Our Big Family Roadtrip -Full

Our Big Family Roadtrip

by JP

In the middle of the summer Martha got off the phone with our San Francisco friend David and suddenly said “We’re driving to California.” It was a shock and a case of terrible timing, but it was true just the same. It was obvious. We had been trying to visit relatives out west for over 7 years. We’d tried several times but it had never worked out. We don’t like to fly. We almost took a train once. We hadn’t been on a big roadtrip in 12 years.

My Uncle Kent from Hollywood had been calling for the past 10 years asking when were we coming out. We wanted to take our little kids out to see him and Aunt Jo in their cool town, where I’d once hung out a lot and where I’d lived for months at a time on an old wood sailboat. We wanted to see Uncle Tim way up north beyond Reno in Susanville as well. And we wanted to see our friends out there.

Suddenly we knew that this was our chance. In the hectic storm of life and desperate work to avoid bankruptcy and try to create a viable alternative publishing company, it was clear that we had to go now or never.

Thus began a month of panicked preparation. Martha’s mom said we could use her fresh’n’fancy minivan. We wanted to rely on our own car and our own style: our behemoth Town Car. But the transmission started making noises the week we were going to leave and we decided to accept her generous offer.

I finished a bunch of publishing projects and mailings. We would leave a week later, right when the real work and phonecalls to benefit from those mailings should begin. Like I said, bad timing. But in a small biz, when is the timing good?

Martha had her first art fair booth the week before we left. It was at the quiet, small, friendly little Williamston Art Fair in our town. Sales were a bit discouraging. I think you have to go to a bunch of fairs several times before people get to know your work and word gets out. Dozens of friends showed up and parents, too. If the shoppers avoided the booth I hope they at least saw that a party was going on the whole time. Anyway, after that explosion of energy, we had to pack. Whew!

So we were going to visit my sis in St. Louis, then check out my old grounds in Boulder then go see my writer Pete in Utah then friends in the Bay Area, then Uncle Tim in the Sierras, then more friends up there, then roll on down the coast to Uncle Kent in Hollywood and go to Musso-Frank Grill and Philippe’s, Disneyland with the nippers, see the old harbor, then check out the desert on the way home. After we were already driving, we added up the miles. Looked like 7,000 in store and one month to do it before school started. Yikes!

This was going to be a car-camping trip. No motels or restaurants except a special few. We brought a big ole tent, cooler, stove, bags, the works. Martha bought a little suitcase bar at a garage sale, from the 50’s, all stickered up with travel stickers. She added some old Michigan stickers of our own and engraved the 4 silver cups inside with all our names and made up some special bottles for our basic drink-groups. It would be a nice way to kick back at the end of each day of driving.

I tried to cut back on what I packed. I left out the rollerskisbut brought a set of ski-poles for hillbounding, in case. Martha rolled her eyes.

We brought a bike for each of us. Our goal was every day to ride an hour each. So that we could stay sane and not get too fat.

When I do roadtrips I generally equip myself with my basic foodgroups: coke, coffee, fruitjuice, water, chips, applepie, chocolate, candy. Every hour or two I hit on one of these and somehow the variety keeps me going. But I realize that it’s a bad method. Last winter I went on xc ski weekend roadtrips with local friends. They brought water, babycarrots, celery, hummus, pita. See the difference? I determined to follow their example.

We finally rolled.

It was hard the first couple days to avoid buying Mountain Dews and snackfood. But I made myself work against tiredness as I drove instead of simply medicating it. Then I didn’t miss it at all. Water is best.

Man, minivans are cool. You can store a ton and get at it easily. Nuff said.

Day One: Illinois–a great ‘found’ dinner site

We visited a wonderful friend who is dying in Chicago and had a good visit. He’s been in the hospital since, so it was good timing.

Then we drove south on I-55 (or whatever it is) through the center of Illinois for a few hours. And hours. There was nothing. No town, no place to stop and fix or eat a dinner, no rest area. Suddenly we crossed the Des Plaines river on a huge, glorious silver bridge. I glanced below and saw a semi-abandoned industrial shoreline and crappy marina. Then we were across and I saw newer huge industry and an exit. Let’s check it out! We turned around and wangled our way through bumpy, broken-up frontage roads and trashed or nonexisting signage among various bouncing, dust-strewing semi-trucks and bashed-up pickups to the marina area. A rough’n’tumble area, eh? There was a dive-bar with patio on the water. An old marina with a bunch of half-sunk smallcraft, and the ruins of industry. But across the large river was a running factory. We drove around the vacant lots and found what I knew we’d find: beat up old picnic tables near the marina and the edge of the river. A perfect place for dinner!

We stopped. I unloaded the cover, food box, and prepped the stove, then said “C’mon, kids, let’s explore!” Martha set to cooking and looking around our weird new world from her vantage and I got the kids out of her hair and all our big and little legs unkinked. We traipsed our way around big green puddles of hydro-fluid and mounds of coal to the river’s edge. The shore was continuous old loading dock with a 10-foot drop to murky water. Let’s stay away from here, kids! A couple pickups pulled up to an old shed in the distance for awhile then rolled away. Busted up cranes broke up the open skyline. I like old industry. There was a huge old 70’s era motoryacht about 100 feet long, 20 feet wide and 30 feet tall, on a makeshift set of 3 trailers welded together, all tires flat, in a sloping slot that led to the water. A dream that never launched. It looked like it came from a very rough homemade mold. It looked like it looked terrible even when new. An enormous slapdash yacht. Its backbone had broken over the trailers and it sat there slumped. Ouch. A floating factory was being fabricated farther down the shore. Interesting. Back a ways behind some buildings another yacht sat under a shed roof and tarp. Equally as neglected as the first. Clearly a lost dream. Yet. This sailing yacht was in perfect shape. The tarps looked about 20 years old, tearing and rotting, yet they still protected. There was a solid, functional look to this boat still. Mothballed, but with potential. Masts on sawhorses alongside. Easily a globetrotter. Even now. I wonder what dreams are still remotely connected to this boat.

We wander back and a tablecloth is spread and dinner is ready. Ah, yes. A perfect meal. Across the river about a half mile away a tug is pushing a loaded barge away from the active mill. The kids love it. Traffic streams over the beautiful bridge. A perfect resting place for the start of our trip. Thanks for being here. Then we’re rolling again.

But we stop on the other side of the river. We can’t make STL tonight and it’s getting dark and we’ve never set up our tent and we wonder where we might camp in this region and the guidebook says Right here! An exit appears with “State Park” noted. Sure enough we find a campground. No one is there. It’s getting dark. It’s a new campground and there are fresh campsites cut into dark woods going to swamp along the river. The sites down in old wet pools mostly. Yuck. There’s a new playground in the evening light in a big mowed grass field higher up, next to two handicap sites. The kids start playing on the swings and we go to set up in one of the sites. There’s light to see here and no one around. I unload a bunch of boxes and start to set up the tent. From a half mile away we see in the gloom a pickup pull into the campground. It slowly drives around until a ranger lady tells me we have to move because it’s a handicap site. I tell her this sucks and is stupid. She says “It’s the rules.” I ask if they’ve ever had a handicapper visit. Blah-blah. I say “How about if two handicappers show up then we’ll gladly move as we wouldn’t want to put anyone out.” Blah-blah. OK, we’ll move. In her headlights I see a large moth flapping. Big as your hand, flapping like a piece of tissue. My God! A luna moth! My first ever! Should I lunge to catch it? We brought nets, where’s a net? Is it endangered and the ranger lady will ticket me and arrest me? They get me no matter what I do. (Ever try to catch a snake or turtle near a cop? They feel compelled to tell you it’s illegal even though it isn’t.) I hesitate. It flaps away into the night. We set up camp in a damp and gloomy site.

It’s a new tent. A $100 special. We spent an hour at the camping store trying to figure out the tent situation. Buying modern camp equipment with the help of young clerks is hilarious. They know all the high-tech info. The direction is to get you into a “quality” high-end tent. Everest-worthy, of course. There are hundreds of factors to consider and compare. It’s easy to get sucked into a morass of yuppy-style research shopping. In the end we went with the simplest tent that seemed to have enough room. We had been camping with our old 2-man dome tent. 4 of us and our big dog were in it this spring. Ha. We thought of using it on this trip then said NO. Our parents had a big oldstyle tent: 100 pounds with dozens of poles. I can set it up no problem. But once up it really should stay up a few days. So we bought a cheapy Eureka 4-man dome. Screw that. We’re car camping. It’s summer. We’ll risk it. I bought the tent with the fewest poles. Just two! I can set it up in moments. The tent worked great the whole trip.

Day Two: St Louis–great cycling, neat town

We visited my sis and bro-in-law and their kids the next day. Man, the kids just hit it off. Max interaction the moment their feet hit the ground. Very cute. It was great to see the grown-ups, too. We hadn’t been to their place yet in a very wooded, very hilly part of the STL area: about 20 miles west of the city in an area called Wildwood.

I had to get out the kinks from driving and took a bike ride. It was a neat change of pace from our local mid-Michigan flatland. It was either a 40mph plummet or a first-gear climb. Riding here for awhile would give one as good a chance as any to turn into the next Armstrong. I explored their neighborhood, then headed out on the local roads. They were lovely, twisty, hilly. I could really keep my momentum flying. It was neat to ride somewhere where I had to actually do sporty handling to deal with the curves and change gears on the fly. A couple racer-dudes passed going the other way. Then a few more. I turned around at the end of a valley and started heading back. We were having dinner in an hour. On a fast downhill a group of racer guys suddenly flashed past me. Hey, what is this? I couldn’t resist. I joined in. I’d never seen so many fast riders strung out on such a narrow, twisting, hilly country road. We’d fly around a corner then drop down into a river and rumble across a one-lane bridge and attack up the hill leaving the valley. I worried about the cars. A huge, new pickup came blasting up to us at one point and I cringed. These riders were often taking up a good bit of the road. But the truck just waited amidst us until it could squeeze past. That’s how all the cars were. It was great not to have any homicidal vehicle encounters like we get so often in Michigan where the roads are wide and open.

I finally realized it was close to dinner and I was a long way from home. I managed to gasp to a guy near me at an intersection “Does this road to the left go back to Wildwood?” The group was jumping and he just drooled back at me incoherently. I was tapped out myself and just turned around and retraced our route. Dinner was served.

My bro-in-law had an older red Miata and I took the kids for a drive in it. It was a great car for those roads and that hot weather. The kids fell asleep instantly. He said it wasn’t really a sports car, though. I gather that it’s light and lively but that it could handle better for roads like these. Seemed fine to me! The boys were going ape the whole time over snakes, lizards and frogs (“It’s lost! It’s lost in the house!”). The girls fussed over doll families. John and I checked out the mini-planned community nearby that’s finally starting to thrive. It’s a small-town America revival project by the Seaside, FL, people. A little ways away we have a beer at the Big Chief, an 80-year-old motor lodge that has an original skin painting by a chief who was at the Battle of Little Big Horn. It used to be an entire Spanish villa style complex with mission tower, etc. Turns out we’re on a stretch of the original Route 66. Big Chief was a major watering hole.

We had a fine visit with our energetic, generous relatives. Then we got rolling again. Two days into it and we’re starting to feel the immensity of the trip we’re proposing and feel pressure to keep moving.

Day 3: Kansas–Big Sky when slow; aged beef; civil defense theory & practice

It’s afternoon when we finally leave STL. We get partway across MO and find ourselves exhausted in Jeff City. We’d told my sis and bro that we intended to drive small roads and avoid freeways, so they showed us a way to go. My sis mentioned that you can camp along the Katy Trail and that it’s in town there. We are confused upon arrival late at night but after chatting with a few speedfreak clerks we figure out that there’s a Trail access point just off the freeway and that you can, I guess, camp there. We find a parking lot accessing this classic, huge rail-to-trail. It’s next to a freeway, behind an all-nite golf driving range with heavy equipment parked next to it. Martha isn’t biting. But we give in and set up the big, puffy tent in the hot, breezy grass. The glaring lights and the freeway roar and the sight of our little angels snug in their bags give us a bit of unease, but we sleep fine.

In the morning we see cars are already parked and people stretching, biking, etc. We look out of place but I checked the trail sign last night by flashlight and it said camping is OK. People are jogging. We’re brushing our teeth and having cereal on a flatbed trailer near the trail. Martha went for a ride down the trail and said it went down to the Mississippi river just right over that rise. We roll.

That afternoon our backroad route takes us through Sedalia. A lovely little town. With some size and heft to it, though. The downtown has a classic oldtime out-west feel. Not the wide open style of some, but the canyon-of-buildings style. Well preserved.

There’s a Schwinn shop that hasn’t changed. Not even in terms of stock. The old guy running it said he’s been there for 67 years and he still had some brand new models from the 60’s and 70’s on display. Collector alert! On the wall behind the counter was a huge, mint condition Schwinn thematic display, with overarching layers of signage saying something like “Ride a Schwinn bicycle todayfor fun and for your health!” in huge chrome lettering.

The Bothwell Hotel downtown is like stepping back in time, with its tile floor, white-wood-and-brass everything, and its little service shops on the lower level opening into the foyer along with a steakhouse that opened off to the side. It had a speakeasy in the basement that opens in the evening. It’s all fully restored.

