Travels with The Rayman

Well, I hope this does it.  I’ve been trying to establish my new blog and now I’m testing it. this is a picutre of moi and my mere in Santa Barbara.  So much fun.

We were invited to dinner in Paso.  A lifetime friend, Tim, and his wife, Donnie, invited us over for fish.  (Here’s a picture of Tim, above).  We have been to their home before for dinner except then it was in the winter and it was dark at 6 p.m.

So, we gathered ourselves up and drove to Paso.  Because we had only been there once and they live out in the country, sort of, I entered their address into Glenda, our GPS.  Glenda did manage to get lost as we drove over Old Creek Road but it wasn’t her fault.  She lost her signal.  And we knew where we were going.  No problemo.  She came around on highway 46 and all was well in the world.

So, we arrived as planned right at 6 p.m.  I announced our arrival to Ray by saying, “Here we are”.  So Ray turned into the driveway.  And I remarked, “Wow, look at all the cars here”.  Ray offered, “That truck hasn’t been moved in a long time.  Look at how dusty it is”.  I figured that they had invited others.  However, the dust was thick.  But there were two other vehicles parked in the driveway that weren’t dusty.

So, anyway, we approached the front door and rang the bell.  No one came to the door.  We rang again but this time I rang it twice.  No one came to the door.  Again, I rang it twice.  Well, perhaps they were in the backyard barbecuing?  Or in the lou?  Or…well, who knows.  So, I decided to call on my cell.  Donnie answered by saying, “Are you lost?”  I said, “No.  We’re standing at your front door ringing your doorbell”.  She said, “Oh.  I didn’t hear it.  We’ll be right there”.  Click.

No one came.

We were at the wrong house.  OMG.  We missed it by one driveway.  OMG.  How embarrassing.  As Ray backed out of the driveway, we started laughing.  By the time we drove one house further, Tim was standing out in front of HIS house.  Laughing.  Donnie came out.  Laughing.

Look.  There is no excuse.  But if it hadn’t of happened that way Tim would not have been able to say over dinner as a response, “Hell, Dianna, you couldn’t even find your way here using GPS”…or something like that which got us laughing so hard my sides ached.  So, here’s to making mistakes.  It leads to so much fun sometimes.  Life ain’t perfect.  Shit happens.

But don’t we have fun?!!

Oh, and that is not the fish we ate.  This is a picture of a fish he line caught in Alaska.  He and Donnie do the darnest things!!

OMG.  Apple has forsaken MobileMe.  What’s a girl to do?  I have use of the service which includes iweb (which I use for my blog) until June of 2012.  So…I decided I need to change to something.

Well, let me tell you.  Change is not easy.  I’m barely computer literate in oh, so many ways.  But I’ve never let that deter me.  So off I went trying to solve my dilemma…because I really do enjoy blogging and we’re off to Australia and New Zealand where adventures await.  And I don’t want to go with things hanging.

My friend Tim, suggested I use blogger, a free service from Google.  I established an account but immediately didn’t like it because it only offered about 6 fonts.  That’s just not enough for a princess like me.  The guy at the Genius Bar who was helping me with a MobileMe problem the other day mentioned GoDaddy.  So, I went to their website and thought I liked what I saw and signed up for their service.  This involved plunking down the credit card to pay.  It also included choosing a domain name.  The few I liked were already taken. (travelingprincess, roundabout etc.)  So, I finally arrived at TravelsWithTheRayman.com  That seemed like a fitting name for my musings since Ray gives me so much material to work with…if you get my drift!!

Then I was totally lost.  They have a service called WebsiteTonight.  That sounded useful.  But, it was going to cost hundreds more.  This could not stand.  My rumblings just aren’t worth it (please don’t agree so quickly).  So, I finally picked up the phone and had a long extended conversation with Laura in Arizona.  She works for GoDaddy and she knew everything.  She knew it so well that I had to have her repeat everything a dozen times.  There was talk of domains, email accounts, customer numbers, passwords, word press.  OMG.  Apple had made my life so simple.  Why were they forsaking me now?  And Apple was inexpensive.

Oh,well.  Now that I’ve stopped whining, I will wait for an hour to attempt to log-on and do two things.  Set up my email which comes free with the GoDaddy service (but of course you pay) and design my website (which will lead to a horror story or two for those readers that appreciate horror stories because they confirm that they are not the only people with computer generated horror stories).  Oh, and then I will try to link my iweb blog with my new GoDaddy blog.  This will probably involve the gnashing of teeth and a few expletives.  More to come.

I don’t know how I did it.  But if you click on the link above, it will take you to my new spot on the web.  Word of warning.  It is not ready to go so I’m not using it yet.

The other day we had to go wine tasting.  Isn’t that terrible?  But we had to do it.  We belong to a wine tasting group and once a month we head out to some fabulous central coast winery to taste their stuff and then we go to lunch or, in this case, had lunch pre-ordered and delivered to us at the winery where we ate it sitting under huge old oak trees on wooden picnic tables in 90 degree heat.  Not so bad…there was a breeze and the oaks shaded the entire spot.  It really was lovely.  And our badger sandwich went perfect with the glass of viognier we bought.

But I digress.  We have some friends that live in Cayucos that belong to the group and we called them to see if they would like to ride with us to the winery.  Yes, they did.  So in the course of the trip over the river and through the woods, I mentioned my new blog.  And that is when I discovered that we have another mutual friend that helps people with computer issues.  Ah, ha.  So, I emailed Tom and he agreed to help me.  This involved meeting him in his garage (his cave) and working together to get a few things straight.  He knows everything.  I’m so impressed.

Now it is up to me and you can see that I’ve not done a darn thing yet.  I need gumption but have mislaid it somewhere.  When I find it, I’ll start designing my new web home.

