First Date Night in Twenty-Eight Months

Our plans were set, mostly. Our old pal Jules was set to get married on a Friday evening, the ceremony was to begin at 5pm.

If you live in LA and plan to be at a wedding at 5 pm on a Friday seven or eight miles outside of Grass Valley, CA, you need to plan accordingly. Like, better than we did.

Penn Valley was the scene of the ceremony and reception, specifically Lake Wildwood, which is the lake at the center of their (very white) planned community. As we drove around the place on the way to the reception hall, after making through the gate, I asked Corrie, "What do you think the over-under is on the number of black people who live here?"

"Oh, zero, honey, c'mon..."

Part of us wanted to leave Thursday night...pretty tough with a toddler. Then we thought about leaving at the crack of dawn Friday. Also, tough with a toddler.

Penn Valley is about seven miles from Grass Valley; Grass Valley is just under 30 miles from Auburn; Auburn is about 20 miles from Citrus Heights; and Citrus Heights is as far from the center of Sacramento as you can be and still be part of Sac, and is where I'm from; and Sac is six hours from LA with no traffic or stops.

When we leave Long Beach for Sacramento and my brother's, it takes an hour to get to the base of the Grapevine and an hour to get past the Grapevine. In two hours, we'll have just come down the final slopes and stick with I-5 when it breaks up into itself and Hwy 99. Depending on stops and average speeds, it will take about 3.5 to 4 hours to get to Stockton, and about another hour to get to Dan or Norm's, at the Northeast side of Sac.

On this trip, we dropped Cassius off at Norm and Holly's for an overnighter with his cousin Simon, changed clothes, and hit the road again.

Up the hill for a quick jaunt up I-80 to Auburn, then got on CA Route 49 and took it all the way up to Grass Valley. There, we hung a left, heading east along CA Route 20 the last seven or eight miles to Penn Valley and the Lake Wildwood gated community, and community house where the wedding was to take place.

We missed the entirety of the ceremony, arriving just as the party was starting. From 9:15 am until 5:45 pm, it was a harrowing and stressful run, from Long Beach through LA, up and down the Grapevine, up the gut of the state along I-5, through Stockton and Sac, dropping off the Boy, putting on nice clothes, trying to be strong for him (he was all good as we slipped out the door), and then up the grade to the mountains, and then up into the cut to Grass Valley, and then up into more of the cut to the sight of the ceremony.

It's amazing that we made it at all.

Finally able to relax, we had a good time. We'd decided to skip checking into our Grass Valley hotel until afterwards.

After the party, and after reacquainting ourselves with a long-lost pal Ryan Waldren, we all headed to Jules and her new hubby Brad's place in the community. We had a good time there as well, except that I was still dressed in my nice clothes. I had black slacks and my black tailored shirt, black dress shoes and super colorful tie, which I removed after arriving at the house. On one trip to the bathroom I noticed something particular: I looked like a Star Wars villain. Maybe a ranking officer on a star destroyer.

On the way back to Grass Valley to the hotel, it became apparent that because of some weird malfunction on Corrie's phone, our hotel was not, in fact, in Grass Valley, but it was located in Marysville, another thirty miles west along CA 20. A tenuous drive along 20 was completed easily.

It was our very first night where both of us were away from the Boy.

The next morning we walked around the historic Marysville downtown area before eating breakfast at a nifty bricktown coffee house. Did you know: Marysville is named for Mary Murphy Covillaurd, a survivor of the Donner Party expedition.

We took the scenic route back to Sac, a route that had a twenty minute patch that was unpaved; I spent the entire twenty minutes in second gear at about twenty mph. Nice.

We spent the next night at Dan and 'Pita's, and drove home Sunday.

Long drive, long drive...

Here's a shot of the route from Citrus Heights to Auburn, then due north to Grass Valley, then west to the wedding scene (the blip) then even more west to Marysville:

Corrie looked smashing, but I don't have any pictures. Crazy...no real pictures from a wedding party, but oh well. Life goes on.