On the edge of town we found a huge civic park full of sports fields and an old whitewashed baseball pavilion and new waterpark. The waterpark was nicely designed with a big winglike awning. The teens were in attendance. Kids were doing baseball practice. A vibrant place. We had lunch and I did calisthenics. We rolled.

We’ve been impressed by mid to western Mizoo. It’s a taste of the west close to the Midwest, if that’s convenient for you. It also has great roads, hills, vineyards, classy old towns with a vast river rolling thru them with dramatic bluffs. Enough for inspiration and a worthy destination of its own. But we roll.

Things open WAY up. We’re in Kansas now and it’s evening. I try to think of a good reason to be in Kansas and I suddenly remember: beef! I flip through Roadfood, the only highlightsof-the-hinterlands food guidebook: nothing. Then I grab another that’s just a listing of everything and I study each town. Suddenly I find one: a restaurant offering DRY AGED BEEF. They mention it in their two-line micro-listing. To some people (me) this is an important thing. It’s part of the nearly-lost art of making great steak. We’ve only had it once and it was alarmingly good, special, interesting and rather exotic. Back then we realized we needed to look into this some more: Should we be dry-aging our venison? What’s up here? I compare the restaurant to our route. Hey, it’s just 15 miles off the road an hour ahead. Perfect for dinner! Martha says No, let’s not detour. (Memo to myself: If you find dry-age beef anywhere near you at all, don’t screw up: go. We never found another to stop at.)

We look for places to stay. We decide on a huge reservoir in the middle of the prairie a couple hours ahead. We turn off the small highway to a smaller road. The sky opens up. The fields truly become endless rolling yellow. It’s amazing how even a slightly big road diminishes this. Then suddenly we find trees, green, cottages, and see water. We find the state campground. It’s a scattering of shelters in a sea of golden rolling field with green trees in swales leading down to the water. The shelters are like concrete wings. They are swooping tentlike shapes, lovely. I’m guessing that they vaguely allude to teepees. We don’t quite get it. There are no johns. But we camp anyway. It’s very windy.

Later that night a sound of loud rock’n’roll comes down along the road and a pickup rolls into view near us and heads farther on down the range of little pavilions. It stops. Then comes rolling back and on over a hill. We hear some noise, then quiet. I go scout after a bit. I see the truck and a half set-up old canvas tent flapping in the wind and a pile of firewood. Later yet I peek again and no truck. We never saw it again. We have a fear that America is going to catch up to us any time now and give us some screaming drunk fellow campers who rage all night. Yet so far our luck holds. Three nights in a row where we’re the only ones in sight!

It is nearly a rule for us–and one we tend to forget–that if we stay in a campground, public or private, we will have screaming drunks for our neighbors, or we will have generators roaring all night long, and no one else will mind. This is the real America. Who cares about politics, I care about noise. If you have insane noise you can’t have civics, I don’t care what brand you like.

I prefer to camp on undeveloped public land. Every million-acre state or national forest has a couple campgrounds, sure, but that leaves most of the rest of the million acres open to quieter camping. (Of course, I’ve had plenty of mid-woods screaming and all-night offroad racing and fireworks near me, too.)

But boony camping makes some people nervous. It might even make me nervous. Who knows what’s out there. One time I went hiking for a week in the boonies, in bear country, and put my food up in a tree every night, and every day while hiking I stumbled across a bear. A couple times I’d look left and see a cub then right and see a mother. I didn’t break the bear-safety rules, they broke themselves. I was by myself and at night I heard noises.

Comfort is easy to find.

After the bears, when I camp, I include defense. To me defense doesn’t need defending, but there are folks who disagree. I guess I consider them to be close to kooks. But they probably think the same of me. I suppose it’s pointless to try to discuss anything across this particular divide.

I don’t care whose ‘turf’ I’m supposedly ‘unnaturally’ invading when I choose to defend myself. All ecosystems include me if I choose to go into them. I am nature. That’s my take. I am society, too, within reasonable law and custom. Civics includes the right of defense in my book. Pick your own book if you like. So when I travel and camp I cover the bases for survival and defense.

Martha recalls our first big roadtrip when I talked her into tenting on public land in the boonies off the side of a two-track. I said it was no problem, nothing to fear. She hesitated but went along with me. We set up tent and were getting ready to snuggle in for the night when I started stacking up a pile of sizeable rocks at the front of the tent. She asked “What’s that?” I said “For defense.” –In case of critters, people, whatever. She got scared, she later said. But she settled in. What did she know.

The kids have been great so far on this trip. Henry plays with his modeling clay and Lucy sings. They stay great the whole trip, pretty much. What cuties. They inspire us as we drive. Of course they have their childish weaknesses, too. On the second half of the trip I suppose they fatigued some. Can you imagine being strapped in those 4-point astronaut harnesses all day? When we were kids going on car vacations we got to loll around everywhere in the car. I recall even trying to hang out in the backwindow ledge, trying to make forts down in the footwells. Anyway, we went to several restaurants with them on this trip. Not many really, but a few. The kids would get wild there about half the time. Not too wild, but wild enough. But I don’t think we had a single spilled milk, so there’s that. We also noticed that which parent would be driven nuts by what they were doing would alternate. We’d also have some Henry hitting and Lucy squealing kind of dynamic, which increased on the second half. Still, they kept their act together all in all.

At the beginning, Henry was lizard and snake oriented. He knew we were going to places where he might see these things, might see different kinds than usual. Might even see a rattlesnake. This theme persisted throughout the trip.

Lucy simply loved her Philadelphia Chickens CD and songbook. She sang along with every song and “read” along with every song at the same time. Thankfully they are fine songs because we heard them over 100 times. Well, we’re a pretty harmonious family: if the songs had sucked the CD would not have survived. But then maybe we’re easy to please.

The minivan had a prime luxury: a video screen. The kids could watch movies. It had cordless headsets so we didn’t have to hear the movies. We could plug their little minds into the fantasy machine and enjoy the drive. (It seems like a certain kind of fantasy is good for kids of a certain age. Too bad about the rest. Well, I think we pick good vid’s anyway. See my kid’s vid listings at the OYB site.) The headsets soon stopped working. But the video provided daily diversion for an hour or so.

Every now and then we’d look back and see H and L holding hands as they sat with faces aglow in the electronic light.

I quickly realized that I brought about twice as much stuff as I should have. For proper roadtripping this flaw needs to be eradicated.

Uncle Kent is a big ole guy, over 6’6″, with a deep, huge voice. He’s not known to tolerate foolishness. When I was a kid we drove West once and met him and Jo halfway, in Colorado. I’d never seen a yucca plant. We were all in the car and I kept noticing yuccas. There’s a yucca. There’s another yucca. Suddenly the windows shook as Kent boomed “For God’s sake, shut up about the *&#@ yuccas!” I was paralyzed in shock. We used this story frequently on the drive to Hollywood. The kids picked up on the challenge and the risk. They needed to learn how to behave. Or else. Every now and then as we drove we’d hear from the back “So how big is Uncle Kent?” Followed by thoughtful silence. It worked.

Martha packed perfectly for herself and the kids. Well, almost. She brought a good bit too much as well.

So we had to stop and buy a $50 rooftop bag to give tolerable daily access to interior supplies.

Man, we saw so many rocket-boxes and roofbags across the Plains. (But few in California!) Mostly they were on minivans and SUVs. We never saw anything like this on our last big drive 12 years ago. This gear didn’t exist back then. I remember when the first rocket-boxes appeared and seemed like an indulgence for the disorganized and wealthy.

I wish I had made a rocket-box myself, of plywood. I fantasized about doing it on this trip. I could do it with 2 full sheets of thin plywood, a saw, some screws, brackets, caulk, hinges. It would have that compelling DIY style. You want a rocket-box, I’ll give you a rocket-box!

Martha nixed that idea and we got the roof-bag instead. Those bags are annoying to load. And they hurt mileage and power! Our Town Car gets 24 on the road. The minivan only gets 18 at best. With the roofbag it got 17 and less.

I’d intended this trip to be partly for business. The OYB brain would be working the whole time, scanning for opportunity and detail. So I brought along about 30 pounds of inventory. It came in handy but, really, there wasn’t time.

Actually, the whole trip was a dash. We lingered twice, in SF and LA, otherwise zoom-zoom. And how to refresh years of dreaming about places I used to know in SF and LA in just a few days? Still, we noticed stray things here and there.

I had big OYB magnetic door signs made up beforehand. And I stuck up nearly all my range of OYB bumperstickers. And the whole way out I had the van festooned with dozens of Social Stickers: my moveable magnet hobby stickers. I installed them in a continuous wave-form along the front, sides and back of the van. It looked cool. People gawked for thousands of miles. Until Martha got fed up. She didn’t like the gawking. We simplified the presentation. And clustered them near the rear in a milder swarming-hive affect.

I gave them away as we drove along. Kids seemed to like them most, but occasional adults caught the gist. People would typically stare but not in detail, at least when we were around, so I suppose they’d miss the fine-print that stated what they were about. But that’s part of the point. They’re meant to be stickers that stay. Or move. For those in the know. They can stay, but it’s OK if they move. To know they move, you have to care enough to look a little closer. There’s a little life lesson here, eh? Data wants to be free, but one has to care.

The next day we both took bike rides around the wide open empty prairie road around the rez. As I rode along, in one place I suddenly smelled a great smell. I think it was sage. Then it was gone. From then on, we gathered sage and kept it in the van. Some ways of handling it would result in a nice smell, other times we’d have a bundle with no smell noticeable in the vehicle at all.

The old guy at the ranger station says this place was an old stage stop. That was neat to know. To feel a bit of historic longitude for where we were, history being a strange thing for so much of the made-over, erased, cleansed suburbia where I live. There were a lot of pictographs on the cliffs across the water from our campsite, from Indians of 5 nations, but they’re off limits. You can see them from a boat, though.

Day 4: Denver–Swiss Family Fondue

We loaded up and blasted for Denver to visit old family friends. We’d alerted them of our arrival just a few hours before. Not polite, I know, but they were excited and said “Let’s party!”

Then we hit the freeway in the 110degF heat. We get out at intervals for tank after tank of gas and pop and cold things. When we get out of the car, it’s like a furnace. But I love it. Gimme that lung-filling heat, that luxurious sweat. I sweat. I notice other people sweating, too. At a gas station while I’m filling up a young woman is sprawling in the car next to us. She’s barely clad, lean and curvy, stretching and writhing around, covered in sweat, angled my way and angling more and more. Oh my. It was quite a show. I try not to hyperventilate and get the gas cap back on. Her tattoo’ed Latin guy comes out later and they peel away.

I spent a few months in Denver back in the mid-80’s. It was a formative time and as we drove the freeway north of town I saw various neighborhoods beyond the barriers that brought back great old memories and even semi-visceral feelings that I didn’t know I had. There’s an oldstyle amusement park with wooden rollercoaster next to a small lake that we went past. I recalled going there with friends on a hot summer night. I’d forgotten. Very nice to get that one back. We overshot our exit on I-70 west of town and went down that huge luge-run stretch of freeway that twists and drops out of sight at the Chief Hosa exit. An exciting ‘welcome back’ for a flatlander who hasn’t driven in heavy steep-descending traffic in years. Bikes are legal on the freeways in Colorado. I wonder how fast one could get rolling in that 5 mile stretch. It would be fun to find out!

We also blew past the ole Red Rocks musicgrounds exit, bringing back more memories of whitelining through heavy traffic with pal Randy on his motorcycle to go to rock concerts and crazily explore the vicinity: riding up the dirt road to the big antenna hill nearby.

We finally got off at the El Rancho exit west of town. There’s a great old restaurant right there that I haven’t been to but which I recommend. I really like swanky old log cabin 50’s-era restaurants: big chandeliers and fireplaces. I suspect one could have a great steak and good time there. But we were meeting friends in the parking lot. They escorted us back to their mountainside condo.

These are international people where the husband is from Switzerland. It was near midnight and we hadn’t had dinner yet but they insisted on a proper Swiss fondue welcome. Wunderbar! The kids loved it, too. We sat up chatting and having a fine time. Fondue: the social dinner. Fritz is presently working with Vietnam on its economy. Pretty big stuff. He says he has 2000 farmers who are ready to export the very best in bamboo flooring anywhere in the world. They’re working on lining up markets for them. Just tell them who wants a container to kick things off. I guess bamboo makes a cheap good beautiful hardwood floor. Outside below the condo balcony where we’re breakfasting in our first fresh mountain air some pre-teen girls like my stickers so I let them each take one.

Day 5: Boulder–breakfast and a mountain ride

The next morning we launched for breakfast in Boulder. Boulder has the world’s best breakfasts! Well, I counted up 30 neat places to have breakfast there. I lived there for a couple years in the 80’s. It was neat to be back. Darn, what a whirlwind, though. I’d really wanted to stop in Denver, too, but M is already fretting about getting home in time for H’s school. Sigh. We don’t really have a schedule. Kinders don’t really need to make the first day of school. But. I had textbooks to deliver for prof’s to MSU! Yikes! And our friends in the Bay Area were leaving in a week and the kids really wanted to see each other. So we did have to keep moving to our main destinations. Breakfast in Boulder was one of them!

