Isn't it almost June?

Is the weather where you are weirding out? 

Granted, I live in Southern California, and the day-to-day atmospheric conditions that in other places is called 'weather' here usually just means sunny and pleasant. Some days its gets warmer than others, some days are rainy---but honestly very few. In certain parts of the Southland, June can get overcast often enough for it to be known as June Gloom, but in Long Beach we don't really see that (Corrie may disagree by now, after living here for a dozen years (REALLY??)). And in Harbor City, where I work, we never get that atmospheric phenomena. Harbor City is located in a spot that alters its weather patterns relative to the coasts.

Anywho, this year May has been dreary and chilled. The idea of weeks on end of mid-60s as the high temperatures being chilly makes the New Yorker in me laugh. Remember that one day that hits 56 in early March, and everyone's outside in t-shirts and winter hibernation weight barbecuing in the street? After 40 days of being under 30, and 80 days of being under 45, when you approach 60, it's like summer's early.

For Memorial Day we went to our kid's friend's grandmother's condo for a swim party. It may sound convoluted, but we're very close to Gudrun and she watched Camille for a while during the early parts of the pandemic. Now, the weather this past Monday was not particularly warm, but the clouds lifted just in time to trick my camera:

From their balcony

Look at that! It sure looks like a nice a pleasant day. A little later, down on the roof deck where the pool is, the sky still looked as if it were nice out:

This is all so weird. We've ridden bikes to Gudrun's before, as it's in our neighborhood and only a few minutes away, they just live on the beach. I'm not used to being tricked by photography in my own zone.

Later on still, I got a picture for a possible painting exercise, and the sky was back to looking like how it felt:

It was at first bracing in the pool. Eventually, as is naturally the case, you get used to it, and getting out becomes the unpleasant option.

As usual, it was a great time. Happy...summer...?

So This Happened

What's the worst possible thing you can imagine to happen while driving where there were no collisions and no one got hurt? How about going up a long, soaring bridge, heading above a busy port waterway when your car seizes, jerks, and you begin to lose torque, slow down, and stop? 

What if it were right at the beginning phase of real rush hour?

What would you do?

Fortunately, or unfortunately, I have some answers and insights to this situation, since I just lived it, exactly, bit for bit as described above. 

In my rearview mirror I could see down the hill as traffic was starting to bunch RIGHT AS IT WAS HAPPENING. I was almost to the vertex of the parabola, the very top, but only almost. I thought if I could just push it over the hump, that I could coast down to the very first exit and get out of the way. I jumped out and tried to push, but the car just laughed at me. I had to jump back in before it ran me over and started careening down the bridge.

Hazard lights on, foot on the brake, I called an emergency tow company. "I'm dead on the Vincent Thomas Bridge! What do you got?" Nothing. They told me to call 511, the roadside emergency number.

What what what? There's a roadside emergency number? FYI 511 is the roadside emergency number here in LA county.

Only they don't service the 47, which is technically the highway for which the VT Bridge connects San Pedro and Terminal Island. Thanks, I guess. Good on you for, er, your other work...?

It was about here I made the decision: I would start to slowly roll backwards down my lane, which was already FUBAR, and with cars zooming around as best and dangerously as possible. 

I figured the slow roll backwards, for however dangerous, would be screwing traffic up for only ten or fifteen more minutes, as the plan was to just get off the bridge and out of the way, so I could start calling other tow companies.

I maintain it would have worked and would have been the best plan for me and for everyone else. The cop who showed up didn't exactly agree.

White Privilege Alert: the cop, when he approached my window as cars angrily sped by, said, "How you doin'?"

Thinking about such a privileged question I laughed and said, "Well, my car's dead on the bridge, so I've had better mornings."

He asked me if I was out of gas. I said No, that I lost the torque, that the car just wouldn't go anymore. I told him about calling a tow company--no dice; and then about calling 511--no dice again as, and we said this part in unison, "--they don't service the 47 and the bridges." He offered to get a truck as fast as possible, and I figured that would be accurate, a beat cop probably has more pull than a giggling and frazzled motorist ruining the mornings of many thousands of people.

It took over a half hour to get there. I sat in my car listening to sports radio and ate my breakfast. Eventually the tow guy arrived, and I snapped a picture before getting in the cab of his truck:

After looking closely at this picture, I realized you can kind of see how far I rolled backwards in my effort to get off the bridge: if you follow the road ahead you can make out a directional sign above the road. One side says Harbor Ave 1 mile, and the other is for Gaffey and the 110. Anyway, I was beyond that sign, and in about ten minutes of slowly rolling backwards I made it a decent distance. 

Corrie sent me this text after we got to talk and she could hear the laughter, ease, and whatever-ness in my voice:

What can you do, really? I didn't plan on having my car die up on the Vincent Thomas Bridge. These things just happen.

What I've found most wonderful is how other adults react to the story. One lady I told almost had a panic attack right then. Another almost broke down in tears. I can imagine for people who are bridge-phobic to begin with, it would be their personal hell incarnate.