World Series Note

I love the fact that the entire 1939 World Series, a four game sweep of the Cincinnati Reds by my New York Yankees, took about 7 hours and 5 minutes, WHICH TOOK LESS TIME THAN FRIDAY'S 18 INNING MARATHON BETWEEN THE RED SOX AND DODGERS.

That game, Game 3, the only game the Dodgers won, was effectively two games, and took 7 hours and 20 minutes.

We started watching it at the restaurant at 5 pm when it started. We left close to 7, got the Boy through his bath and into bed like normal, and kept watching. By 11:30, both of us were done and about to be out on the couch, and tha game was still on, the 16th inning maybe.

I turned it off and went to bed not knowing how it it would finish. Had it been the Yankees, NO WAY would I have gone to bed.

Anyway, it wasn't until the next morning that I learned the outcome.

Also, my condolences to my mom and and all my Dodger loving family and friends. This Red Sox team is just so good. And as a Yankee fan, it pains me to say that.

I do like Mookie Betts, though, and love the fact he's also a professional bowler. He's even rolled three recognized and sanctioned perfect games in his life.

In other random sports news, I caught a few plays between the Trojans of USC and Arizona State this past Saturday. I caught a tackle of the USC running back deep in the backfield, which was a loss of yards on the play.

The announcer said, "That was great penetration from Darien Butler there to cause such a loss of yards," and while Corrie made her usual jokes about how the rampant homophobia in American football battles the obviously gay dialogue by the commenters, I perked up.

Darien Butler was one of mine, from my first year. I had him and Ray Scott in the same period, and Ray plays defense for USC, so they must have been playing against each other.

That was one of the better periods that year, as those two didn't let shit happen that was obnoxious.

Beachy Cliff Hike

It seems like month ago when in fact it was only a few weeks, but we went on a hike with our friend Lauren. We wanted to find a place that Cass could join on the hike itself instead of being carried (for the entirety), so it had to be mellow, but just enough nature that it was different from our normal neighborhood walks.

We settled on a nice easy walk along the beach bluffs on the Rancho Palos Verdes peninsula, technically the entrance is on the public land forced upon Orange Roughy at his golf course in RPV.

The Boy has his hat and walked the vast majority of it. Above is a picture of a backwoodsy spot, without the ocean in view. It, the ocean, was in view for most of the walk, seen below in Lauren's family picture of us:

And, the obligatory selfie, taken when neither me nor the Boy could see what was happening on my phone when I took the picture, but it turned out okay anyway:

Such an easy walk with a toddler, such a good use of a Sunday afternoon...

Apple Season Once Again

We have arrived at the glorious time of year when the apples are in season for our farm box deliveries. This past Thursday we had three different varieties delivered:

The wonderful thing was that each one of these examples were some of the best examples I've experienced of them.

The first one, on the left, is an Arkansas Black; the middle they called a Jazz Apple; and the third, the oddly shaped pale apple on the right, is the French classic Calville Blanc.

Both the Arkansas Black and Calville Blanc were quite dense, far denser than most apples available to the American public.

The Jazz apple was crisp and tart and juicy, reminiscent of the fantastic Honey Crisp.

Fire in the Sky, and Other Notes

We just returned from a long weekend of driving to get to the wedding of our friend Jules to her fella. There will be a brief mention of it before too long, but I've been saying as much for most of the summer.

I have some ideas that have been cooking for a while, like taking the Boy to the Farm and later to the Cabin, both times as a two-year-old. And a study of Friday, June 15ths...the last two Friday, June 15ths have been rough for us.

Back in 1993 a movie was released called "Fire in the Sky," and told the tale of purported alien-abduction from the POV of both those left aground during the event and the guy who was taken. It's based on the story of one Travis Walton, a man who claims to have been abducted.

Anyway, the other night there was a Space-X launch and we got a bit of an evening light show:

Our friend works at Space-X, and that's how we knew it was a launch of theirs.