We went to my fave: mimosas and eggs on the porch of the main camp lodge in Chautauqua Park at the top of town, in the foothills overlooking everything else. Ahhh. The kids were great, the food was great. It was my first view of Boulder people in years. They look like models and movie stars, wheelers and dealers, coasters and sliders.

Actually, I’d started getting intimidated earlier in the morning as we left Denver. Everything is much more built up, sure. But there are also tons more public amenities and most of all: there are LOTS of people outside. I’ve never seen so many high-end road bikes and mt-bikes out on the road. Along with special parking lots and bikeways for them. And this is in Denver! Denver felt like Boulder to me. And it seemed superfit. All this go-go, professional stuff with all the development of bikeways just kind of threw me. A little goofy, I know, but there ya have it. Well, I’m not used to seeing any at all, really, other than a few people I know. And then Boulder was even more Boulder than Denver was, of course. (This is getting funny.) While we were having breakfast, people from town were coming and going by the score, to the hiking trails nearby, only not just for strolls, I guess. They had on performance-wear and camelback water systems. Well, fine.

My next plan was to do my favorite bike ride in town: a bit of the Boulder Creek path then on up through the ‘hoods to Flagstaff Mountain and ride up that supersteep 9 mile hill. We went down to the Pearl Street Mall area and Boulder Creek where I left the family for a couple hours. I went to check out the old library by the creek. It was gone. There’s now a new library on the other side of the creek. It’s a crystal cathedral with waterfall in the middle, circular in layout, with highspeed Net connections everywhere , with spiral staircase. Yowza. I was starting to get amenity overload.

Driving through town we’d seen the vast Boulder Community Recreation Center. It’s basically something like three times what an Olympic Training Center would be, with much new stuff added on. Whew! Then there was the lovely Creek scene itself. There were hundreds of diverse people outside. Bums, punks, hippies, backpackers, yoga types, martial artists, bike racers, inline dancers, cellphone people of every stripe, bicycle activists and commuters, trout fishermen, inner tubers, kids splashing, old ladies, groups of civic people meeting on lawns, a farmer’s market. My Lord! All in a lush, overgrown, green, tree-filled setting with crystal clear creek tumbling down through it. Packed with people playing, swimming, lolling, sitting, reading. Then as I rode along it, I’d see sections that looked wild and briary and kind of inaccessible and it looked like any woodsy creek. What a place. The Pearl Street Mall with its civic commercial space and the parallel Boulder Creek pathway corridor, with neighborhoods of small streets and small, older bungalows hidden in between in the warm mountain sun make a worldclass combination of something, that’s for sure. I mean, I still dream about it.

I sure was enjoying seeing the wide variety of bikes of all vintages, along with lots of older cars and motorcycles of all kinds, cruising around and stashed in yards many of which had plenty of character.

Time for Flagstaff.

I had the sense I had brought the wrong gears for my bike. A 24-tooth cog was my biggest, with 42-tooth chainring. In Missouri I’d already spent a lot of time in that gear. I thought I’d left the same gears on the bike since we’d visited Boulder 3 years ago. I’d find out for sure.

I started up Flagstaff and was immediately straining like I never had in my life. I’d never screwed up gear selection so badly. So much for rushing my packing. I needed a 28. Every 10 minutes I had to stop. Lots of racer dudes and dudettes went blasting on down past me. Then it got steeper. I started tacking across the road. Help, help. The heat, the heat. I could kind of turn the pedals and that was enough. I finally made it, swung around and started back down. Whoa, this is WAY too fast. I had to brake and lean so hard I almost skidded out just to make the turns. But any less and I was zooming off the road over the cliff. Catcha-22. I tried sitting up high but that didn’t help. My rims got boiling hot and my glued-on sewups got all juicy and wanted to slip right off the rims. I was bummin’. I had to stop a couple times and pour the rest of my water on the wheels.

I had lost the Dark Art of Descending. I used to be able to ride up that hill in 22 minutes. It took me 1 hour this time. I used to fly down it using the brakes maybe 4 times. Not today! You just have to be familiar with going down these hills. And I wasn’t anymore. And I just could not figure it out. That was kind of funny.

When I finally got down I went into town and found a bike shop that I know from the Net. I’d chatted various times with its owner in public discussions. I knew he ran just about the only high end road bike store in the US. So I found him and said Hi. He had lots of vintage bikes on display. He didn’t have a 28-tooth cog I could use on my old 80’s freehub set-up. “You’d have to file down the ramps on a new cog.” We talked bike books. The Tour de France ended on his TV. All us dudes there gabbed about the race. It was a fine shop.

Martha then went on her ride along the whole Creek path while I played in the creek with the kids and other wild kids and backpackers and tubers and fishermen.

We left town kind of late, after cruising through a few of my old ‘hoods and checking out the gloriously high quality stylish grocery store on North Broadway: the retro “Ideal.” (A lady in the lot said she liked my stickers.) Then we headed up the canyon to camp at Brainard Lake, the state park north of Nederland along the heavenly Peak to Peak Highway. Along the way we passed the lovely old Lion’s Head restaurant. That looks worth checking out sometime, for the steak-and-Manhattan-inclined. Brainard is a gorgeous, remote, undeveloped hiking area. Or it was. The sign said full when we got there in the dark.

Two more campgrounds along the highway were also full. Then we saw a sign that said “National Forest Access 2 miles” off on a dirt side road. We took it. We followed it to a rancher’s two-track, saw more signs, kept going. Went up and up. It got rocky, a sign said one mile to something that seemed public. Then we saw a couple other cars catching up to us. Finally we pulled off on a spur and they went into a woods below us. Did we know where we were? Ha. I wondered what those folks were up to. But didn’t get nervous. We camped. Woke up in a heavenly high mountain foresty meadow of aspen and flowers. Above and below us through the trees we saw several other car campers and their tents.

Day 6: Craig–We finally get to see what Aunt Rosie has been writing about in those cards all these years

We’d wanted to zip on over to Salt Lake City by fairly directly via I-70 then Colo Hwy 40. But we ended up going through Estes National Park. We didn’t know what this would entail besides some natural beauty. It’s $20 to drive in. It’s crowded. The beauty is OK. It took all day. So we were going to spend the night mid-state Colo instead.

Steamboat seems like a nice town. Not Aspen-fancy yet, but hoppin’ with outdoor action. There’s a soda fountain on a corner in Steamboat that serves hard Italian gelato. Cool.

Seeing the hundred hat store signs on the way to town got me thinking hats. Clever. We checked it out. Pricey hats in the $30 to $80 range. OK, good hats. None were right. Too Western for me. I ended up getting a big straw sombrero thing for outdoor action but not for in-car. Too big. My old Panama was just too trashed and dirty to wear anymore. People had been saying trashed was cool, but M was finally putting her foot down. And the kids had stamped on it too much. But the main thing was that it was just too hot. I needed a straw hat with lots of venting. Not easy to find. I sweat. Grommets are not enough. Leaving Steamboat I started noticing that gas stations were selling a wide range of pretty cool big-brim hats, cheap. Saw a style that suited me. But not in the right size. So we stopped as we drove. I finally found one that was just right. Big ole venting, moderate brim size. $8. I got two. Ah, relief.

We’d been trying to get in touch with my Uncle Dale who lives a couple hours outside Steamboat in Craig. But our addressbook didn’t have their ph# and no relatives were home and they were unlisted. Rats.

My dad has 5 bro’s and a sister. Dale is 70 and retired but got himself invited to a church recently and is now a preacher again after a couple decades off. He’d been trucking. We wanted to stop in and say Hi. He’s a hunting guide, too. Like all my uncles, he and his wife Aunt Rosie had lots of kids. We’d grown up in touch with them, but they were the only ones to leave town. Dale had been a missionary out west to the Mormons. Yeah, a Baptist converting Mormons. We’d never visited them out west. They’d come trucking on through and stop in and see us over the years.

Well, we’d just go to their house. Then we realized it was Sunday evening and that Dale would be preaching. We got into the very rural but fairly sizeable Craig and found their house in town. Big hounds were barking out back. The door was open, TV on. No one home. Van in drive said the name of the church on the side. We drove into town and asked at the grocery store and then drove out to the church. I peeked in and saw Dale in a suit. Bingo. We waited outside a bit. Suddenly petite little Rosie came out, greying hair, and in a lace dress up to her chin. She about fell over. “Well, well, well, what a surprise!” On the second beat: “We’ll have to go to the cabin when Dale gets done!” she announced. Yee-haw! We’d been reading for years about the hunting resort with its lodge and cabins in holiday cards Rosie sent out. About how they finally built their own little cabin, no heat, plumbing or electricity out on this huge mountain ranch where Dale guided, where they stayed for cold months at a time. It might’ve been small and primitive but it was clearly no place they shied away from!

Henry fell right in love with Rosie and soon had some special rocks to give her, then rushed to the van and started making her some clay things. She was impressed and touched.

These days they live in town in a duplex that the rancher owns and where the rancher’s son lives in the other half. They attend Dale’s church. The rancher has miles of land. Rosie cooks for the hunters during the seasons.

Craig is dry, sage-brushy, rural, well-preserved and basically dry-yellow in color.

Dale has some wind to him and when he wasn’t coming out of the church directly, despite time being up, Rosie said she’d go “give him a nudge,” as it was getting on toward evening. I saw some antelope on a ridge beyond the parking lot. Directly, Dale came out in his well-filed suit and cowboy boots. “Well, well, well! What say we head on up to the cabin!” Promptly, we were on our way back to house in peal-out of gravel, with me trying to keep up with the preacher-mobile. At the house the “elderly” couple were a blur of packing and then into their big ole truck, with coolers and all. We stopped for a quick pet of the lion hounds out back. Very friendly. Dale quickly showed Henry the skull from the first lion he shot last winter, with a pistol. Rosie had quickly popped popcorn for the kids. “It’s 20 miles up. Follow us!” And their diesel roared away.

As we drove through the apparently desolate rangeland, we noticed we were winding higher and higher. It was dark now but it was getting cooler and more humid. Greener, more trees, wide valleys surrounded by aspen. Dale would slow up and we’d see his spotlight reveal a group of muley bucks in a lush meadow. Then we pealed off the road onto a ranch 2-track. A few miles later we were scaling a lumpy, twisty grade when we stopped. There was the cabin. The air was fresh and crisp, stars in the black sky. We sat out on the porch, chatting. They had to get up at 5a.m. the next morning to drive some teens to Utah for a camp. It was great to see them, even though out on the deck we could only hear them. We watched the stars and hung out, telling old family stories, then hit the hay.

What a great place. No wonder they wanted to get up there. Dale said there was a herd of a thousand elk right in the meadow out front last Thanksgiving. Rosie keeps these places spotless and runs two stoves at the main mess hall.

Later on I told my Dad about the cabin and he perked up at my layout description. It’s just like the house we grew up in, he said, with a chuckle. There’s roots for you.

Day 7: Utah–Old time candy!

We drove hard all day across Big Sky country, getting stopped way too often by construction. At one long wait a young guy walks up to my window and says Hi, he’s from Detroit, now ski bumming. He wonders about the stickers. I give him one. It’s cute to see him slap it onto his car up ahead.

We’re getting tired. But M was behind the wheel: we have to get to Provo and the 100-year-old Startup Candy Company! It’s going to close any minute now and we call in from the desert on the wonderful cell phone. A guy, who turns out to be the owner, answers and says he’ll stick around a bit longer for us. It’s a candy factory that invented the first filled candy bar and several other long-lived candy treats. It’s in its original building and has been run by many generations of Startups.

We blast through all meddling canyons like they’re nothing. We passengers are delirious van-overdosed blobs but M barrels on. We make it. Mr. Startup seems about my age, early 40’s. But since his business seems possibly viable he’s probably in his late 30’s. (If you spare the stress, you get to live on the street, is starting to be my sense of things.)

Provo seems well-preserved and fairly humane for a big burg. It has great views, too. The little we see of the outskirts shows lots of people riding bikes on well-groomed bikeways. They seem to have outdoor amenities here but less garishness than Colorado.

Mr. Startup is friendly and we sample many things. The kids are sweet and appreciative and on cloud nine without reducing the glee to chaos. We buy a big box of things, mostly for gifts. They do their own box-making and printing and use the same artwork–and printing equipment–as in the 1800’s.

But I’m ahead of myself. The candy and chocolates are great. They use most of the same old equipment to make all that, too. They even have Magnolias, a flower-flavored candy. It’s perfume candy, little crunchy globes with juicy centers of natural flavoring. You like em or hate em, as Startup said. We liked it. Lovely.

They had such amazing glass-like sculptured candy, too. He said many people got the large (6-10″), brightly colored candy animals, trains and things as their only Christmas presents back in the day, and didn’t mind.

We talk business and family. He’s a fine fellow. But it seems he doesn’t like people to order directly from his website. He doesn’t like mail-order catalogs either. He wants to get to know his customers and have them taste before they buy. Wow. I suspect he mostly does wholesaling. I think he should go direct more accessibly.We say goodbye and wish each other luck, talking about handing biz down to kids.

