canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
Eight Days a Week, the Beatles sang. It was a love song. For me those words are a lament about my long work week. I worked through the weekend staffing my company's booth at a trade show. Now it's Monday and it's been... back to work as usual. Though today has been busier than usual for a Monday. And my calendar is fairly full for Tuesday through Thursday, as well. I've marked Friday as a day off; I'm taking it as a comp day for this past weekend. That'll limit my work week to just 11 days instead of 12. I'll take a second comp day later this month.

canyonwalker: Uh-oh, physics (Wile E. Coyote)
Pasadena Trade Show Travelog #4
At the hotel - Fri, 7 Mar 2025, 9am

When I was a kid the song "I Love A Rainy Night" by Eddie Rabbitt (no, not Eddie Money and yes, Rabbit was his real name) was popular on the radio. It was one of the original crossover hits. In 1981 it reached #1 on the charts in country, pop, and adult contemporary. One of the lines was "I love a rainy night... (because) I wake up to a sunny day."

Hotel Dena and Pasadena Convention Center in the Rain (Mar 2025)

Well, here in Pasadena, I went to bed on a rainy night last night....

Hotel Dena and Pasadena Convention Center in the morning sun (Mar 2025)

And woke up to a sunny day this morning. But that's not all the morning held. Look at the mountains on the far right of the photo....

Snow in the Angeles Crest mountains behind Pasadena (Mar 2025)

I woke up to a snowy day!

Yes, there's snow in Los Angeles. Those mountains are in Los Angeles County. They're the San Gabriel Mountains, sometimes also called the Angeles Crest, and the peaks are up to 10,000' high. When it rains here in the winter, it often snows there.



canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
For years now, at least 10 years, and possibly longer, we've been getting mail addressed to a person who never lived here. And this isn't just the usual mis-addressed junk mail about "Buy your cemetery plot early and save 40%!" but legit, important mail that I imagine the person it's being sent to actually wants. It's quarterly statements from one of his retirement accounts.

Over the years we've tried everything reasonable to correct the problem. At first we sending the letters back with various forms of "Return to sender/Wrong address" written on the envelope. They kept coming. We ask the Post Office for help. That was like talking to a mailbox. We searched the person's name online but found nothing definitive. We even called the insurance company that manages the account, explaining the situation to an agent there. They refused to look up the account unless we also gave them the account number. The full name and address of the account holder weren't enough. That would mean opening the letter, which seemed like it could run afoul of federal laws around mail tampering, so I declined.

The letters keep coming. One day as we were listening to music in the car a classic by Elvis Presley came on, and I suggested to Hawk, "Maybe they're respond if we wrote the whole lyrics to Return to Sender on the envelope."

🎡 Return to Sender 🎡 (Jan 2025)

So she did.

Well, not the full lyrics. And also not the correct lyrics. 🀣

I added the musical notes 🎡 and signed it "Elvis" to clarify the intent.

canyonwalker: My old '98 M3 convertible (road trip!)
It's Friday night... and again it's Friday Night Halfway! Last Friday found us in Auburn, halfway to a hike in the Grouse Lakes Basin of Tahoe National Forest. Tonight we're in Jackson, halfway to a hike tomorrow along the Pacific Crest Trail above the Kit Carson Pass.

Jackson is a town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. It's a crossroads town, at the junction of highways 88 and 49. Route 88 is one of the passes over the Sierra Nevada. Route 49 is "the 49er trail" connecting a bunch of towns in the foothills that sprang up in the California Gold Rush that hit its peak in 1849 following the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill the year before. Sutter's Mill is/was about 35 miles north of here, in Coloma, though in the gold rush years gold was discovered nearby here, too. In fact there are at least a dozen historical gold mines within a few miles of Jackson. But those are not why we're here. For us it's just Friday Night Halfway.

