After returning to Rosamond, I noticed when I drove up and parked in the street in front of my brother’s house, that his RV was there but I didn’t see his car. Damn. I’d have to try and park the RV without help since I think he’s not home. It’s so steep that it’s nearly impossible for me to do it alone. Someone has to jamb the chocks under the tires so the beast doesn’t roll down the road. But, there was an alternative. I snuggled up next to the sidewalk, crammed the front passenger side tire right up snug, threw it into park, and then sweating bullets, released my hold on the brakes. Slipped a little, but held. Then carefully and cautiously tiptoed to the door, grabbed the chocks sitting right there next to it and ran back to the back and jammed one under the passenger side rear. Then to the drivers side. Whew. I could relax.  Then, surprise, Dan comes out from the back yard. Helps me get her all settled with four chocks and the tire off the curb.

With that finished, ask him where his car is. He mumbles something about it being in the shop. Over the next few hours, I get the story on his nearly brand new car. What happened was he had left before I left to Hawaii to join his son to drive his RV to Phoenix to see a Ducks football game. They had a fine time, stayed several days, but as they were headed back, he’d forgotten to put his car (which is towed behind his RV while traveling) into Neutral. That of course, if not discovered quickly enough, will ruin both the engine and the transmission.  Seems he was driving along at 65MPH and someone pulled up alongside pointing back to the car frantically. When he stopped, smoke was pouring out from under the hood and other mysterious places. After returning it to neutral and arriving at their stop for the night, when he checked it, it obviously had a problem. Towed it back to California, took it to Honda dealer and they gave him the news that the engine was toast. And they wouldn’t know about the tranni as they’d wait for a new engine to test it after doing the best servicing they could do.

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Allison and Leo took off on their honeymoon, I think they were flying to Maui. I was invited to the airport to wave goodbye but I begged off as it didn’t sound all that much fun. Oh, I’m happy for them and all, but it’s a hassle these days going to airports to see someone off. Use to be you’d be able to join them all the way up to the boarding gate. Now, not so easy.

With 3 days left here in Kona, and with a rental car, I had a great time exploring the town and outskirts. Since I’d already circumnavigated the island, stayed pretty close to town. Did visit several malls, Walmart, and some autoparts stores looking for paint to touch up the scrape on the front of the rental car. I was stressing about that a little as I’d not paid for any insurances offered, carrying only the collision coverage that I have when I use my VISA card. True, that saved me lots of money, but now I was worrying that it was going to cost me $3-400 to repair. Yikes. Finally, it hit me, my brother has to fly all the time for his job, and uses rental cars all the time. He’ll know what to do. So I give him a call, and he says just not worry about it. Drive it in, don’t say anything about it, and let them inspect it. If they care, they’ll note it. If not, I’m off the hook.

Scrapes and scratches on the cowl.

See those scrapes? That’s what I was worried about. Continue reading →

I just had enough time to get familiar with my condo and settle in with a little WiFi email checking when Allison called and let me know they had finished the reception, cake cutting, toasts, clothes changing, etc., and were headed to the bar. Met up with A&L again and was talking to her father before we left for Humpy’s Big Island Alehouse about his day. He’s been out body surfing on what passes for a beach in Kona and got flipped over then pulled under the water by the strong undertow and bashed his head/neck area. Someone was there to quickly pull him out or he would have drowned. He was dazed and wasn’t in charge of his facilities just after it happened. Later, he was talking to a guy at the rental shop I think? And the guy told him that they have a couple tourists a year have almost the same thing happen to them but they end up paralyzed due to a broken neck or back, or worse yet, dead. Yikes! That could have been a very bad ending to a very happy event.

After getting everyone all ready, we wandered down to the bar for a few. It was within walking distance from their condo. Humpy’s Big Island Alehouse. Huge place. Lots of TVs big seating area and a bandstand. Just a DJ that night but, everyone got up to dance and celebrate the wedding. We didn’t get out of there until 4AM. And I headed home nice and toasty.

Allison kibitzing.

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So the next day was the wedding…I dressed in my Sunday best, designed for Hawaii; a Hawaiian shirt (not the flashy kind that tourists wear though), pressed Dockers, and nice sandals with socks. Stopped off at the store and got myself some nice local Hawaiian beer. Arrived at the venue (the beach) a couple hours early I thought. Turned out I ended up being 4 hours early. So had bunches of time to kill. The wedding party was having trouble organizing all those people and arranging last minute details I suppose. Or Allison just told me the wrong time to get there. Yeah, that’s it, the bride was goofy and told me wrong. Job one is assigning blame, and I’m good at it.

I had a good time wandering around the ancient Hawaiian ruins again and contemplating what it must have been like to live there.  When I remembered about the museum, it was only a few minutes from the expected arrival time of the wedding party so I skipped walking the 1/4 mile uphill to visit. But like I said, they arrived 2 hours after that so I could have made it there and back in plenty of time. But the time I wandered off during my daughters wedding, I almost missed the entire ceremony. I wasn’t about to let that happen again.