I’ve never met Pete Vordenberg, my ski racing memoir and culture book author. His book is highly regarded and going great guns. It’s a great project and we’ve had a fine time working together the past year. It’s high time we got together! He’s an Olympic XC ski team coach and we emailed before this trip and planned to meet if we could. He lives in Park City where the Team is HQ’ed. We talked by cellphone on and off. Things were shaky as he was just getting back from LA. But it looked like we could meet for breakfast the next day. We got a motel, our first, and collapsed. Oh, we had a campstove dinner alongside Bridalveil Falls as we slowly drove back through the canyon outside Provo after letting Startup go home. We’d had one restaurant meal so far (breakfast in Boulder).

To me, it seemed like we now started to move too fast. We were hurrying to make it to the Bay Area to meet our friends before their kids left. But without a couple painful spells of bleery dashing we would not have finished the whole nutty trip in a month. And in the end it seemed like it was all a blur, with a couple slower blurs tossed in.

Day 8: Utah–I meet Pete and get killed by the US Ski Team

In the morning I call Pete and he says that instead of having breakfast how about if we just meet him and the gang at Soldier Hollow–the 2002 Olympic XC Ski Stadium–and we could visit there and hang out or I could do a work-out with them if I liked. I about popped a gasket. Where’s Soldier Hollow? “Oh about 10 minutes away from you.” We’re there, man!

We beat the white vans to the stylin’ stadium. We were cooking up our morning coffee in the parking lot when the coaches and athletes pulled in. I recognized Pete as the driver next to me. We had a nice “I know you already, you bum” visit and then he said, Want to join in? I first thought, Aw, I don’t want to bother these kids. I’m not in shape. Then I thought, The heck with that, I’m in! I grabbed the ski poles that I conveniently brought (and M had said they were a waste!) and Pete and I trotted off with the gang.

The US Team was about a dozen superfit smooth-muscled guys and the gals. Tan and t-shirted. Sport-bras for the gals. They seemed fresh-faced enough that they could be my kids. They seemed cheerful and without the poseur edge I felt in some folks in Boulder.

I shook hands with the ex-Norwegian wildman coach, Tron. “Ja, nice to meet you and have you along. C’mon, let’s kick some butt.”

First thing we did was warm up with a jog. Not bad. Those high-altitude big-hill trails weren’t so hard on me yet.

This was going to be a Level 4 day. Yikes! (There are only four levels.) Race pace! I heard Tron say intervals plus some anaerobics. Here goes! The first item was 4 times up a 150-foot very steep hill, bounding with poles, at 110% effort, with lots of air in the bounds. Torin Koos, a tall, rubbery kid of about 23 led off the line-up of skiers. I was at the end. Torin sprinted up to the mark like a polevaulter attacking his launch. Then he leaped like Michael Jordan hitting the key. Holy smokes! With every ‘boing’ he’d fly so that his hips rose up about 3 feet in the air and floated about 10 feet up the steep hill. Then it’s my turn. The coaches yell, “C’mon, Potter, let’s see some air!” We did a halfmile trot to recover. Each time up, Torin and the others just flew and floated up that hill.

Just standing around Torin looked like a normal enough human. Seeing him go up that hill my eyes bugged out. His was an exotic gift. Going up really big hills really fast is what this kid did.

The U.S. is getting awfully close to the World Cup podium these days. Of course it’s not the skier alone who does it. A new team spirit and risk-taking brought by new coaches Tron and Pete were being widely credited by the skiers for their recent top finishes. “The podium this season for sure!” Pete says. I saw what he meant during the next part of the workout.

We were to pole-bound the 10k Olympic course and attack every hill and keep good technique the whole time. I lasted about 5k then found a place to watch. As I caught my breath, the lead guys closed in to finish the 10, snaking around the multilevel twists of the course. (Yeah, that makes them twice as fast as me.) You can see most of the course when you’re in the stadium. Watching those kids come in seemed like a good simulation of an Olympic race to me: great skiers were out there, giving it their all. What a thrill! It wasn’t just a workout. Send the US team out together for a max work-out and what do you get? A race! The coaches and others were yelling from the hillsides, Go go go! And the skiers were kickin’ butt. It looked great.

After lunch they were hitting the weights. Ha! I warmed down jogging with Pete. He said, Yeah, this is just the best race venue ever. We talked about our great and wild plans to do an audio CD version of his book with new stories in it for all the skiers who’ll be spending hours roadtripping this upcoming season. What a cool idea! The kids cooling down around us were psyched about it, too, and teased about who would do the voice. Pete will! Yeah, cool! So, I’ll send him a digicorder with my kids’ lunchmoney. It’ll pay off.

We said our byes and I told Tron thanks for killing me. M said my face was still beet red. Tron said “Hey, man, we kill you any time you like.” The white vans peeled awaywith my Move-It ski stickers on them. Pete winked and waved.

M went off on a ride into the little nearby valley while I looked for rattlesnakes with the kids at a creek near the stadium. Then we blasted.

After hanging with the kids, it struck me how wide a range of talent was visible even at the National level. I started to see why the squad going to WC events each year was only a couple guys and gals. Yet I’m sure that even the littlest kid there, with the most babyfat, could’ve beat me even in my prime.

Day 9: Reno–driving driving driving

We drove all day, and all night, and made it to Reno. I had an interesting time listening to the ranters on A.M. talk radio. They could’ve used more black preachers. At a big truck stop in town a tall, bosomy Native American hooker is in line ahead of me. Amazonian. She sashays her explodingly packed outfit and flips her hair with pride. She gets into a fancy truck that pulls up. Everyone gapes and snickers. A wino hunkered in the bushes as we carried the sleeping kids to our motel room.

Day 10: Alameda–We make it to the Bay!

The next day we head over Donner Pass and tell the kids the cannibal story then stop off at Truckee. Nice little town. Even nicer little river. I think it’s my favorite. We go swimming. Somehow its colors and friendliness are just the best for me. I saw it last 15 years ago and it still held true. A quick dip and then we were rolling again.

We finally get to Alameda Island in the Bay near San Francisco. What a quaint little place, such well preserved old bungalows. Not all built up or added-onto or steroided. There are a few amazing old mansions, but the lovely little bungalows impress us just as much. It’s a place of civic pride and care. People are friendly and diverse. We find our longtime friends. Ah, rest. A house with a courtyard out back, citrus trees and a nice place for outdoor dining. Ahhh, that’s life.

My old school pal Randy is who I hung out with, and lived with, a lot when I lived, skied and partied in Colorado. We’ve been through a lot. We hadn’t seen him and his in the Bay area for maybe 7 years, since he got married. He’s working pretty hard as a bigshot in the gov’t transpo scene. It was cute seeing him try to justify buying a several-year-old Beemer M3 convertible. RTR has always loved to drive. He’s a bigshot, let him have his Beemer.

His wife and kids are great. Our kids just fly to each other. They’ve been visiting Michigan in recent summers and we’ve all been having good fun. It’s nice to see them in their habitat.

Day 11: Alameda–A San Francisco fiesta

We do kid stuff all day. After RTR gets home from work, we get a sitter and go out for dinner to the Beach House at North Beach. It’s a WPA era place that kicks off the Golden Gate Park. Restored WPA murals on the walls surround us as we retire up to the live-jazz restaurant above the surf. We see bonfires on the beach and waves in the moonlight.

The drive over in the Beemer wasn’t bad either. Oh my God. 100mph amidst the twinkling lights of the city. The “Sport” button adds even more umph to quite a car.

We have a few ‘character’ drinks at a wharf bar by the Bay Bridge before we have dinner. It’s a neat, crusty place surrounded by a run-down marina with dogs running around and sun-faded cars that are clearly less important to owners than the faded boats. Vibes from my past. The owner of the Chronicle, Mr. Ex-Sharon Stone, is chilling out next to us on the patio.

Later at the Beach House, from above, I see bike lights pull into the lot. In the dark I notice the rider has a high hands position. I sense some other things as well. I say to our table, “I bet that’s a Rivendell.” They laugh at me. I laugh at me. I trot down the stairs to see if I pulled it off. Sure enough I meet a nice, tossled, rumpled youthful guy locking up a luminous mint-green Atlantis, by Rivendell. (I suspect this is not a rare Riv rider profile.) He was impressed by my ID-ing him in the dark. His bike has a honey-colored leather saddle, an elegant rear rack and lovely front handlebar bag–all by Riv. No reason such a lovely bike shouldn’t be as popular as a Harley, really. They have that personal quality yet useful aspect to them. Back upstairs I confirm my catch and get some wide eyes.

We tell stories about the old days. One of Randy’s faves is when I drove the old Yamaha 650 Special (ultra-customized, a cool, simple ride) that I bought from him down from Boulder in September to visit a girl in Colorado Springs by way of the Divide. On the way home, a blizzard hit. I drove most of that day in 6″ of slush on the freeway in the tire tracks of semi’s with my visor cracked open so I could see. I stopped and warmed up and wrung out my clothes in every town along the way. But by Denver I was done in. When Randy got home from work that evening he said he knew I was at his place. A snowy bike was parked outside. I had a key. A trail of snow and snowy clothes was strewn up his stairs, leading to his bathroom which was emitting steam. He’s been laughing about that one ever since.

The engine on that cheap, simple bike sounded SO good. We both underappreciated it. (Probably because it blew fuses, and stranded me a few times.) You’re doing good when a homemade old bike turns heads. It’s not the easiest thing to do in Boulder. I mean, I used to talk about buying a different bike. What a maroon. I wish I had it now.

I’m going to visit Riv tomorrow. I’d emailed awhile back. Get to test some bikes. Meet Grant. See what this outfit is all about. I’ve only been reading his stuff and seeing pictures of his work for 15 years now. He’s been sending me his publications and I’ve been sending him mine. He’s been a loyal OYB advertiser as well. I can only afford to buy tubes and chains from him, and an occasional saddle or pack, but maybe someday

On the way home, Randy takes us on a late night drive through the heart of town, down Lombard, the works. M and I are in the back with the black sky above, the sounds of the city around, the fresh air. We listen to a CD Randy’s office made up for a transpo event. It kicks off with the bossest driving sounds. Night driving music in a night driving city. Heavy beat, then trumpets. (Long Line of Cars, by Cake.) Randy and I have listened to a lot of cool music together over the yearshere’s another page.

Day 12: Alameda–Rivendell, David, and Welcome to the Tenderloin!

I went and visited Rivendell Bicycle Works. It’s in Walnut Creek, a busy suburb in a valley over the hill from the Bay, with beautiful rolling hills surrounding it within easy bike-ride escape distance.

Rivendell is America’s only high-quality handmade production bike company. It also offers a wide variety of original, vintage and hard to find accessories that any bikey would love. All their stuff has a “we care” vibe to it and a design value that clearly states: “This is going to last for decades and look and work great the whole time in a classy but not fancy way.” Riv believes that simple is better and tries to keep simple alive in a bike world which is in the grip of pricey toss-it-don’t-fix-it stuff. Riv can be pricey, too, but what can ya do if you’re paying real people to make things for you. Of course, pricey bike stuff is actually cheap because it lasts for decades.

Grant Peterson was the manager of Bridgestone US before he started Riv, which went under when the yen got too strong. He was speccing unfashionably simple, classy and reliable bikes in the mid-80’s. A cult formed around the worldview called the B*O*Bs, Bridgestone Owners Bunch. Grant put out a nifty mag and catalog for them. These are already collector’s items. Then Bridge died and he started Riv. And the Rivendell Reader. I’ve been following what he’s been up to since he started being up to things in bikeland. I’ve been shopping his way as I’ve been able. I have a Bridge MB1 race mt-bike. My national-class racer housemate rode Bridge RB1s to many wins for awhile. I’d never really seen a Riv in real life until last night. I’d read about the shop, the spartan conditions. Time to check it out. The guys said they’d be there.

Riv is in a metal shed in a row of sheds in an industrial park hidden behind other buildings downtown. Riv people are friendly folks and there were gorgeous Riv bikes leaning here and there all around. It was breath-taking. It’s been decades since I’ve seen so much art and care in a roomful of bikes. Down the way was some kind of custom hotrod shop. A paint shop. The usual. The neighbors were friendly, too. Grant was talking with a customer, a big fancy guy, like an ex pro football player. Riv is offering the only classy production bike for big guys, the Redwood. It fit this guy to a tee. They were doing some very pleasant business it seemed, but earnestly. In the meantime I looked at things. There were cool bike things everywhere. A pile of lug castings at various stages on top of a file cabinet on top of a pile of raw ore. Cool. A workbench front and center. I remembered my need for a cog. I showed them my road-dirty insect-be-gutted bike and apologized for it. They said it looked great and reminisced about it. I got to meet the legendary cross racer and male model, Pineapple Bob. He said he started on a bike like mine. Mark said they had a cog that would work for me but they’d have to file it, and he offered to do so. It ended up being more work than first thought but not too much and a fine fix with no extra charge. I looked forward to some hills! Then Grant was free and we said Hi. With his bright green eyes and oversize eyeteeth, he has a penetrating mien. He’s a pro with a romantic tendency. He’s shy and keeps the focus off of himself and on the bikes, but there is a rumpled stylish vibe of his that seems to get shared and spread around his work. What he’s doing is an inspiration, you gotta know it. And his team is with him all the way.