Not Stuck in Lodi Again

The drive out to Jackson starts like a drive to Yosemite. We leave the Bay Area via Livermore on I-580 the hook the short I-205 east toward Manteca. Yes, Manteca, the Spanish word for lard; lard as in rendered pig fat. But instead of going all the way to Manteca as we would en route to Yosemite, we turn north on I-5 to Stockton and cross over to Route 99 north. On Route 99 we drive north a few miles to Lodi to exit onto Route 88, which angles northeast up into the Sierra foothills.

Lodi is always an amusing town to drive through. We can't so much as think about the town without also thinking about the classic hard-luck song named for it.

Just about a year ago
I set out on the road
Seekin' my fame and fortune
Lookin' for a pot of gold
Thing got bad and things got worse
I guess you know the tune
Oh Lord, stuck in Lodi again

-- Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Lodi"

Thankfully we're not stuck in Lodi tonight, or even hanging our hats there. I mean, we could have chosen a hotel there. We actually did, once, ten years ago. Going back would have to be just for the LOLz, though, as Lodi is about as dreary in real life as it's made out to be in song. ...Not that Jackson is worlds apart. It's a hardscrabble town whose best days were upwards of 150 years ago. Stately Victorian buildings built as banks with Gold Rush money are today biker bars popular with 50+ year old rebels in MAGA hats. But at least Jackson's 30 minutes closer to where we're going hiking tomorrow.

canyonwalker: My other car is a pair of hiking boots (in beauty I walk)
It's time to get back to Tongariro National Park. ...No, not literally. It's 7,000+ miles away, and we already enjoyed a packed day-trip to Tongariro National Park on our trip to New Zealand last month. It's time to get back to writing about that trip!

One thing I find memorable about that day is that we called an audible around 10:30am. I've written before about calling an audible when traveling and how it's important in travel. This one's also memorable because it recalls for me a few lines from the chorus the 1972 Elton John song, Honky Cat:

🎡 It's like trying to find gold in a silver mine
It's like trying to drink whiskey, oh, from a bottle of wine 🎡

I know, "Hiking in New Zealand" and "Elton John songs from 1972" seem to have little to do with one another. So let me explain.


What does an Elton John song from 1972
have to do with hiking in the mountains of New Zealand?
I'd been really wanting to hike Waitonga Falls. Of the 4 hikes we scoped out in the park, it was the one I wanted to do most. But the weather had been crummy since early morning and wasn't getting any better after temporizing for an hour or two with a short hike to Mangawhero Falls and a scenic drive. In fact it started raining harder. And the heavy clouds stretched on for tens of miles (we could see them from above when we were on the flank of the summit at Turoa) so it wasn't likely to get much better for hours, if ever that day.

Hiking Waitonga Falls— and not just merely hiking it, but hiking it in weather that didn't suck— was the gold I wanted to find, the whiskey I wanted to drink. Unfortunately bad weather meant neither was available.

After several moments of fretting I accepted that I wasn't going to get what I wanted. Moreover, I accepted that when I can't get my first choice of hiking in beautiful weather, "Hike anyway but in shitty weather" is not necessarily the second choice! I decided that somewhere else the weather was probably better. In fact that view from above at Turoa made it look like the other side of the mountain wasn't so cloudy. So I decided to bail out on hiking Waitonga and drive on to the next place on our itinerary. Maybe I'd find the proverbial gold mine there.


canyonwalker: A toast with 2 glasses of beer. Cheers! (beer tasting)
Los Cabos Travelog #9
Downtown Los Cabos - Sun, 5 May 2024, 7pm

This evening we've enjoyed dinner at Tres Gallos, a Mexican style restaurant in Cabo San Lucas. It was recommended by our hotel concierge. Yes, we sought recommendations for a Mexican restaurant here in Mexico. This town is full of tourist traps designed to lure white-bread American tourists. Places like Señor Frog's are packed with tourists wearing Harley Davidson t-shirts, listening to Kid Rock, and pounding shots of cheap tequila, thinking it's all an authentic "South of the border" experience.

So here we are instead at a local restaurant that's less than half full, where the menu contains some Mexican cuisine staples like tlacoyitos you don't regularly see in the US, and the music comes from a mariachi group.

