Travels with The Rayman

Howdy.  If it’s Wednesday, it must be time to blog for no particular reason.

Is anyone watching Clarkson’s Farm?  If you have missed this jewel, I highly recommend it.  On Amazon.  We’re looking for more good TV.  Recommendations accepted!!  

A few news bits from the Bay.  In order to enhance sales of my new about to be released book, I have created a YouTube channel.  Right now it consists of two videos.  My plan is to create more videos.  Of course, a video of me sitting at my computer, writing, is not riveting at all.  So, what was I thinking?  

Trains. 

 My love of trains is not a mystery to the Rayman.  And his dislike of trains in the U.S. does not go unnoticed by me, either.  So, when Rayman took a train last summer without me, he gave me an opening.  Rayman’s son,Ryan, treated his father to a train trip to Seattle, from Vancouver, WA.  It was a father-son trip to attend a football game.  I was happy Ryan did  this.

From that trip, I was able to talk Rayman into taking a trip to Chicago this summer on, drumroll please, the Empire Builder from Portland, OR.  This trip was my  brainchild, or was it?  My new friend, Colleen Craig, writes.  She is well connected.  She is very pretty.  She is really the one that got this ball rolling in this direction. After discussing my family history book, she fell asleep as boredom set in when she read the title of the book…

The pic of the book cover was supposed to be placed here but I couldn’t figure out how to do it.  So, please look at the end of this blog to see the cover of the book as Colleen saw it.

 You can see her point?  I certain saw her point.  Colleen then offered her idea up to me.  She suggested since I blog, that I might consider retracing my great great grandfather’s trip from Beloit to California and writing about it.  She reasoned that more people might buy the book if it peaked their interest.  And she suggested that the name could be “From Beloit to Clark Gable in Three Generations.”  

Well, holy mackerel.  That was it.  It had to be it.  And so I got the bright idea of taking the train to Chicago.  See how it happened?  Pretty cool, right?

Off we go on June 9th to the east.  A rental car procured at O’Hare will be used for tracing of steps, and I am thrilled.  Now all I need is a budding artist to design a cover!!

Where did Clark Gable fit in?  You’ll have to read the book to find out!!

Did I perk your interest in the Empire Builder?  It’s the Amtrak train that skirts the upper reaches of the United States.  Most of it will be real estate that neither of us have transited before so we are both excited.  Here is a link.

https://www.amtrak.com/empire-builder-t

In other news:  I also have a new email address for my marketing of the books.  It is [email protected]. So, if you get an email from me using this address, it should be read.  To that end, please insert this second email into your contact card for me.  That way, it might not be relegated to junk.  I will continue to use [email protected] for non-book correspondence.  

Oh, my You Tube channel is https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfboDXyuohl0zmniMhOxo2Q

For a senior citizen, this writing business has lead me to all kinds of opportunities to drive myself crazy with technology.  They say that new things keeps you young.  If that’s true, I am reverting to a toddler.   

It will be fun to do some videos as we cross the country.  There are bound to be interesting predicaments to video.  Maybe I should buy myself a fake mic so I can look professional.  

Well, that’s all folks.  We’re done here.  I’m having some peeps over for dinner tonight and I need to get cooking.  If Rayman ever returns from the grocery store, I will don my apron and make an Atlantic City pie.  A new recipe.  

Oh, and speaking of recipes, my soon to be released book about cooking adventures is close to being published on Amazon!!  I have settled on a name…How to Cook a Skeet.  Just need to come up with a good subtitle to goose sales!!  The book is organized in alphabetical order.  A is for Artichoke, Z is for Zebra with a chapter for each letter in between. Have subtitle ideas?  Send them my way…attribution assured!!  And the same thing goes for a picture cover.  Budding artists, this is your chance!!

P.S.  As anyone author would do, I will order some business cards.  Okay.  I am definitely out of here.  My pie crust needs to be rescued from the oven.  Multitasking at its finest.

Good day, dear readers.  

.

Boy, did I have a weekend.  Think of it.  Me in a dragon boat on Morro Bay as it rained, a snow storm having just blown through.  And a surfing contest on the other side of Morro Rock.  Check this out!

Perhaps you ask, “What in the heck;  why was she doing that”?  I have a perfectly good explanation.  I joined a dragon boat team to lend my spirit and support to all women that have battled cancer.  Our daughter-in-law had a double mastectomy with all that entails, and she joined a dragon boat organization up in Vancouver.  Last summer we saw her paddle in a race on the Willamette River that runs hrough the city of Portland, OR.