He set up a couple bikes for me to try. Two bikes were loaded and leaning against the bench. Grant and John were heading out after work for an overnighter. They had classy-yet-casual prototype canvas luggage bags on some very shapely-yet-rugged racks. I tried Grant’s bike, too. He measured me for his own style of seat and bar adjustment. It was a very interesting ride, with bars higher than seat. The bars were also a Riv innovation and felt real nice and versatile. Actually there were 3 different Riv bars in view. Lovely to see, with so many innovative useful cuves. I rode up the steep hill near the shop just fine. I wasn’t convinced though. What about speed and sport? What about em, said Grant and John, laughing. Grant gave in and lowered my bars a bit. They still seemed fine. When I rolled by, John said “Seem a little low.” The pack flaps were held down by a stick. A good, whittled stick, the guys said. Nothing to get lost or broken. Fully adjustable. I’d never seen a high-end product with a stick on it before, but darn it suited me to a tee. I put sticks on my own stuff all the time. Why not design a stick into something way nice? Their setups also didn’t have toeclips, just plain old platform pedals: lets you move your foot around, Grant said. Nice, simple. I think they’re on to something. Go, Riv, go!

I still think a fully integrated bike with matching fenders, lights, chainguard, rack, saddlebag, pump and tools might really do it. But they’re already doing it where no one else dares to tread. Do you know how rare that is? Onward, dear Rivulons!

An organic juice icecream truck came jingling down the alley and Pineapple bought me a Popsicle. Thanks! It was VERY hot. In fact, so hot that I think minds were melting yet the gang took time to show me things and have a sweaty chat. The casually loaded lovely bikes were calling the Friday guys strongly.

Later that night the saintly Rosemary offered to watch all the kids while we went out on the town for a date (RTR was out). We planned to go to Chez Pannise, the worldfamous first California cuisine restaurant. As we drove over we realized we hadn’t seen Downtown David yet. The very provocation for the trip! We’d been so swept up, but now we had a chance and even though we’d see him soon, we leaped into action. David, are you there? Are you ready? Let’s party! We did a screeching left-turn from shady groves to the seedy Tenderloin. It was great to see him finally. He’s visited us a lot. A family friend from the Ann Arbor days. It was time to inflict the Family Unit on him for a change! Well, we’ll start with just us old farts, no kids. (How rare is it anyway that family vacationers get to go out without the kids? Yeehaw!) So we met up and hit the streets and the wild, crazy international restaurants, picking a brash, loud Vietnamese place. Cheap, crowded and great. Welcome to the City! Then we hit the bars. We end up in one that is very confusing and very urban. Three hot Asian chicks man the bar. They introduce themselves by name and we shake hands. Then a tall young guy sidles up behind us and starts being hilariously obnoxious and buys us drinks. The ones we’d ordered taste like water. He orders us all Jack Daniels on the rocks–smart–the barmaids scowl. He’s pushy. The girls know him. Why is he buying drinks. What is going on here. It’s some kind of strange procurement, we guess. A midget came in and suddenly bought Martha a drink. This is getting weird. After we leave David said “That’s the weirdest bar I’ve ever been in, and you know me. I think it was a traditional Korean bar-girl bar where they sell socializing and not sex per se.” However we did notice a redlighted stairway heading up to some doors along a balcony. But no one ever went up while we were there.

Day 13: San Francisco–We love the Tenderloin!

We say bye to our friends and yet we’re still driving one of their cars, their little beater. We leave our van at their place. They’re leaving town themselves. We’re heading into the City for a couple days and a teeny car is a good idea. Thanks!

RTR is a famous non-consuming DIY appreciator of plain good things. Some might say infamous. I mean, he actually made cross-country drives with me in my old Rabbit with no heat, for Christmas, and we would wear sleeping bags as we drove while he was a muni-bonds salesman in the go-go 80’s. Some might call that enabling.

The previous year a neighbor was away for the summer and loaned them their runabout powerboat. They explored the Bay a lot and loved it. Alameda has more boats per capita than anywhere else in the US. The Bay area has more wonderful boat exploring to be done than a life has years. And there’s no traffic.

David is working until early afternoon. He’s the manager of the first retail outlet of an elite chocolate maker in the renovated Ferry Building by the water. His neighbors are outlets representing the highest quality in most of the foodgroups. There’s an elite, custom cheese shop; meat shop; vintage olive oil shop; wine bar. The works. He says he’s getting back into cooking. No doubt! The Farmer’s Market is in full swing so we check it out. Too crowded. We end up hanging out at the end of the wharf with the homeless fishermen. They’re friendly and show the kids their exotic catches. One guy is a big, friendly Viet Vet sort of Indian who is netting crabs and has his granny mom with him, knitting in a rocker. They camp in his truck parked right there. She gives the kids some pops. Everybody chats. We finally think to take a ferry to Sausalito and back to see the Bay before David gets off work. The Bay is gloriously full of sailboats. We change ferries at the turnaround because ours is taking on water. Yikes!

Day 14: San Francisco–Bussin, eatin ‘n’ drinkin, all day long, in the blazing sun

David’s apartment is small, like he warned. We get the bed, he takes the floor. What a guy! In the bathroom, I hit my head on the sink when I get up from the toilet. I could’ve washed my feet in the tub at the same time. But David is whipping up some great snacks and treats and popping wine. The place is older, with tall ceilings. It’s got conviviality a-cookin’.

We joke about his neighbors. There’s no pets allowed or smoking, so we smell smoke and hear dogs barking whenever we hike his stairs. Whenever we hear a dog or parrot squawk we say “No dog here!” “No bird here!” David said there was a For Sale flier in the foyer saying “Bird cage for sale” then in small type: “birds included.” He said everyone there has a tic or talks to themselves.

We meet a friend of his who agrees to dare hang out with us and our kids today. He’s heard about us for years, so here we are.

We all push strollers and ride busses in the extreme heat all day. David says the Muni is the worst bus system on earth and they all need to suffer and be punished. Every bus arrives on time for us and has friendly, helpful drivers.

We stop again in North Beach at the oldest Italian restaurant in the City, the Gold Spike. A great old dive. Both kids are asleep in the strollers. We lean them in a booth and start drinking around a big table and order huge dinners, app’s and wine. Party! No kids! They sleep for two hours.

At the bar next to me I see a couple swanky guys and swanky Asian girls. Later as they get ready to leave I notice that a nerdy guy is sitting among them. A girl stays back and says to him, “Hey, you know we’re not those kinds of girls but, really, call us later if you want to have some fun. Ta-ta!” We’re in the City now!

Day 15: San Fran–Japantown and American Classics bike shop

In the morning we check out Japantown and see things like a store dedicated to teen cell phone accessories. We hang out at a Japanese bookstore the size of a Borders and see hot young Asian gals dressed like manga comics, the hyperurban latex skin look. Yow. We have sushi boat for lunch. H loves it all, goes nuts over the toys. We nearly fall for a Totoro tea set. Hmmm, possibly a few gift items were picked up. At the Soko Hardware, I fall for a few handmade Japanese bladed tools–a kukri-like hatchet and bamboo-handled hand-tempered pull-saw–and stash away a lovely kitchen-knife and a couple other nifty blades as presents before Martha gets to the counter.

We bus on over to the American Classics bike shop. I’d written articles for the owner’s bike zine in years gone by. He was out of town. It’s a great shop of high end and retro/vintage quality bikes. Nice displays of rare chainwheels with cool patterns on them. Nice displays of collectible derailers. And a whole showcase of Campagnuolo parts with the best old complete parts-set in one half and the new high-tech parts-set across from it. The old stuff sure looks better (and is easily repaired and maintained), like simple jewels.

At night we wheel the kids over to a wild, noisy Indian restaurant near David’s apt. It’s hot and steamy with loud music. We shove into the crowd and place our orders at the front then go find a table at the back. Some guys squeeze past us carrying a 5-foot-wide, 2-foot-deep metal pot. At the front some of the cooks are stirring a steaming stew in the same kind of pot. The food is great!

Obviously, you can get cheap great food from every part of the world in this City. Not too many kids around, though. Ha! It is a dirty city, but so vibrant.

I didn’t get a chance to see any of my favorite old stairway trails up through overhanging trees. Can’t do it all. I dream about those narrow, twisty pathways climbing up through that City. Will I ever find them again?

We wave goodbye to him as he heads into his shop the next morning and blast on our way.

Day 16: Nevada City–The Strappin’ Dudes!

I stayed a lot with Joel and Mike when I lived in Breckenridge. Later on we all took our cash and went out to LA to be pirates together on my wood sailboat for a couple months. All for one and one for all. I hadn’t seen them together since I’d moved. Mike got married and moved to Nevada City. Then Joel broke up with his Breck gal and moved there, too. Then Mike broke up with his gal and moved in with Joel. Back together! –Albeit in misery. But it was a boon for me. C’mon over!, they said. We wound our way through miles of gorgeous mountain roads that only got prettier as they got more remote until we rounded a bend and I just swung into a driveway. Did you say this was the place? I ask M. She says No. I look up. There’s a hippy in the drive of the trashed-out house. I lean out and hazard an explanation, “Uh, I’m looking for a place. This isn’t Joel’s, is it?” He smiles. “Joel’s inside. You’re here! Mike is on his way.” Another resting place after a hard day’s drive, another party on the way. We step inside over a big hole in the floor and look around. I see Joel squatting outside a sliding door, on the phone. Joel says Hey there! The place is trashed. A carpet strip is pulled up and upside down. Lucy steps on the nails in her bare feet. Mike pulls in the drive. “Hey, Strap!” Joel yells. It’s great to see them. The old gang! Mike is unloading his truck and we’re chatting. He says “It’s great to see you and your kids. I had a family once.” I haven’t seen such pain. It’s been six months. He’s his usual dry, witty self most of the time, though, playing with the kids. He looks the same, but puffier around the eyes.

It’s great to see Joel, too. While he squats there talking I see the same old Joel. He owns some rental property and knows the score and is quietly talking to a landlord on behalf of someone with an eviction hassle, from what I gather, calming the factions. He gets off the phone. Joel is a custom home carpentry foreman. Mike does windows for builders.

Friends stop over. People are having beer in the busted down ol’ house. Special plants are growing tall outside the back porch. “Yeah, I told that guy he could plant a few out back but, sheesh, not right here. Oh well.” There’s clothes on a ratty old clothesline, and busted down fencing around the yard.

Mike shows us his room. There are pics of his wife and kid on the wall. She ran off with a construction guy. He stands looking at a photo. I notice a dirty, dog-eared paperback copy of “The Philosophy of Aristotle” on his desk. Hmmm.

In the livingroom I get another surprise. There’s a beat-up bookcase jammed with bent-up books and paperbacks. They’re the classics of Western Religion, from the monks to the modern. Michael Fox, Meister Eckhart, all the Saints as far as I can tell. The Enneagram! Wow. I haven’t seen books like this since, well, my house! Amazing. Usually it seems like someone can only read this kind of thing with help, with fellow-travelers, in a school setting, with a teacher. But, no, Joel says he’s been reading before and after work. It looks like Mike is catching on, pitching in. Joel said “I figure anyone who hits 40 without getting some kind of wake up call is missing out.”

M & L dig into the garden alongside the house and bring in a big haul for dinner. We open some fine local brews and keep chatting and start cooking. We sit down to eatand Mike reaches out to hold hands around the table and say grace. Holy smokes. Our kids act up but we bless the food. What is going on in this party house? Maybe a little lifesaving it seems. Still, it seems like there hasn’t always been enough food around here. People are looking too thin and windblown.

Joel says there’s a wide range of independent people living around there: lefty hippies and righty militia-types. People seem to get along OK, he says. Why, there are 5 bookstores in town and it’s a small town. Sure enough, we check out town and it has plenty of amenities for being small and rural. Well-preserved, too. Hard to see how it has hosted the US’s 2nd biggest and oldest bike race, though.

Day 17: Sierras–Swimming and a drive

Everyone agrees we need to go swimming at the local hole. Joel laughs and says “Martha, do you forgive me yet for last time?” We visited the Dudes in Breck 12 years ago and did a casual afternoon hike with them to camp out in a cool place. The hike was a solid max 4-hour death march straight up a mountain that about killed Martha. I had to carry both our packs. We brought no food since it was such a light jaunt for the Dudes and Joel’s ex. We were eyepopping famished and trashed by the top. Still, it was cool to dive off the glacier into the lake with all those huge trout. We’d asked for a light hike. It’s been a joke ever since. So what kind of deadly extremism were we in for this time? The next day we packed some goodies and set off. The narrow, rocky drive in nearly wrecked the van, to start. The descent of the scree-field wasn’t too bad if you didn’t fall. The river did look lovely. I thought maybe the nude German fashion model girl who was at the pool area with us might qualify as intimidating to M, but she was friendly. The Yuba river was gorgeous and we cavorted and swam. But there were rapids exiting the pool and only big round boulders to creep around on. One slip by a child and we’d have death. Gulp. We watched them like hawks. They’re cautious kids but Lucy hadn’t had a nap and was being a bit reckless. Afterward we heard that people drown every week in the Yuba and similar area rivers. So she did get her chance to about faint when it later sunk in fully what we’d been doing.

After that, we had to take off. We were all bummin’ at the short visit, but it was time to head deeper into the hills to see Uncle Tim.

I get in an extra-twisty hilly bikeride then shower up and we’re off. We elect to go the mountain backroads. We spend hours getting nowhere besides carsick.