Dinner and mariachi music at Tres Gallos in Cabo San Lucas (May 2024)

Still, the clientele are mostly tourists. That's kind of unavoidable in a town like this. At least there isn't a cruise ship in port today; otherwise this place might be packed.

We enjoyed the mariachi music with dinner. The group played a wide repertoire of US and UK classic rock tunes. They covered CCR, Van Morrison, Clapton, Santana, etc. "They know their target demographic," Hawk quipped.

By the time the mariachis came to our table we'd already discussed what our request would be. "La Bamba!" we asked.

I felt a little self-conscious about that; isn't that just another tourist favorite? I wondered. A foreigner's notion of the local culture, like thinking that Outback steakhouse is at all Australian? But then the band jumped into it with great gusto as the server staff all briefly stopped what they were doing and clapped and sang along with it. I remembered, oh yeah, even though the modern version of La Bamba was recorded and published in the US, and made the US charts, it's actually a traditional Mexican tune, specifically a traditional mariachi tune, and it was adapted to the style of early rock and roll by a talented young Mexican-American singer.

canyonwalker: Malign spirits in TV attempt to kill viewer (tv)
Yesterday I wrote about how comparing things to memorable dates can make you feel old. For example, do you remember the Apple Macintosh? (I do.) Well, the Apple Macintosh launched closer to WWII than to today. 😳

That's a form of comparison I described as "X happened closer to Y than to today." Another type of comparison that can make you feel old is to consider what would happen if memorable TV shows or movies about times past were remade today.

Back to the Future, 2024 edition

For example, Back to the Future was released in 1985. If it were remade today (2024), it would feature hero Marty McFly traveling back in time to... 1994.

If Back to the Future were made in 2024, Marty would travel back to 1994

Marty would be like, "Hey, where can I get on the Internet?"

And he'd cringe when old-time Doc Brown says, "Oh, you mean AOL?"

Then he'd meet his parents at a high school dance listening to oldies music from Ace of Base and Salt-n-Pepa.

Okay, let's try another one.

That '00s Show

If they remade That 70s Show today it'd be That 00s Show. The teen nostalgia show that aired from 1998 to 2006 portrayed the years 1976-1979. So today it'd premier with teens living in 2002.

That 70s Show

Teens in That 00s Show would be sitting in someone's parents' basement together after school sharing their fears about more 9-11 style attacks, lockdown drills, the war in Afghanistan, and whether the US would invade other countries, too, like Iraq.

They'd be trash-talking about which movie, Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, each of which had just been released months earlier, was better.

The kids would likely have internet access to help pass the time... but it would be slow because it'd be a dial-up connection. The warble of the modem connecting would be a regular sound effect indicating what was happening. And somebody's mom picking up the phone and breaking the connection while downloading music illegally would be a regular trope. Oh, and in later seasons the kids would discover this great new teens-focused service, MySpace. 🀣
canyonwalker: Uh-oh, physics (Wile E. Coyote)
West Virginia Travelog #12
Blackwater Falls State Park, WV - Mon, 18 Sep 2023. 1pm

🎡 Almost heaven, West Virginia 🎡

Those are the opening lyrics of John Denver's classic song "Take Me Home, Country Roads". I thought about the lyrics and song as we were traveling to West Virginia a few days ago. It turns out I haven't been able to get them out of my mind since then... because the state of West Virginia has basically made them its slogan.

At multiple parks we've visited, for exmaple, "Almost Heaven" is the tagline. Consider these signs we saw at Cathedral Falls yesterday:



Lest you think that was a one-off, the "Almost Heaven" slogan appears to be standard branding at West Virginia state parks. Here's the sign we saw at Falls of Hills Creek yesterday:

More

"Almost Heaven" is also branded on all kinds of tourist mementos we've seen for sale at gift shops. "Country Roads", too.

The sloganeering jumped the shark today when we saw this at Blackwater Falls State Park:



It's a selfie station with a swing that's branded with "Almost heaven" on a sign cut in the shape of West Virginia.