While long in the tooth, and frightfully weak in my upper body, I threw caution to the wind and did it anyway.  My Uncle Ralph pumped his bike up a tall hill until he was 85, so I figured I could do things I didn’t think I could do.

The paddling club (never refer to it as rowing…they frown on that), had two women fly down from Portland, OR to our little Morro Bay to do a two day clinic.  As a newbie in the group, I was anxiously hesitate, but I signed up.  

Boy was it a work out.  We paddled, and paddled, and paddled some more.  We were videod and then after the filming, we all went back to the Morro Bay Art Gallery and looked at our “strokes ”.  It turned out I was not getting my hips into the action so I had to practice that the rest of the two day paddle clinic.

This is a sprint sport.  Boy, does it get my heart racing.  After the sprints,  we rested in the boat, as sea otters came by to view us!!  So fun to see them up close in the water.  Then, after a break, another sprint.  More instruction.  Then another sprint.  It was fun except for the times when I hit the gunnel of the boat with my thumbs.  It really hurt because it was cold with rain now and then.

The second day, was more of the same.  More instruction.  More sprinting.  I felt about 100 years old when we finally docked on Sunday.  Struggling in and out of the boat is another challenge.  And getting out was harder because of the fatigue factor.  I suggested to no one in particular that the team needed a crane to lift the half dead bodies out of the boat!!

The team is always looking for more members.  If I have failed to scare you off, you might give it a go.  It really is fun, invigorating, and nearly impossible to do right as a newbie.  Improvement is just around the corner.  Practice makes perfect, and with any luck at all, I will develop more muscle through my back, shoulders, and arms.  

My mon nick-named me Tootsie Thomas as a child but she could have called me twiggy.  My arms are twig-like so any improvement in the twigs department will be welcomed by moi.

Incidentally, there were two boats, for a total of 34 people, more or less involved with the clinic.  And don’t judge a book by its cover.  All ages, all shapes, all sizes enjoy the sport.  I’m just another one now!!

Go Tam!!  And to all other people that survived cancer and joined the sport…hats off to all of them.

Who of us knows how the day is going to go until we swing our legs off the mattress, get out of bed, and run into the day.

Will it be a good day?  What could wrong?  What’s on the calendar?  We just don’t know.  

This a.m., I lay in bed thinking until I get the gumption to get started.  Donning my sweats, I head for the coffee, for that pump of caffeine that will start the engine.  However, this morning that routine of sorts was interrupted because I had a chore to run.  As I am want to do, I left a sweater at a party and I needed to get it back.  Collette, Tom our bicycle friends that live in Portland, fly south in the winter and land in Morro Bay for months at a time.  It was their party that we attended and it was so much fun, I took off my sweater.  Nothing more came off…just my sweater (cardigan if you must know).

With rain looming on the horizon, I drove about 2 blocks  (LA Story, anyone?) to retrieve said sweater.  And when I knocked, I discovered I had intruded on a visit they were having with other bicyclists from Visalia.  We had a grand time trading family stories.  So I left much richer than I arrived.  Collette and her female friend (who shall remain unnamed because 1.  I don’t remember and 2. I didn’t warn her that she might show up in blog) are of Japanese descent.  And their grandmothers were picture brides, I think the term was.  That is women that were sent from Japan to the U.S. to marry a man their family knew.  Sight unseen.  What a great bunch of stories they. Had.  

Never saw that coming.  

Then I promised a friend, Diane, that I would pick up her and take her to physical therapy for her new knee.  Off I went.  When arriving, I parked in the driveway and sent her a text.  She emerged from the garage and it is the first time I have seen her walk, unaided, since her surgery of Oct. 31.  So impressive!!  Anyway, she throws herself into the car and announces she is going to give up.  “What?”, I exclaim.  You can’t do that.”

Seems a toe got infected and the when her doc saw her, he sent her to a podiatrist the same day a few hours later.  Out of that appointment, she lost her nail, she gained prescriptions for two types of antibiotics, hydrogen peroxide, bandages, and assorted instructions that include medicating, bandaging, and applying salve.to the toe.  

Which led to the next story where I told her to cheer her up.  It’s a Susie story.