Downieville is a great looking place that we pass through. It’s along a river that’s full of small-time free-booter gold-mining vacuum dredge-rafts. Interesting scene. There must still be claims being staked. The town is totally preserved with a mainstreet of two-story buildings with roofed balconies on each story and active bars, restaurants, inns, shops and civic functions in all of them. I’d stop there a weekend anytime.

We finally bust out of the mountains onto the rangeland valley in the evening and take the supposedly less scenic highway to Tim’s place in Susanville.

I decide that I prefer Big Sky valley and rangeland driving to mountain driving. It’s far better scenery to me as well. We start making time and finally pull in in the late evening.

Day 18: Susanville–Lessons learned so far, and Uncle Tim

We’re finding that the cellphone has been a godsend.

Also, I ask M to free associate based on my cues: A woman with 3 kids? ­Hit head with hammer. A woman with no kids? Running in a field, throwing flowers. So I guess 2 kids aren’t so bad.

Oh, here’s a big thing: When you drive fast, on a freeway, you’re not anywhere at all. This is very tiring and lame, but it does get you somewhere. This fast time-travel has a cost. If you drive slower on a small highway, you’re almost somewhere, you can sense the traces. If you drive slower yet on an actual backroad you’re starting to be somewhere as you drive. But driving in general shows me more than anything that it isolates me. You don’t really notice where you are. You can’t. At best you get an impression. To really be there I can tell you have to earn it. It has to be a bike. Or a hike. Or a boat.

We made it to Uncle Tim’s place, a dark, cool rancho on the edge of Susanville. We see no lights when we pull up. It’s messy and overgrown. The sweet old Citroen DS is dented and on jacks. I walk to the ol’ front porch and the door is open. The TV is on and Tim is sitting in there in lamplight. He looks up from his paper. “Well, I see you made it.”

We sit down and start chatting like we’d never left from visiting 12 years before. Then we get the kids settled.

Tim is 57, my mom’s younger brother. He left home as soon as he could to avoid the strict, nutty woodworker Grampa. He’s a mechanical genius and encyclopedically one as well. Likes hounds, livestock, sailing, movies, Jeopardy, watching sports, world affairs, reading. He went west as a kid and joined his older brother Kent out in LA. Got a job as a nurse and started partying extra hard for a few decades with some real characters. Sailed a lot to Catalina Island with pals on a little boat, then bought a big one. Then for some reason bought a town with a friend up here and moved nearby after deciding that offshore sailing was a bit too much, got an ER job. Started hanging out with ranchers, cowboys, troubled and lively fellers. The hospital closed and another job never pursued. Worked on cars and ranches. Ditched the big indebted boat to me. Never went back to Michigan. Then Tim bought the shares of the town, Seneca (it’s on every map of the US) and drives up there on weekends and bar-tends. Lives in a sty. But to me his house still feels like home. Maybe because it’s always been an open house. A welcome house. It’s a sprawling place that stays cool even in the hot summer. Many friends have come there for shelter. Food is shared. There’s just less of it now. The weather has taken it’s toll on everything. –It’s taken away quite a few of his friends, as well. Never an easy thing. There’s a great old sound system with “Voice of the Theatre” speakers about 4’x6′ that rock the neighborhood with jazz even today. And there’s Tim. He’s engaging. Can positively, insightfully and pleasantly discuss anything. And work on it in the same way. He has a slow, laconic cadence, with turns of phrases that are easy on the ears. He has a longtime lady friend who lives in town and has a nice place, so it’s not like he’s stuck hereI guess. Tim’s house still has things laying around that were there when we last visited.

It is cluttered, dusty, with thick, smoky air. M and the kids play outside in the briar-filled yard. We pick berries out back. Somehow even the smell of the house feels like home to me. It doesn’t seem smoky. I guess I’ve just had too many good times there and have found good shelter there myself.

Henry asked him why he sat in that chair all day. No reply. The kids were invisible to him. Not many kids around.

I cleaned off his bike and pumped up his tires, so we all rode off down the river trail and had lunch and a swim.

Later on, I toured Susanville after a bike ride I took up the big pass to Eagle Lake. Tim’s favorite old hang-out in town is the Pioneer bar, a well-maintained 1800’s bar which is home to the most amazing thing: a snooker table, set out front and center in the large rear gaming area. I went to look at it again. I hadn’t seen one since Tim and I last played there 15 years ago. What a sight: a huge, gorgeous billiards table with net pockets for the small balls. It is a complex, strategic and highly skilled game, involving much use of the bridge, a true joy of gaming. And any competence at it prepares one for casually clean-sweeps of dinky, obvious 8-ball tables.

Next door one way is an independent bookstore owned by a sharp lady, Margie, who Tim recommended and who bought some of my stuff. The other way down the street is the Grand Café, a mint condition early-era restaurant and soda fountain. It was closed! But a delight to peer in at, with its mahogany booths, tiling, tin ceiling and perfect tidiness.

Day 19: Seneca–a big little town

The next day we got rolling for Seneca. On the way we stopped in at Bodfish’s sportshop in Chester. Tim mentioned him somehow and I startled. You know him? He’s a godfather of mt-biking, one of the early tour operators in the boonies. I didn’t know these were his stomping grounds. I’d never met him. So I finally did on the drive to Seneca. Bodfish is a sweet, quiet NoCal fellow who runs a multi-sport shop that offers quality things for every season: ski, boat, bike. He’s been writing about biking and describing his favorite trails for decades now. Bodfish liked my stickers and bought a copy of OYB. The arrogance of VVA put him off of taking any “Dirt Road Epics,” however. But he was open to considering it via the excerpts in the zeen. To me, arrogance in the case of VVA seems Whitmanesque, celebratory. But I didn’t get to meet VVA yet and Bodfish has, so who knows!

That was one big bummer so far. I’d planned to go on a ride with my hero author VVA who lives a few hours north of SF on the way to Tim’s, but one of his many ladyfriends had an urgent need for help in moving and he was gone when we were available.

But I did get to meet Bodfish, another godfather of the scene, and I am happy to have done so.

Seneca is a steep, scary, one-lane two-track drive an hour in from the nearest paved road. It’s in the Feather River Gorge, where the train that the hoboes rated one of America’s Ten Best Rides used to go along its notch cut out of stone and across a trestle so high and rickety over the river that it scared me even to look at it. Those tracks are gone now, but small-claim gold mining still goes on in those parts.

Seneca is a rare flat spot down low in the canyon. It’s a bridge, a couple houses, a few shacks and a few more trashed cabinsand a run-down old shed of a bar with a porch next to the tiny rushing river.

The bar has been around a long time and was run for 50 years by Marie, until she died. I used to drive up there with Tim back in the day, as customers of his own establishment. We’d hang out with the miners and crazy people until the wee hours then fishtale on home in his Citroen, on that scary little road leaving the gorge, then at crazy high speeds all the way home. I don’t think he’s ever had a wreck. Or a ticket. Afterhours at the bar once a miner hung around and showed us a mason jar full of gold. It was hard to pick up. It’s twice as heavy as lead! There’s been gunplay and knife action up there, too. For a nowhere place, a lot happens. There was a music fest recently with hundreds and several name acts. It’s very weird.

So now Tim tends the bar. The place is more trashed than ever. No electricity (never had it). He stays in a trashed, windowless little trailer on the weekends. There’s a bear bothering them presently.

All day long people trickle in. They like the bar. And they like Tim. He sits, reading the paper and visiting. There are business cards over all the inside walls and ceiling. And the outside walls. And driver’s licenses. Thousands.

One rich guy has brought a friend along. He tells me that people are afraid of Seneca but he brings people out. When he leaves he tells Tim that he’ll be bringing a bunch of others next week maybe.

It’s a gorgeous area that used to be a thriving gold town. It’s in a temperate zone down in a high-range canyon. It used to be a kind of enchanted resort area, you can tell. There are vestiges of quirky, interesting people who attempt nifty things. A homemade iron bridge across the river to a cabin foundation. A dammed area with stairs leading down into it for a swimming pool. Huge homemade dredging apparatus. But it’s the tail-end of the era now. One of the faded old Airstreams down the green, shady valley still has charm, but the next one down has death-warnings posted all over it and the road. Good thing Old Goose wasn’t in.

We have to roll. It was good seeing Tim, too, but his health isn’t what it was. He commented on the old gang being nearly gone now. But we had good times listening to standard songs on his boombox til the wee hours. Martha shockingly woke up in the middle of the night and heard us visiting at the bar and came in just when Tim was fixing some tasty 2 a.m. burgers on his little makeshift rig.

M is starting to lose faith in the ability of men to live without women. The last 3 single guys we’ve visited have shook her. Well, they were a bit startling.

Day 20: Sierras and the Basques

We drive through a couple surprising and tidy Basque towns and stop for dinner. Gardnerville and Minden in Nevada by Tahoe. We eat family style at the Overland Hotel, with all the wine you like and thick lamb steaks that were better than beef. They’re sheepherders and you don’t hear much English around but it’s not Spanish either. We watched a fest featuring woodchopping by a big hunky family in tight white outfits wearing berets. While standing atop a big log that was atop two other logs, they swung up to their tippy toes then chopped down between their feet with a huge exhales at every blow. I wanted to compete until I saw how their wonderful style. They win. Way too risky for me! It was an exhibition anyway. The teen girl was ahead of her older brother for quite awhile, but alas. Their axes were shorter and broader, heavier than ours.

We make it to a campground near Yosemite and visit that place for the first time the next day, driving in from the back, as people suggest. Crowded mountain valleys don’t really do anything for M. The kids could care less. I watched some climbers do nothing for a half hour through my binocs then we were on our way. I later learn that all you have to do is hike off the road a ways and you’re in solitude. The kids and I had a nice quiet swim, though. But M has a fever for getting to LA. The clock, the clock! It’s true, we’re behind. We skip our plans to drive Hwy 1 along the coast for a couple days. We take the Big Valley straightshot instead. It’s gorgeous. We like the farms and orchards of this world’s richest valley. It’s M’s birthday and I give her a cute silver thing I’d had hidden. She likes it. I save the various knives for our 10th anniversary coming upin Hollywood! I think 10th is silver but she needed a better lift right then than knives would’ve given and we don’t follow that stuff anyway.

Day 21: Big Valley, scary campground

We camp at a private place in the orchards region. We get in late and the lady lets us in through a gate. No visitors allowed. It’s a family-values area, a sign says. It seems kind of prison like. She says there aren’t many people, with plenty of prime spaces left down by the river. We drive in and find lots of people and one space left by the river. They also charge by the camper, not the site. We see why when the first site by the river has maybe 6 tents. Shirtless people with tattoos and pitbulls stare at us as we roll past. There are hotrod boats and jetskis pulled up by every site. We pull into the empty site. When we get out of the car we are blasted by rock’n’roll. I immediately panic and say we can’t stay here but M says to just get used to it. I try for a couple minutes by walking around. I tell her I can’t take it–she’s freaking, too–so I walk over to the neighbors. I say Hi. They’re drunk and tease me a bit but the music gets turned off. A teenage girl had been doing her makeup for 20 minutes in the huge new SUV and no one had cared that she had the sound system on max. Whew. We settle in.

The kids invent a new game in the tent, while we read outside by the river, called “Baby’s Bonnet” where one wacks a pillowcase off the head of the other with the pillow.

The huge irrigation river (the Sacramento?) flows past seemingly higher than the level of the ground, just bulging with water. In the twilight under a rising full moon someone starts their hot-boat, the silence shattered by a flaming, erupting, engine–8 exhaust pipes pointed skyward–as it gently idles its way around to another campsite.

There are teens drifting about. After we go to bed the fireworks start. But at 11pm, silence. Whew. We leave early. It seems like the owners have firm but tenuous control. I sense a lot of pent-up raving up and down the beach. Man, the American public is a wild, thoughtless, animal thing.

We’re starting to realize that tenters are discriminated against. We have a camping guidebook and see that many of the nicer places say ‘no tents.’ I guess the wildest screaming riffraff party away their weekends in tents. People want huge RVs with loud generators and babbling TV sets instead. Too bad normal humans get lost in the cracks.

We also notice that tenting costs $15-28 in most places. With $25 being very common, almost the new standard. State places are $15. All this for the privilege to be with either a raving mob and/or a bunch of roaring generators. Open state land is the best bet left–other than somehow building a national directory of sane campgrounds. But out in the open, this land is your land, this land is my land.

Day 22: Hollywood!

The next day we blast our way to Hollywood. It was really something rolling down from the farm highway onto I-5. Traffic got wilder and bigger as we rocketed over foothills and into busier and busier valleys. We finally hit the Valley Girls valley and saw the malls and minimalls and tall buildings of Universal City and Burbank. We’re getting close! I saw the exit for the old street where all the best no-cover jazz clubs are. M popped on Michelle Shocked’s song “Leaving L.A.,” about the girl bustin’ loose and racing all over town on her stolen motorcycle. All those great place names. We blasted it at full volume. It gave us the shivers. We’d made it! Faded “Toyo” micro-pickups merge on and off. Mexican gardener’s truck everywhere. Palm trees! Sightings of bungalows beyond. A cell-tower disguised as a palm tree! Huge entertainment billboards. An electric air of possibility. Finally we swung over the last hills that I used to ride on my bike and on into Hollywood and LA. Cahuenga Blvd! Our exit! We peeled off and into the hubbub of the familiar street. Then we climbed and twisted up and off the main drag and into the hills and instant cool and quiet. We parked at my Uncle’s place at the end of his cul-de-sac.

