Happy Late Night from Northridge, my Darling,
I got back a few hours ago, and really fast too, just 5 hours and 12 minutes as noted in my FB post. I was averaging about 75 mph the whole way, which as I'm sure you have seen, is about the speed people drive nowdays when they are out on a highway in the middle of nowhere. In fact, a lot of the time the average speed is 80, and I myself topped out at 85 a few times. Didn't wanna go any faster than that, lest Smokey emerge from behind a signpost and lay an expensive ticket on me.
But it was a good drive, and a little cooler (mid-90s) than on the way up, thank goodness. Central California just goes on forever, and I must say that - having now traversed it twice in the past few days - I am really aware of what the drought has done to our State. There are of course enormous plots of farmland, with trees and vines and other crops stretching for what looks like miles in all directions. The land in the Central Valley is flat, unlike the entire California coastline and eastern desert region. So in the past, it was known as The Produce Capital Of America, and it was said that the Central Valley grew enough fruit and vegetables to feed all of America.
But now, much of it - at least from what I saw - is so dried up that it, too, looks like a desert. The low rolling hills off to the west are uniformly tan colored, with not a single tree or shrub in place - not one! - and it looks like some Giant draped a huge section of beige colored carpet over the landscape. In some places it looks like you are driving on Mars or The Moon.
Our state is almost completely dried up.
I pledge never to root against El Nino again.
And I may have already mentioned it, but seeing all of this has given me huge new respect for the farmers, not only in California but all over the country. Without them, we wouldn't be here.
Anyhow, that was my drive, and I will add also that California is not exactly what our general image may represent. California is big; the size of Italy, and most of it - probably 75 to 80 percent of the land (and maybe even more than that) is entirely empty. All of our popular and well known culture comes from our three major metropolitan coastal areas of Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego. 33 miliion people packed in, along the coast, most of them in three cities (and almost half in the greater LA area), and in the rest of the state..........almost nothing.
I will do more road trips in the future, because I wanna see stuff.
Today before I came back home, I took one more tour of Downtown Benicia, and I saw a lot of historic older buildings from early California, got some good pix too. It's a beautiful town with a unique landscape and atmosphere, and I am glad I got to stay there.
After that, I drove back to Concord to David's place so we could engage in one of our favorite pastimes of years ago : Bowling. When we were kids, junior high age, we were both on the same team in a bowling league. I loved bowling as a young teen, and as I write, my one remaining bowling trophy stands on a shelf about 18 inches from my right hand. All of us Northridge Kids used to bowl at Matador Bowl, which still stands and was named for the CSUN mascot....this was in 1971 through 1972.
Before rock music, bowling was huge.
So today, this afternoon, I met David at his place, and we went to Clayton Valley Lanes a few miles from his apartment. My first couple attempts to roll the ball down the lane were kind of lame, because I had not bowled in, I am guessing, at least 25 years.
But pretty soon I got back a little bit of form. I threw a few strikes and spares. I even won the first game, and David is a regular bowler.
But then he began to warm up, and he beat me the next two games.
I averaged about 120 per game, which is about what I figured I would do.
My all time high game is 218, thrown when I was 12. I guess my average back then was about 145.
It was a blast, and while David was getting something to eat at the snack bar, I had a moment of Deja Vu, sitting at the bowling lane all by myself. I was noticing the wooden ball racks, how they were angled in a zig-zag, and I noticed where the counter was located in relation, and I just basically noticed how the place was laid out, and I thought, "I know this place - I've been here before". When David came back, I mentioned it to him, and he said I was probably right - that we had bowled there on one of my first trips up to visit, in 1976 or '77.
So I recognized a place from 40 years ago, and it was a bowling alley.
Then I drove home a little while later.
It was a great trip. ////
See you in the morning, SB. I will be on Usual Sunday Schedule.
I Love You. xoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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