My cousin, Sue, texted me yesterday in a twit about her hubby yelling about a sore finger.  We texted back and forth.  It was decided that men have no idea about pain as they do not have the job of giving birth.  That is painful.  Sore finger?  How painful could it be?  Turns out that he told the Kaiser nurse his pain was a 9, rated from 1, the lowest and 10, the highest.  Sue was aghast and this comment ended up requiring a sit-down.  A conversation.  Pain was discussed.  

The next I heard of this, hubby was at Kaiser.  She had dropped him off there for treatment, the finger was infected.  She was not going to fetch him because she does not drive in the dark anymore.  An old age thing.  Plus it had been snowing and it was COLD.  Their daughter would pick him up.  Whether he got home or not remains to be seen. 

After my visit, I came home and Rayman showed me the inside of his flp-it-off-finger.  Big rash.  He went to the drugstore and picked up some Benadryl.  Now his finger is on the mend.  

Really, people, this is just a hoot.

While I was waiting for Diane, I was looking at my emails, and low and behold, there was an article about the first Japanese man in California and his grapes.  Really.  A true story reported by BBC.  Wondering why it is the BBC.  However, the timing was exquisite.  I forwarded that onto Collette and posted it to FB for the remaining people still on FB.  Now, if I find out that Collette is somehow related to this dude, my mind will be officially blown.

Back at the therapy place, I showed up early to pick up Diane so I took advantage of a person who was leaving the locked office, and scooted in, found a bench and sat down.  To wait.  After a few minutes, I heard Diane say, “Okay, I’m going to call my friend now.”  My reply of course was, “I’m here!”  What a scream.  It was a Fitness Works sweatshirt.  Fitness Works, a gym, sthat hares space with the therapy place.  At this point, I couldn’t resist blurting out, “Well, I am famous for dressing for the occasion.”  Of course, that was not a true statement, but it was a funny retort, I thought.  And what were the chances of wearing this particular sweatshirt?  I have worn the thing about 4 times in four years.  Never even thought about or made the connection.  Just grabbed it because it was red.  And I do love the color red.  

There you have it.  Who knew any of this was going to happen?  A very fun morning, indeed.

She was big.  She was strong.  About 800 pounds?  Not sure about the weight, but she was a big girl…elk.  An elkess!!

Heading South of 101 thru Oregon, there are plenty of places to see elk.  Signed are posted.   Locations are designated.  And for a good reason, as we found out.  

Moi was at the wheel, weather was clear if you ignore the smoke in the air.  We have seen smoke almost the  entire day!  We were entering a small berg, not sure which one.  They dot the coast line.  Some are quite quaint, some look like havens for down-and-outers.  There was a man standing on the other side of the two lane highway and as I started to give him a glance, our elk came out from behind some trees and into our vision.  We looked into her eyes.  She was terrified.  I was terrified.  Swerving to the left and into the lane where the man stoically stood, I started to break and the car finished the job.  Our Honda CRV has brakes with brains.  Somehow, f it senses the need to stop, it stops on a dime.  Between the breaks and my swerve, disaster was avoided.  Yippee.  Last seen, the elk was prancing around unharmed.  She had headed straight across the road, toward the man.  I don’t know if he moved or not.  

Gathering our wits, we sally-forthed!!  Or is it sallyed-forth?  

This is not her. Took this in 2019.

Next bit of news was that we stopped in Eureka for early dinner as our night was to be spent in Fortuna, CA and there isn’t much there so we knew a restaurant we had eaten at before.  It was already a long day.  5 :15 p.m. we arrived.  We needed food and wine.  They had both.  The only thing that I had that was good, was the wine.  Ordering a half bucket of clams and some garlic bread, I was sure it would be a fine meal.  It was not.  It was so bad, I wrote a review in Yelp and Trip Advisor.  Just as an example, the garlic bread came out.  It was sourdough with clumps of garlic thrown on top.  There was no color to the bread.  Did they forget to toast it?  No matter, I sent it back.  It came back with a tinge of color.  I choked down one piece as I was famished.  The cook who committed this grave offense, did not have a clue about cooking food.  And I will leave it at that.  Oh, and this was on a Friday during happy hour   You would think the A team was at the grill. 