It was great to see them again. We went out back and checked out the views. Ah, yes! That skyline, Capitol Records, the works. Fruit trees, flowers, narrow-twisty, rickety pathways. Just the ticket. Then we went into their quiet, cool, tidy, artful house and relaxed.

Then Martha took a bike ride up to the reservoir above. Then I took one as well. Stretch the legs! The new 28-t cog worked lovely as I rode the lush, quirky little lanes from my past and from my dreams, up and down the Hills.

I really like the living places around here. There’s a narrow, beat-up walkway at the end of K’s cul-de-sac, cutting under an avocado tree and through some flower bushes, between their house and their neighbors. I knew it went to a separate apartment house-like thing off the back of their place, but when I went to check it out I noticed about six mailboxes nailed at crooked angles here and there along an old fence. It turns out that the little foot-wide path twists its way back in to several other houses that you can’t even see. Hidey-holes everywhere. Code, what code? I like that.

They had another lovely apartment below their place that used to be rented for decades by a crippled little entertainment columnist who drove an old Mercedes, the same black one forever. He knew everyone in the biz and was a wonderful man. Chuckie. His place was now ours, with lovely new leather easy chairs and a big screen. Wow.

Back when I used to stay for months at Kent and Jo’s as I worked on my adventures in books and boats, Chuckie once pulled me aside as he started down the narrow walk to his place. We had our one and only chat out on his patio. He was a private person. Couriers would come and go for him from the studios all day. We’d hear him typing away down there. But that evening he told me about when he was young and healthy. He and some cartoonist friends owned a 90-foot schooner in LA Harbor in Long Beach not far from where I kept my 30-foot cutter. They had the greatest and hardest times on that ship. The main thing was they didn’t abandon it or their dreams. It would sink when the pumps weren’t on, but they kept living and partying on it. People told them they were fools, but an old man told them to keep at it and they did. “What times we had,” he said. “And you, you keep at it, too.” So I did, in one way or another.

After dinner at Lucinda’s, “their” wonderful Mexican place nearby (where mariachi’s serenaded us), we were in heaven as we watched the lights of the city twinkle and I felt like I was home all over again.

Day 23: Disneyland!

Early the next day we launched for Disneyland. It seemed premature. We were still shocked from the road but Kent said the weekend would be impossible and to go now. So we did.

One really should buy tickets ahead of time at discount, online, to save a bunch and avoid the first long line. And of course one should go in the offseason. It was hot and crowded.

We immediately knew it would be a death-march military type experience and we prepared for it as best we could. We brought water and big hats. We should’ve paid the $15 for the spray-fan. It was $170 to get in, though.

We did some cute rides. An hour wait for each little ride. We got more serious about keeping fed and watered when we almost had a total collapse early on. We thought for sure we’d see ambulances or worse as the day went on. They must have special doors or scoops to take dead and violent people away without anyone noticing because everything went fine with the scary, tattooed crowd all day. Or maybe Americans are so used to mobs and lack of natural life-support that they can be cheerful when around fantasy no matter what the real conditions.

We adults love 2 of the rides in particular. They’ll likely be no surprise: Pirates of the Caribbean, and Peter Pan. Just wonderful. To me they represent ideal cities and ways of life. Yeah, it’s true. They’ve inspired me. And did so again equally as much. I would love to live in a city like them. Boston? New Orleans? Sounds close enough. Bangkok? Oooh! I love narrow ways, old places, and rough’n’tumble. I suspect the Indy Jones ride is cool: but too much line. The Jungle Cruise was great, no wait. M was collapsing into a heedless mess when I quickly bought a lunch and she was made right again. She didn’t know she was so close to breakdown. It’s hard to notice an emergency until you’re in it sometimes.

Tonight is our 10th anniversary and K&J take us out to dinner at our most favorite restaurant, just down the hill from them: Musso-Frank Grill on Hollywood Blvd. Now that’s a restaurant. It’s kinda fancy but not so much, it’s more oldfashioned. Everyone there knows them and everyone there has been working there about 50 years it looks like. But I’ve been going there 20 years and it seemed like that then, too. It’s Bogart and Faulkner’s old hangout. Hasn’t changed. (Micky Rooney using the payphone out back has been my only sighting.) They serve great sweetbreads and jellied consumme. An oldfashioned alacarte menu with oldfashioned items. Murals on walls. Waiters in red, bar-tenders with green sleeve holders. I didn’t mind the cigar smoke from years gone by but that fat-cat affect is gone now. We go to the front of the line and get the best table and the best waiter will kill any other who tries to get us. There is a pecking order and it’s kinda cool to be with folks who have put in their 40 years of being a customer to be in the right place.

He’s showed me some pretty neat things. My first meal in LA when I spent my first summer working there in ’82 was at a hectic noisy stall in Little Tokyo. We sat on stools and had big steaming bowls of seafood stew and udon with the whole market scene buzzing around us. A neat change of pace from a youth in Michigan. Then we went out and bought me a new wardrobe. (And it was suggested that I not wear shorts or tennies in town.) The deal was that I’d come visit after work and take care of their garden in exchange. Fair trade indeed.

I remember years later coming to LA and working for a summer from their patio, calling bookstores with their big ol’ black rotary phone, selling tons of books with the flowers overhead, typing thick letters to friends back home on my old manual down in the spare bedroom below the house, then all of us going out for dinner.

Kent is retired now and says he’s not doing anything at all. He was a public defender for years. The decades of partying and being assaulted by our world catch up one way or another.

Day 24: LaBrea Tar Pits

The next day we took Henry to see the tar pits and museum. It was cool how the tar was coming up out of the grass in the park.

Then we have lunch at Canter’s, the famous deli on Fairfax and Melrose. We just love that swanky styling and those feisty waitresses and customers. All of whom were fussing over H&L, which was very charming for us. They behaved perfectly and enjoyed their lunches and their surroundings.

Later on, K and I talked in the living room as of old. Kicking back with the speakers facing us, CDs and flat speakers now instead of the old “Voice of the Theatre” speakers behind their Japanese screens, which Tim now had. The music still booming out God speaking to us. For being an atheist, Kent sure has God doing a lot of lovely things through that old jazz. He sits there grumbling and sighing in his easy chair, drink perched tinkling on his belly. “Now THAT’S what God had in mind!” he booms, shaking the windows along with the music.

Back in the day after some music, he’d say “Well, let’s get over the hill and listen to it ourselves.” And we’d drive over to Burbank and check out the three lovely no-cover clubs on the old main street down there. I remember the China Trader and the Money Tree. We’d hear the greats down there, and some of the old greats who’d be visiting town would get asked down to the stage.

On Sunset and Vine is a 30-story bank that had a club on the top floor. No cover, great music, great views. I used to sit evenings up there with the black hep-cat crowd, gazing, absorbing, writing in a notebook.

Somewhere else had a piano bar. We’d sit right there and listen to Johnny Guinnerri (sp?).

Notice I don’t complain about traffic. If you halfway know what you’re doing, there’s no need to fuss..

Day 25: Chinatown and The Villa

We visited Chinatown, just us and the kids. What a wonderful hubbub. Real people doing real things. Fresh fish market. We like the Old Town best, but it’s sad these days. I always like little backway streets and narrow walkways. It would still be great at night, what with the lanterns twinkling overhead, but there are too many vacancies, even as C-town booms and grows. Get there for an evening while you can. We had dim-sum at the Golden Dragon while a wedding went on in the back with drums and snaking dragon dances. Henry was amazed. Lucy napped.

We also stopped by Phillipe’s on Alameda in downtown LA. Now there’s a sandwich shop! They invented the French Dip. Great counter ladies and sawdust on the floor. Just a fine old place.

Then we checked out Watts Towers in the ghetto. It’s amazing what that old Italian did so long ago, making that huge work of art, one of the biggest in our nation, I suppose, with zero help from anyone influential, in fact with powerbrokers trying to destroy his work many times. Isn’t that how art is in America so often? He didn’t use hardly any tools or bolts to make it, bending rebar against the rail-tracks next door and wire-wrapping each hoop into place then mortaring by hand and planting colorful scrap glass and ceramics that his neighbors brought to him. Martha was inspired, but also a little disheartened to learn that the art broke up his family.

Later on we visit old friends at their old movie producer villa in Santa Monica. They are influential leftist lawyers and their sprawling outdoor courtyard had several big areas with tables and wrought iron lawn furniture. A great place to plan and direct social action indeed.

Later that night I coast my bike down to the Boulevard and check out the old newsstand. Back in the day I would coast down here every night and read magazines. It was the biggest stand I’d ever seen, with magazines from around the world. Bike racing ones in particular. Le Miroir. I learned some French just to read it. This was way before the Internet. It held an international vibe for me, hanging out browsing with all kinds of characters on those hot nights. I went down again and it was still nice, full of magsthat you can find in any B&N today. But the street was still hotter than most, with hidden night clubs in half the alleys. I checked out Micelli’s, an old Italian restaurant that had a piano bar and balcony, murals, wonderful music. Young people sat at the bar talking movie work. Older people, too. Waiters and waitresses came by the piano and took the mic and sang standards and arias. Later on, I asked a beautiful blond opera-singing waitress if I could hang out in the best seat, as it was set for dinner and she said I could sit anywhere, with anyone, if I was friendly enoughshe sure was. A city that parties togetherain’t half bad. At one point she started singing an aria from across the restaurant out of sight of the side barroom the piano-player was in—he followed perfectly anyway. Her singing filled the place and stopped everyone’s heart.

This whole trip we’ve been stopping by places that were run and operated by adults who were there as their livelihoods, because they cared and wanted to be there. Such a heartbreaking contrast to the new American Lifestyle of minimallism that has destroyed Michigan, and most everywhere else, replacing it with pushbutton franchises run by teenagers turning over, by design, every couple months.

On my ride down up the hill I went past a hot new glam nightclub, The White Lotus, or some such; it has a wild white floral shape to the roof. There are limos out front, velvet ropes, lines of wannabe’s, guys in suits with radios. Some people waltz in, others don’t. I cruised past it all slowly. On my way back up the hill there’s action going down. Cop cars pull into the lot in front of me. I roll up and stop at the side to check things out. A guy is face down at the side of the entrance area, two guys with radios standing over him, they aren’t the usual doormen or bouncers. The cops come up and haul the guy away. One of the radio guys is thin and black and has on a long dark leather coat. The other guy is white, unshaven, looks like David Duchovny and has on fatigue pants and wrinkled old blue tshirt, lanky medium build. He’s relaxed and emiting none of the usual club vibes and looks out of place but he clearly doesn’t have to follow the rules for the public. I suppose they’re simply the security and he was just an out of work actor, but it was kinda cool, kinda Mi-Vi.

We went to Venice beach one day for an hour. Henry loved watching the “macho men” surf. The surfers let me in to do my body-surfing action. I saw a big fish of some kind (hammerhead?) in the shallow zone, once. When we were showering off by the beach two actual actors were chatting next to us. Martha was appalled. They were short, tan, buff dudesand dumb as bricks. We gathered that they’d just been filming in Vegas ascops. They were back in town comparing notes on where to go that night to pick up chicks at hotel pools in Hollywood.

When I first came to LA, there were hundreds of exotic hookers of all kinds in the Sunset area. Maybe thousands. It gave the place an electric air. A free for all of extreme fashion. When I visited again when I was more ‘of age’ they’d been mostly swept out, still it was a bit wild. On this visit I said I wanted to see some wild folks like we don’t see in the Midwest. I didn’t get a chance to except that night I biked around a bit. I couldn’t figure anyone out. Basically, most of the girls going to clubs were dressed like what I would call hookers. I thought I was seeing wildlife at first but oh well.

Day 26: LA Harbor

The family unit drove to LA Harbor to see the old stomping grounds and to have ceviche for lunch in Mexicanville. Let’s find some real industrial landscape and get away from all this English. LA Harbor is a sight to behold, with all the huge ships, bridges and cranes. We had lunch at an old fast-fish joint with a huge marine life mural painted on it. Sure enough, the counter girl couldn’t even talk to me, but giggled instead. The ceviche was great. The fish taco better. Down the block we saw a guy on a cool chopper bicycle ride up and rest at the corner. Neat to see a macho latino guy think a bike is cool. Seconds later a car pulled up, gave him a big wad of cash and zoomed away. Ah, all that style, just for business.

We checked out my old marina nestled between the oil refinery and cranes. More run-down, it looked like to me. I see some young guys hanging out by the gate and tell them I used to live there and ask to have a look to see what it’s like these day. One guy says “It’s where boats come to die.” They laugh, and we chat awhile, they’re living and adventuring there themselves. We head on in. There are quite a few homeless people living on their boats, it appears. We see one lady passed out amid a mountain of trash on a boat. But there are still a few interesting, quirky boats that look like adventures might be brewing in them.

Kent later tells me that slip-fees have gone down through the floor, which is why homeless people can sprawl on old barges. I wonder if my old boat is around there somewhere. I hope so. I meant to look for it on this trip, but no time. Not for anything really. Just little dips here and there. We have to roll, and say goodbye to K&J.