It was the fuel pump, which gives anywhere between zero and 50 seconds warning. It should be ready to day, and I only missed a few hours of work. Everyone's safe and I got a helluva story.

Were you held up Thursday morning on the 25th trying to get to the northbound 110? 

That was me.

Beach Streets a Rousing Success

Besides getting a righteous sunburn, this past weekend's event was a rousing success.

Long Beach closed Broadway, 4th, and Pine Ave (at least) for multiple miles to auto traffic this past weekend, making the roads available to cyclists and walkers, families and pets and vendors alike, and in different spots they set up free bike valets and tune-up stands. Those were next to places they labeled Kidz Zone, where they had free face painting and even wall climbing activities, among other things.

Camille wanted to climb, but was too small; Cass was big enough, but had no interest in climbing. Kids...

We took the bikes out and rode down Broadway to Bixby Park, a park that stretches the two blocks down from Broadway to Ocean Ave and the bluffs overlooking the sand.

Cass cruising by the grocery store

Cass centered; Corrie, Cam center-left

At Bixby Park we played on the playground for a while, got some food truck tacos, met up with friends, and eventually went exploring the grounds outside of the playground. At one point there was a contraption with what looked like green vines hanging down. Both kids and adults were walking through the vines as if they were on ecstasy or psilocybin. Upon closer inspection, the vines were made of super soft fabric, and walking through the was totally rad. I kept at it for longer than was probably reasonable considering I had no sensory additives.

Coming around the front, you could see that it was a Burning Man-esque Hairy-Face-Truck thing:

It was a grand afternoon. It was also my brother's birthday, so Happy Birthday Dan! Eventually we rode home and started to apply the shea butter to our skin. My skin...and my having-inherited-my-lobstering-ability daughter's skin. (Sorry babygirl!)

They should do this every weekend!

What's with the ducks?

I didn't take any pictures of the ducks. But seriously...ducks?

We had a birthday party for one of Cass's friends last weekend that was scheduled for 10:30 am at a Dave and Buster's. If you're unfamiliar, Dave and Buster's is essentially a more adult version of Chuck E. Cheese's---a sports bar with games of both an arcade and carnival style.

As a parent, I get the 10:30 am Saturday start time: plans change or fall through, and as the date approaches, you just need a place.

Anyway, you get to eat, then the birthday boy's mom hands out the cards, and the kids go crazy in the arcade. Cards, you may be saying? These arcade games don't take quarters, they take card swipes or taps. A part of the birthday party package, each kid gets a set number of game plays, and the rest is fun-time.

One of the games (that I couldn't et anyone to play so I could watch) was a Ghostbusters version, that had face cutouts of the back for photo ops:

That I, apparently annoyingly, had pictures taken with both kids:

Maybe it wasn't annoying. I don't know.

At one point I noticed one of the Claw-game apparatuses appeared to have a the number 10 showing on its panel. I was about fifteen feet away, but I could make out the 10 just the same. Nobody was there as I approached it. Corrie and Camille were at a cabinet console and Cass was somewhere on the premises, so I had a moment to explore it.

It was full of rubber duckies in a wide assortment of colors and patterns. I started to operate the joystick and the claw leapt to life. There was a duck that appeared to be sitting atop a veritable ducky mountain, and I tried to drop the claw right on it. Success! The claw automatically brought the duck to the drop-off, and gave me my prize.

How serendipitous, I thought. Free rubber ducky. As I turned to leave, the panel readout on the game still read 10. I looked around. No one even noticed the middle-aged white dude at the ducky claw machine. I tried the joystick again. Again I located---and GOT---another colorful duck. Again afterwards, the panel read 10.

This turned into a bonanza. On and off for 40 minutes the malfunctioning machine yielded dozens of ducks, to me, to kids walking by noticing me getting ducks and get interested only to be told by me that its all free and here you go grab a duck, to other parents. By the end, the pockets on my shorts were full of rubber duckies. I think by the end I had a total of 14 ducks. That number may seem small or it may seem big, but if you were to look at the pile of ducks all at once you'd say: That's an unreasonable amount of ducks.

Corrie said, "Do we need more bath toys?" 

It was never about the actual prize, but it helped that it was the easiest prize to attain. The sense of accomplishment gained by beating the claw game 14 times out of 25 (or more (sheesh)) for FREE was prize enough.

But...no duck pictures...

Evolution and Blending of Toys

When my brother and I were kids, between 7 and 10 maybe, we would regularly play with our action figures. While my grandma called them "dolls for boys," we called them "Guys." 

But we wouldn't necessarily say "We're going to go play with our Guys," we'd say, "We're going to go play Guys," as if the title of the toys themselves was also the title for the activity---generally mega-battles that would overtake sections of our living room or front yard and last for hours.

It was around this same era that video game consoles were taking over America, with Nintendo and Sega home consoles exploded on the scene. We didn't have one of those; when we were younger, our folks picked up an Atari, and later we were gifted a Commodore 64, and we definitely played games on that.

But, Guys and video games, two kid playing activities. Guys seemed to use more imagination, while video games sharpened eye-hand coordination.