Unhappy with the meal, we left and drove on to Fortuna to the Redwood Riverwalk Inn.  Smitten by their charm on the computer, I booked it for the wrong day.  So, we double paid and may I say, the hotel matched the meal.  The bed was lumpy and thin, there was a Shell station out in the back, the wall heater so prevalent in many hotel rooms sounded like a DC3 taking off every time the temperature reached 60 degrees.  It also had a holy bible which gave me pause.  There was a chair to sit in that was covered in faux cowhide.  It was, clean.  Clean, uncomfortable, worn, with a disk from a cross section of a tree hanging on the wall in the bathroom.  

 I asked as we were checking in to the cute lobby if there were glasses in the room.  She said, glass?  I said, yes.  She said, “we provide paper cups.  I can sell you some wine glasses.”  That was a tell.  We drank our port out of paper cups.  

And that was that.  

This a.m., I took in the keys to the lobby and spied some water in a pitcher.  Filled up a paper cup and took it out to the car and poured it in to our “thermos”.  And off we went.  I do not recommend the place.  

The drive South from there would have been fab except for the smoke.  It obscured the view of the mountains.  We did go thru the Redwood Avenue of the Giants.  The best part of the trip today.  

We are now in Healdsburg and off to see our friends, Margaret and Bob!!

A giant cross. Bible Belt stuff.

We are flying toward Denver and I’m sitting next to Rayman who is rubbing him thighs with dry napkins to mop up the white wine which he just spilled upon himself while holding his book and sharing a pretzel with me.  Poor dear.  

The flight attendant replenished his wine which he really needed by this point in the trip.  The good news is, it wasn’t red wine.  The bad news was it was the entire glass.   A healthy pour landed in his lap.

Hopefully this is the only mishap of the trip.  Thus far it has been great.  We left a bit earlier than I would have, but Rayman gets nervous so I have learned to accommodate early arrivals so he doesn’t get overwrought.  This is a family trait.  His Mom was always nervous about time too.

On the drive from Branson to Kansas City, about a 4 hour drive, we started getting hungry.  Alert.  Alert.  Seems to be nothing but fast food restaurants along the freeways of Missouri, and that just didn’t cut it for me.  Our first destination was the Truman Presidential Library.  As we closed in on Independence, MO, where the library is located, we exited the freeway and drove the local streets until we spotted a Mexican joint that had a few cars in front.  That is where we ate.  And as usual, we gorged ourselves with chips and didn’t complete our meal.  But we were happy as clamss.

This highway is a “major” North-South artery in MO. It is Tuesday mid-morning. Look, Mom. No traffic.

The library is wonderful.  What a time Harry had his whole life, and his life in politics was nothing short of amazing.  I had read the book about him and so it was old news, but the re minder was very helpful.  The pictures and presentations were wonderful.  We also got to see some very old cars that Harry used over the years.  Finally, we capped off the tour with a graveside visit;  Harry and Bess Trumans’ final resting place.  The closest I’ll ever come to them.  

In reflecting on the state of our country, I was reminded just how important democracy was to him.  He even was declared the loser of his election to Mr. Dewey on the front page of the NYTimes.  But he won and Dewey graciously accepted the outcome.  Oh, how I moan at the thought of Trump and his BS. 

But I digress.

As most of you realize, it is hard to land a direct flight anywhere nowadays.  And our trip was no different.  Flew Southwest and we changed planes both ways in Denver.  Denver airport is relatively new and I don’t think it is was well planned.  We couldn’t even find an ice cream cone.  How is that a thing?  Restaurants are few and far between.  Very disappointing.  Oh, well.

We are now flying west out of Denver toward Portland and we just hit lots of turbulence over the Rockies.  Good thing I was wearing my mask.  It made hyperventilating much easier to counteract.  Deep breathing ensued and insured that I did not pass out because of fright.  I hate turbulence.  

While we were waiting in Denver for our continuing flight onto PDX, I checked my text messages, and discovered that my old childhood friend, Marie, was in PDX.  So we connected up and decided to meet for breakfast in the morning.  She is leaving tomorrow to drive back to Paso, where she lives.  So we are meeting at a food truck for breakfast.  I figured she would enjoy the experience of that type of dining since I’m pretty sure there aren’t any food trucks in Paso.

It has been a great trip.  Finished editing the book, spent lots of time visiting with Nancy, saw some sights and dipped my toe in the swimming pool.  

And we didn’t get lost.  This may be a first.  Send up a flair!!