Taking the back roads

After the wonderful day at Disneyland on my birthday, we were all a bit tired so we decided to take the rest of the weekend doing laid-back stuff.... or so I thought. On Saturday night we had planned to have a nice family birthday dinner at some restaurant. The more I thought about it, the more I thought we should do something else... a BBQ would be the most fun. We could eat, drink and swim at Carisa's... and Darren does a great tri-tip BBQ. So I asked Carisa if we could change the plans and do the BBQ at her place. She agreed but suggested we do the BBQ at Kim's (Carisa's BFF) since Kim and Charles had never met Kirk, Jenia and Stasia and Carisa was always talking about them. OK by me... I just wanted something low-keyed and easy for everyone. Boy, talk about pulling one off, Carisa did just that!! and then some. Unbeknown to me, my darling daughter had hi-jacked my e-mail list and sent out e-mails to family and friends stating she was having a surprise party for me. I fi

Since early this year, I've been planning my 70th birday day. I figured I wanted to do something fun, not really physically demanding, and most importantly spend the day with family. So I asked my daughter, Carisa, to plan to take the day off from work and we, Carisa, Darren, Devin and I, would spend the better part of the day at Disneyland... hey, I get in for free on August 27. Carisa said that could be arranged so that was the start of it. When I told her I wanted to spend the day with family, I would have loved to think my son, his wife and my granddaughter would be able to spend it with me too. But being in 2 different states (because of Kirk's work), I would be happy with the family members who lived near me. As the time got closer, Carisa and I worked out the timing schedule and decided we would have a late lunch, go to Disneyland later in the afternoon so we could see the fireworks at 9:30 PM and then have a nice 4-of-us family dinner on Saturday nite (my b-day was on T

A rediscovery... going someplace without using my car. Living in So Cal one gets very used to going places with a car, as if that were the only means of transportation available to us. But! I have discovered the joy of going a considerable distance by trains and other modes of transportation. It's not that I've never used trains before to get from point A to point B... it's just I don't usually prefer them. Alas, now that time is no longer a primary thought when it comes to going places, I have the leisure to explore other avenues. When I lived in Boston in my youth and early 20's, I used the train often to go to New York. It was cheap; it didn't take all that long and it usually was fun especially when there were several friends as traveling companions. Also when I worked as a tour escort for a travel agency, I would take groups of people from Boston to New York for "theatre tours." We would take the train out of South Station and wind up four hours l

Recently my friend, Judi, and I decided to take a back road returning to her home in Coarsgold, CA from my condo in Lake Tahoe, NV. We had been up to the condo several times recently and had traveled on the more obvious routes of CA 120, the Tioga Pass and CA 180, the Sonora Pass. Well, those were lovely routes and we certainly have some beautiful photographs to attest to the scenery. This time we decided to “take a back road” and it got me wondering about taking back roads in life’s travels. As we cruised along CA 50 from So Lake Tahoe, we decided to find a less congested route home and Judi suggested we take CA 49, a nice 2-lane road through little towns I had not seen before. Just getting off the main route showed so many things I have not really looked at over the previous years. Perhaps a bit of background history is required here. I’ve spent the last 44+ years living in Southern California and been part of its hustle and bustle lifestyle. As such I’ve taken the quickest, mo