Day 27: Vegas

We have 5 days to get home. Here we go. 10 out, 5 back. This will be a doozy. We head out into the desert. For the next 4 hours to Vegas, it’s a traffic jam. Sometimes we stop, bumper to bumper, in the Mojave, at 107degF. (Stay off freeways to stay sane!) But we do get to roll down through the amazing Red Rocks Canyon area just before Vegas. That’s a lovely stretch of big road. I recall being blown away by it when driving the other way for the first time. After nasty Vegas comes this soothing natural wonder with a gently twisting freeway. It’s not a big canyon and only about 10 minutes long, but it’s shady, cool, red and rocky. A great entrance back to the desert when you’ve just been assaulted by Vegas. We see an insane casino billboard that says “Remember when gambling used to be about winning?” Huh?

We blow by Vegas. From the road, it does look pretty amazing. I usually slowly cruise the old downtown when coming through, and stop for a cheap steak, an eyeful, and a few bucks of lever pulling. No time this time. But the new buildings actually look pretty cool. During some slow time of year it would be neat to stroll around.

I remember once driving across all that desert from Denver to Vegas and getting to a big multi-hour stretch of nothing. (Or was that Reno?) After awhile, I passed a pretty dark-haired girl. I just had to socialize. So I got a good tape out, slowed down, she passed me back, then I slowly passed her again, driving from the passenger side, then I waved, reached out and handed the tape to her. She waved, rolled down her window, and took it. (GulpSteely Dan.) I sped off. A half hour later she came rolling past me, weaving a little and reaching out with a tape, one of hers. Good listening. (UhVan Halen, I believe.) An hour later, I went past her again and passed her a note and she gave a thumbs up and in Vegas we had dinner. A nice way to make time go by across a desert.

Day 28: Grand Canyon: no, little canyons: si.

We decided to go to the North Rim. M wanted to show the kids the canyon. On the way the road went through Zion. A national park. Our third. $20 a pop. An annual pass is $50. The GC would make the fourth. Doh! Oh well, We’re big spenders. We support the parks.

We stay the night in the southern border town of St. George, UT, the 3rd biggest city in the state. It pops up out of nowhere in the desert. I have no idea why and no one there explains it adequately. Prices are posted at motels as we cruise the strip: $40, $35, $28 $26, $23. We back up and try one for $26. I pick badly after M says she doesn’t want to talk to anyone. It’s a stinky, dumpy place. Don’t go there. A young boy shows me my room in the middle of the night. “So what do you do?” he asks as we cross the parking lot. “What kind of books?” “Sounds good.” I tell him it looks like he has a job, too, helping run this place. He says it’s not a job, he’s just helping his family. I say that’s all a good job ever is, and you’re doing as could as anyone can do, so be proud. I tell his dad later that he has a good kid. He says Yes, thanks, they’re proud of him. But the room sucks. And the next morning a wino is laying outside a nearby room smoking a cigarette, halfnaked, damaged. I feel bad about getting shafted.

I’m now against the Grand Canyon. It’s too big. The only reason it’s popular is because of its shock and spectacle value. And what’s that to me? How does that relate to nature? It’s pure brutal psychology. To get out of a car and see a 100 mile vista and a 5 mile plunge, what’s that? You can’t compute, or grasp it. I’ve decided I like Little Canyons. Any of them. They’re all great. Why single one out? Little canyons have the right scale. They’re awesome yet manageable. I was scared and unnerved at the darn Grand Canyon. Innocent people I’ve mentioned my heresy to roll their eyes then partly agree and say Yeah, you have to hike the canyon to appreciate it. Well, that’s not entirely easy either. I say that if you started at the bottom and hiked up then back down that you would earn any view you got and would have a comfortable feel for things as they got bigger and bigger. But to start at the top as generally everyone must is just to torture yourself with shock and spectacle all the way down where you can get your bearings. Then you could have a decent, human-scale hike back up, I agree. Otherwise, screw the GC.

We had lunch at a Little Canyon in the middle of nowhere. We caught a lizard and the kids went nuts. It was about 8″ long and had big blue blotches on its belly. Very pretty. He really loves pritty things, as he says it, which are mainly natural things, frogs, toads, bugs, flowers. He is so innocently charmed and swept away, and they are so pritty. He’s already embarrassed by a lot and somewhat avoids girly things, but I’m happy to see that pritty is still an OK access to heaven for him. He’s a real enunciator. We drove a two-track to the end of the canyon and checked out the little rushing river and the wide range that opens up. It’s gorgeous. The canyon wall has cave-like hollows in it. I hike up to them and see campfire ashes in a bunch of them. At night a fire would light up the whole 100 foot wall. We see bleached bones of cows. We look for rattlesnakes. No luck this whole trip! (I think you need to stay in the wild for a couple days. Get quiet. Get way off the track. Ranch-track being OK.)

As we drive I see little country roads going 50 miles across a valley, straight down from one range, across, and up the next. Gorgeous. This whole area, and the little humble abodes here and there out in it, is heavenly to me. The Four Corners area between Durango and Vegas, that’s the ticket.

We sleep in Tuba City. There’s a neat-looking restaurant at Marble Canyon 100 miles east of the GC. It’s an old log cabin lodge place, an eatery and inn. We pass it because M has road fever, then realize it’s getting dark and stop at the next place. It’s not so hot. Try the other. We’re near the start of the canyon and the place is full of rafters. We get a great, lingering, cosmic sunset for over an hour. A tough old waitress comes out of the restaurant and watches it with me as she smokes. It never gets old, she says. Then it’s dark.

Electrical storms roll across the 100 mile vista. Two cop cars pass us, lights flashing. We see them for the next half hour, getting tinier and tinier in the distance, the distance, the distance. An hour later we go past where we see them parked flashing at some house off by a mesa, way off. It’s a big open area. Real big.

The motels in Tuba City cost $70-$85. We notice a camping sign pointing away in town. We ask at the outskirts motel about it. She says it’s them and they rent RV and tentsites out back, too. We skip the $85 room and pitch in the hard gravel for $12. There’s a great truckstop at the main stoplight there, covered in autographed photos of Mexican bands.

A friend told us to eat at a café in Mancos and we do. It’s great. An oasis away from fast-food. It’s next to a river. They sell nice new and used books there. I think archeologist people hang out there as they come and go from Mesa Verde nearby. After Durango, America hits you full on and turns back into itself again and never lets up. Trash trash trash.

Day 29: Colorado Springs

On the road.

Day 30: Omaha

We see in Roadfood that one of the great steakhouses is in Omaha and we’re timed just right. However, we do accidently pass up the only one, in Grand Island, that declares ‘dry aged beef’ in the micro-directory. It might’ve tasted better. But Johnny’s is a multigeneration place located right on the old stockyards in town. What ambience! Dark wine leather everywhere. Swanky huge chandeliers in the 60’s vein. Tall ceilings and murals. Highback swivel chairs. Swank and beef. Oh baby! The kids were driving me nuts. The young grand-daughter owner gal was there and was friendly with us. When the owner is on the premises you are on track in my book. I forgive all. The food wasn’t the best, but it’s a great place. Some of the staff has been there awhile. Most that night had not. But! The bar side was heavenly as well. Bar-tender too young, though. Still! Yet! There was a plaque in their foyer celebrating their employees who had been there the longest, starting with 50 years or something. They still had the goods, thank God, but maybe on a different night. Stop turnover, stop turnover. Keep this ship together! I really liked seeing the huge jeroboams of cabernet displayed everywhere. That’s a proper wine bottle. We noticed that Nicholson’s last movie, “Schmit,” had several scenes filmed there and they bragged up the after-movie party held there. They do all their own butchering and age their meat on premises. It was great to see the cattle trucks pulling into the railyard next door, full of moo-ing, and see the empty ones being washed out. Smelled good around there.

Day 31: Home!

On the last day, we stopped in Moline, IL, on the Iowa border, at the 100-year-old Lagomarcino’s candy store suggested in Roadfood. Great place. Nice owner lady there, helping us, then working in her open-air office overlooking the store from amidships. We had a fine little lunch with fountain drinks in a wonderful mahogany booth. Patterned tile floor, Tiffany lamps for each booth. Tall tin ceiling. We bought a bunch of handmade gift items. (Roadfood seems way too thin to me, but we’re finding some good places with it. Still, it seems like every good independent outfit should be listed in it. These folks need bigtime help nationwide or they’ll be gone soon.)

We stop for dinner in Hammond, IN, near Chicago. Down by the water, the industry, and the trains. Again, thanks to Roadfood, we find Phil Smidt & Son, noted for perch and froglegs. It’s in a new building but it has industrial heart’n’soul to it. You can’t really tell it’s new. Well, it’s new to them anyway and they’ve been around for many decades. Seems fine to me. Murals, tall ceilings. Older, professional staff. Our kids are OK, but they’re driving M nuts this time. I think that everyone’s hormones are starting to take over. The kids are holding up great in this nonstop crosscountry dash! But we’re all ready to be home. We notice a spread from USA Today posted in the foyer listing them as the quintessential place for Indiana. M notices that Johnnies is the representative place for Nebraska. The food is wonderful. We choose perch whole, not fileted. But I didn’t know M doesn’t know the trick. She struggles a bit which doesn’t help her mood, but she learns. I flick the meat off the spine and enjoy the hot fresh fish, and more of it due to not being fileted. The waitress says that hardly anyone orders whole anymore. My froglegs are heavenly as well. Remember: always eat fish, frogs and fries piping hot. They just suck if allowed to cool even slightly. We roll.

Earlier, the cellphone saved us again. In times of tiresome driving we use some free minutes when we’re in range of the zone or whatever it is. We finally connect with a backhome friend we haven’t been able to catch. It turns out she finally has a car and would happily go pick up my MSU books for me at the printer. We call home and our housesitting guru Roland says he’ll be all cleaned up on our arrival and that another printer has already shipped the other books to me. So two drives don’t have to be made just when I’m done driving.

A few hours later, we’re home. Whew. What a trip!

What a trip!

I hope you enjoyed it. Did you feel anything? Hmmm, how to process it all? We’re back in the hectic rush of things already. The next day I deliver books to MSU and H starts school. Writing this report has helped, but it has been obviously slapdash rushed as well, so I’m back where I started.

We also came home to bad news about our future finances. Well, darn it, I just have to get those OYB books out there into some shops and bookstores! They sell great wherever they go. But everyone wants things they can order robotically. Even in independent businesses. These folks are panicked themselves. Oh well, as the old song maybe goes: “If we make it to Christmas, Mama” Ah, but right NOW, September, will determine that. Yikes! I have twelve projects to do NOW, this month.

PS: Back in the saddle again.

Michigan feels nice. Too bad there are so few people here. All you can see are a lot of cars, minimalls and mobs.

The last days of our drive I was wondering how I’d survive back home after having been in so many humane places. Did I have any new ideas, any ways to live better? Only one option came to mind: to be more a part of our local folk music scene. It’s about the only aspect of integrity in our area. We don’t play music, but it’s the integrity I’d be heading toward. The real people, living really. The making of something and building on what came before, that was working and was alive.

I’ve been able to reflect a bit more now. Last weekend M and the kids went tenting up north with E and hers to see Pirates of the Caribbean 2 at the Cherry Bowl Drive-In. Support indy biz!

I batched it. After they left, I printed out this report, did a work-out, had dinner, then cruised into town to start editing it. I went to Beggar’s Banquet and ordered a Manhattan on the rocks and settled in at a little table, vibing the Friday night whirl around me. Free, free–free at last! My first night out in months. The waitress introduced herself. I worked for 3 hours. Then I overhead some folks talking newspaper talk and I said Hi. Then an old town friend came over and we chatted. He owns the only in-town B&B. Indy biz needs to stick together, man! He wants a sub to OYB and to set out issues for his patrons. (That’s two hot B&B’s now.) I met his friends. Then an older lady friend of a friend came over. We all had a fine time. The bartender introduced himself. Later on the manager introduced herself. The gist was: C’mon into town more often, dude. A good idea.

The next evening I went to the Carpenter’s Ball in Ann Arbor. Builder buddies were throwing a bash. Wild formal attire to celebrate carpentry, sure, but also Bob’s new pad, his nicest place yet, with fireplace in bedroom and brandnew extra-cool kitchen with huge wetbar. I had a great long chat with Tommy, partner at Big Ten Party Store, a perhaps overly-insider named purveyor of vintage wine and cheese, finally coming into its own with Tommy and his partner at the helm, after 50 years of existence with a great, huge neon sign out front, thus the name not being changed any time soon. Indy biz must stand together! Later on that night I met his cheese manager, just back from an intermission in retailing–a year in France finishing his French degree. He’s also a biker and wanted a copy of “Momentum,” Pete’s ski book. I didn’t have one, but said I’d get one to him. We talked food and literature. Indy biz must stand strong! He got out everything he had on him, $13 in wadded ones, and said “Take it, I’ll owe you the rest, just take it, I don’t care if you forget.” It was awkward, but it seemed clear that as a bold young man he felt the passion of indy biz more than most and was just compelled to take his stand at that moment, bless him. I didn’t forget. Order out! Now back to work Onward!