But now, these two activities have been blended. My son was given a gift card for his birthday last year, but he got it months late due to his birthday party getting canceled because we all got COVID and then not seeing the dude for a while. The...we lost track of the gift card for an even longer time, but just recently he settled on spending it (along with a pinch of our money) on a nifty Mario Lego set:

It took me a minute to figure out what was going on. Above, if you look at the Mario figure, it looks like he has open eyes with blue irises and white corneas and all. This figure actually takes two batteries, and once turned on, makes noises, blinks his eyes, and has a display screen on his chest. The "noises" I just mentioned include, but not limited to: 

• The sound of Mario walking from the video game;
• The sound of Mario jumping from the video game;
• Various Mario phrases that you could guess if you're familiar with the franchise;
• The sound of going down a pipe;
• The song itself, and the song sped up when the time gets close;
• The boss/Bowser song;
• The ?-box sound;
• Collecting a coin;
• The "Completing a Level" end music;
• Being invincible from a star.

It's pretty damn complete, considering it's a oddly shaped Lego Guy. But it's so much more. It has Blue-Tooth capability so it can link to a phone or tablet. But you don't need Blue-Tooth to play with it, or 'play it.'

In the picture above, I've arranged all the items that this "starter pack" came with that have QR codes/barcodes attached. Mario has a scanner on his underside, and by jumping on these scanners, the various sound effects start or are activated. Here's how the gameplay is designed to go:

An eager kid sets up the Lego track to look however they want. Items with the codes get placed anywhere along their track, with the start at the beginning and the flag/ending at the end. In the above picture, the green pipe just right of center is the Start, and the code on the Bowser flag on the left is the End. When your Mario is turned on and placed over the pipe's code, the music from the first Super Mario Brothers starts, a 60 second timer starts to count down, and you're off. At ten seconds remaining, the tempo increases, just like the game as time is running short. When you place Mario on the code with the flag at the End, the level complete music plays, and you're shown on the screen how many coins you picked up along the track.

Cass's max so far was 89 coins, but that may have been an experiment to see how often you could defeat Bowser Jr, the enemy that came with this starter pack.

And yes, there are tons of expansion packs to this thing.

This activity blends Guys and video games into something new. It's fascinating.

Touch a Truck, Part 3

The first trip...

The second trip...

This was out third trip to the Touch a Truck event in a parking lot at the beach in the vicinity of Orange County. This time again we met up with one of Cass's friends, and a good time was had.

It's also right near the dog beach, hence the iron cutout Cass and Camille were posing by above. We got out later than usual (kids...am I right?), and Camille had been having issues with her guts, so I wasn't sure we would be visiting for a ton of time.

Like usual at that time of day, the event was mostly sun-blasted, but the air was very nice and the breeze was light. Most of the time I was not interested in waiting in lines, so we did lots of big, empty rigs and trailers, little commuter taxi-van type things, and the city bus...

"Too lenient" isn't a describer I'd use on myself very often, but I was amused by the parents shouting "Stop running!" or "Watch out!" at their kids while they experimented with balance and gravity. I was usually encouraging my kids in those same moments, trying to be close enough to catch them if they fell. (They did not fall.)

There was a fleet Rivian truck at the event. Rivian makes the electric pickups and SUVs that have the weird cat-eye head lights you may be seeing when driving at night. A company has purchased three and use them as tools to help explain their desire to alter climate change and spread awareness of their services. I don't remember who they were or what they do, so maybe I'm not the target audience?

Anyway, one had the hood flipped up, and I was curious what kind of motor or fancy gizmos were under the hood, so I came around the front to take a look:

It was a trunk. Um, cool.

It feels kinda weird when these events feel like old hat, so when we're here it's more like, "Let's find the weird, random things," or "Let's not wait in line..."

Maybe next year we can be on time and see the last few things we missed this year.

May the 4th

Earlier today I was mentioning that if, thirty years ago, I would have been told that people would cheekily, yet earnestly, salute each other with "May the 4th be with you" on, er, the 4th of May, as a tribute to Star Wars, I would have called bullshit.

If that same younger version of me would have been told that the biggest movie property of the era three decades hence, so massive and business-model-altering and so all-encompassing that it causes a kind of fatigue due to overexposure that depresses its own commercial viability was based on Avengers comic characters? AVENGERS?

I know I've mentioned this before. I have a series of sprawling and/or rambling theories on this and related topics. Things like: when it was the fifties/early sixties, the battle for holder of the popular narrative was waged between the squares and the freaks (names coming from their adversaries). The freaks won. When the same battle happened in the eighties, it was between the jocks and the nerds, and the nerds clearly won.

The macho, pushy, this-is-the-way-it-has-always-been-so-it-can't-change group keeps losing.

Anyway, here's a link that talks Andor and links to all other Star Wars posts I made over the years. May the 4th be with you.

NEEEEERRRRDDDD!!!!!!

"Hey buddy, did you see that nerd?"

"Excuse me?" 

Even then they knew who would win...reason number 665 why the Simpsons rules and was ahead of the wave.