Oh, and the picture above has absolutely nothing to do with websites.  It is a tide pool.  Isn’t it fabulous?

As most of you know, I have an 84-year old uncle who regularly shames me by riding his bike up the side of a mountain 6 days a week.  This, and the fact that we have good friends that ride say, from Salinas to Cayucos in 2 days on highway 1, prompted me to prompt Ray to dust off the bikes and go for a ride this a.m.

Now…what could go wrong?  It started out good enough.  The fog was hugging the coastal hills so it was cool but no wind.  We drove our bikes (I was afraid to ride on the freeway) to Toro Creek Road (about 1/2 mile) and parked the car.  We unloaded the bikes and reattached the front wheels.  I donned my bike helmet and jumped on the bike.  Almost fell off.  But persistence won out and off I went with Ray following until he remembered that he forgot the water so turned back.  There I was alone….with my mind.  OMG.

Well, I probably should not have done this just a few short hours after viewing the ipad magazine TRVL.  In an effort to convince Ray and a few others that Africa should be on their bucket list, I found this app, TRVL.  It is a travel magazine that was developed strictly for the ipad.  An ipad magazine.  Very cool.  Anyway, I downloaded it and gave it to Ray after I downloaded an article called South Africa  (all this was free, by the way).   In the afternoon, we decided to take a walk on a new trail called the Estero Bluffs (see picture above and those below) and while hiking Ray told me about the video that was included in the So. Africa article.  It involved water buffalo, hungry lions and a ravenous crocodile.  It sounded fascinating so I watched it myself.  OMG.  I put it on Facebook.  Go check it out.  I also watched a lion killing a zebra by pouncing on it from behind and grabbing it by the throat to finish the kill.  It took 30 seconds.  Well…here I was biking out in the middle of a lonely 2 lane road in an area that looked just like So. Africa with dried grasses as high as an elephant’s eye.  My mind (in the form of an over-active imagination) caused me to put on the brakes so Ray could catch up.

That’s when I found out that my front brake didn’t work.  So, I came to a full stop so that I could figure out what was wrong with my brake and wait for Ray so that we could ride together so if, what?, I was attacked by a mountain lion he could call 911?  I mean really.  Number one.  He didn’t have his cell.  And number two, he wouldn’t have been able to get a signal.  Even so, I felt better reasoning that there was safety in numbers.

We started out together after the brake was repaired and I mentioned that I thought my seat needed adjustment because my knees were hitting the handle bars.  So, we stopped again.  OMG.  I had the front wheel backward so that all the hardware was facing in instead of out.  He turned the wheel and handlebars 180 and riding became much easier.  I didn’t even know the bike would do that.

I mean, have you ever done that?  I ask my bicycling friends.  Were you that dopey when you started riding bikes?  The only thing I say in my own self defense is that I did not look like a cyclist.  Wearing old levis and a frizzy coat with tennis shoes, there was no Lance Armstrong look here.  On the other hand, Mr. J was all decked out.  Bicycle shorts, a special jacket, gloves.  Does the word fashion plate come to mine?

But I digress.  Up the road we pedaled.  It is a 3 1/2 mile upward road.  But gentle.  Now keep in mind that I haven’t taken a bike ride that long since perhaps 1959.  But, hey, there I was.  A few cars/trucks passed but I managed not to run myself into a ditch.  In fact, I feel that since I returned from the ride without a trip to the emergency room of our local hospital, the outing was a success.

So, I have a question for my biking friends.  What do you do while you’re riding?  Do you imagine the unthinkable like me?  or are you imagining Rick Perry as President?  or are you off in some never-never land that goes undiscussed with your spouse?  do you fancy yourself a pro cyclist?  do you pretend you are somewhere else?  or do plan the evenings dinner?  what do you do?

Personally, I found my mind when not focussed on big cats at the top of the food chain, thinking about the next hill, how to shift this stupid bike, why doesn’t the attached gauge gauge anything?  Then there were the trees…beautiful and I was happy our snakes don’t live in them.   Will we see a snake?  Oh look at the cows.  They watched us go by…it was very cool.  But what about chafing?  Do we need special seats so it’s more comfortable?  Can I eat more now that I’m riding?  What are those guys doing over in the field, gleaming?  Why I couldn’t live off this road.  Oh, and the wind on the return ride made my ear hurt so I tried to pretend my ear didn’t hurt…mind over matter so of thing…and you know, that actually helped a wee bit.

But I digress again.  So, on the way back to the car, it was mostly downhill except for hill right at the end.  I started screwing with the gears.  And somehow I managed to derail the chain.  And everything became impossible.  The bike stopped.  Ray told me to coast to the car (we were very close and I had made it up the hill) and I did.  My dismount was a bit unnerving.  That is, I almost fell over getting off the frozen-geared beast.  But I didn’t!!  And Ray was probably thinking, OMG.  What’s she going to screw up next?

Well.  So.  There.  We did have fun.  And we’re going to do it again.

Here’s some more pictures of Estero Bluff State Park about 6 miles from our house.

So, I’m finally get serious about this Australia thing and check out the website.  I’m trying to talk Mr. J into it.  I’ll let you all know how THAT goes!!

More to come.  Oh, and the picture above is Cayucos sunset.

Well, I’ve got him considering an 8 hour tour where you can go in the water with Great Whites for $295/person.  It would definitely make for a good blog write up, don’t you think?  The company that does this is calling us to tell us more, like how cold is water?  are wet suits provided?  how many people have been eaten, how many have survived their shark attack?  is valium available or should we bring our own?

More to come!!

So, today I booked our lodging at Cairns.  Will book the Great Barrier Reef extravaganza today also.