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Later in the day, Allison invites me to go visit where they’re getting married. Of course I’m thinking it’s going to be a church or meeting hall or some such. No, she says, we’re getting married on the beach. At a State Park, named the Kekaha Kai State Park. Oh, cool, sure, I’d love to come. They wanted to do some sunbathing and some swimming and since I knew from experience how ghastly Hawaiian beaches can be on leeward side (the side that gets less wind then the windward side), causing high concentrations of sea salt in the water, and then the fact that there’s so much volcanic rock on, in, near the beaches, I didn’t bother to get my swim suit. I’d forgotten it anyway. Didn’t plan on buying one either.

So we three drive on over to the park, which is really an old yacht club that was built next to an ancient Hawaiian ruins. When the natives finally got some respect, they were able to make it a SP and stop development that would have spelled the end of the ruins.

Allison and Leo heading for the beach.

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My friend Allison had invited me to her wedding. Over in Hawaii. On the big island. Spent hours and hours trying to find places to stay, things to do, places to go. I found a condo that looked pretty good and had a nice low price. Set the link aside for a few days while I researched other places, trying to find one closer to where the wedding was going to be. No luck. And their price was the best. So, went back and started to reserve the place, and my computer belched. Took 3 days to get it up and running again. When I went back to reserve the condo, 2 of the 7 days I wanted were reserved by someone else. Damnit! So, reserved 5 nights there and then reserved 2 nights at a hotel. Advantage of that hotel was that it was very close to where Allison’s family was staying. But kind of rich for my blood. Hadn’t been able to find anyone in the wedding party to share expenses with or to split condo expenses where her family was staying.

So I had already reserved my flight out of LAX (excellent RT price!) and found through intensive internet searching, a bus that left Rosamond about 3 miles from my brothers house (where my RV was parked) and dropped me off at a transfer station in Lancaster, from which I would take a taxi to the shuttle, that would take me to LAX. My brother was going to be gone on the day of my departure so I couldn’t bum a ride from him, and there’s no taxi in Rosamond. Palmdale, Lancaster, and Rosamond are in a string starting around 50 miles from LA and going to 80 miles away in Rosamond. But, I didn’t like the looks of all those bus transfers and the taxi ride I’d have to take to the shuttle station. And I’d have to walk with my luggage down to the Rosamond bus pickup, about 3 miles. Too much trouble, with the potential of a screw up and missed connection somewhere along the way. However, the shuttle station in Palmdale had a very large long term fenced parking lot…for just $5/day. So I planned to drive my RV down there, park it, then jump on the shuttle to LAX. Looked like a great idea on paper.

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After enjoying ancient Greek art, spent the next 2 weeks or so just hanging around the Stagecoach Tavern and visiting with friends. But the poor ass WiFi was annoying so I headed up to Corbett and the nice little RV park up there. Advantage is really fast WiFi, and a change in scenery. Oh, and the bath room just being 50 feet from my RV instead of 100 yards away. Got all my laundry done, cleaned up the RV a little, read books, and surfed the internet. The nearest bar is like 3 miles away, and the weather precluded riding the bike down there so staying home was the rule of the day. But there is a nice old fashioned grocery store across the street from the RV park so I’d wander over there, buy a latte and sit and read the newspaper. This being retired stuff is kinda cool.

Parked in Corbett.

The office and facilities.

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Maybe you all aren’t interested in ancient art, too bad. It’s my blog and I’ll post art if I want to.

A little more ancient Chinese art.

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Bare with me here…this post is about my visit to the Portland Art Museum to see ancient Greek, Chinese, Roman artifacts and statuary. I had moved back to the RV park behind the Stagecoach tavern after spending several days helping Jeff & Jackie remodel their kitchen and I’d noticed the ad in the local paper about this show. Since it’s all the way downtown, and I’m out in Troutdale, I took the bus to the nearest Max light rail station and took the train downtown. I can catch the bus just steps from my RV.

Ready to jump on Max.

The Max trains are very comfortable, fast, and allow relaxation on the way downtown. I use them as often as I can, and these days usually every time I go downtown. You can see that the weather is typical for Portland, but if you live here long enough this type of weather is comfortable. It’s when it’s been raining for several day or months that it drags on you.

Crossing the Willamette river.

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After enjoying the Blues Festival, and Ilwaco for a few days, I headed back down the coast road to Seaside. I was enjoying the weather here on the coast so much that I paid for a months stay in SS. They were still having a heat wave in Portland so it was better to just stay on the coast and avoid that.

This was the scene as I headed to the bridge crossing from Washington into Astoria, Oregon. This is pretty much what Lewis and Clark would have seen, except there wouldn’t have been a bridge. They did boat over to this side to explore a little.

The area where Lewis and Clark landed when they explored this side of the Columbia.

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