Don't get me wrong; "Take Me Home, Country Roads" is a classic song. West Virginia is getting carried away with it.


canyonwalker: My old '98 M3 convertible (road trip!)
West Virginia Travelog #2
Beckley, WV - Sat, 16 Sep 2023. 12:30pm

🎡 Almost heaven
West Virginia
Blue Ridge Mountains
Shenandoah River 🎡

Those are the opening words of a famous American song John Denver released as a single in 1971. "Take Me Home, Country Roads" is famous around the English speaking world— I've read that many Brits think it's our national anthem— and it has a special meaning to me. Although I never lived in West Virginia, the two geographic features it name-checks in its opening words are places I knew and loved in Virginia when I grew up there. Today, though, we're driven those country roads to West Virginia. ...Well, okay, it was mostly Interstate 77 we drove today, but it passed through beautiful and remote country. Does that count as a country road? πŸ˜…

The driving portion of our trip started when we landed at Charlotte (North Carolina) airport this morning. It was a 3 hour 15 minute drive to Beckley, WV, where we're staying the next three nights.

Some might wonder why we flew to NC when there are airports in WV. The reason is that we were able to get a nonstop red-eye from SFO to CLT. Flying to any point in WV, or an airport nearer to the border of it, would've required connecting flights. The added time for those would've meant a longer door-to-door time than the route we chose.

Have a Slow Day!

We were rolling in our rental car by 8:30 this morning. Our first order of business once clear of the airport was to find a quick breakfast. We tried a nearby 7-Eleven... they had nothing prepared for hot food. The rollers and warmers were all totally empty. Staff just didn't care about that part of their jobs.

Fortunately there was another 7-Eleven nearby... and that one, too, had totally lackadaisical staff. There were a few hot items ready to go, filling maybe 15% of the space, but then when I went to get a soda from the soda fountain I found that half the sodas weren't working and the other half were connected wrong. Like, really, how hard is it to recognize that "Diet Coke" is not the dispenser to hook up the "Orange Crush" syrup to? I mean, even if you're functionally illiterate, you could at least try sounding out the words. Or counting the letters. Or looking at their shapes.

We tried— and walked out of— a third convenience store before we struck gold on our 4th try. Good ol' QT. Their soda fountain selection was marvelous, and they had a whole kitchen running with hot food to order via kiosk. I ordered up a personal-sized pepperoni pizza while Hawk got a hot pretzel dusted with cinnamon.

Tunnels and Tolls

With something resembling breakfast in our bellies we started making tracks northward to West Virginia. From North Carolina we crossed into Virginia. I was surprised when I-77 traversed first one, then a second, big tunnel. They're the Big Walker Mountain Tunnel and the East River Mountain Tunnel. The latter is over a mile long. The odd thing to me is that neither tunnel crosses under a particularly high or treacherous mountain. Plenty of other Interstate routes would curve around these hills, gaining the 500' or so of elevation necessary to cross them. Here, engineers were like, "Yay, an excuse to use tons of dynamite!"

The second tunnel crossed us over into West Virginia. Yay! And there I-77 becomes a toll road. Boo. And it's not like the toll is even paying for all the dynamite required to bore those tunnels or the upkeep on them. Those tunnels are in Virginia; different state, different transportation budget.

$4.25 later we arrived in Beckley.
canyonwalker: My other car is a pair of hiking boots (in beauty I walk)
North Cascades Travelog #7
North Cascades National Park - Sun, 3 Sep 2023, 11am.

Today I'm reminded of the lyrics of the first stanza and refrain from my favorite Marshall Tucker Band song, Fire on the Mountain:
Took my family away from our Carolina home
Heard dreams about the west and wanted to roam
Six long months on a dust covered trail
They say heaven's at the end but so far it's been hell

[refrain]
And there's
Fire on the mountain
Lightning in the air
Gold in them hills
And it's waiting for me there

We only came from California, not Carolina, and it was only a few hours by aircraft plus several by 2023 Toyota Camry rather than 6 months in a wagon, and we weren't looking for gold in the hills, just a places to hike. But the rest of it matches. There's fire in the mountains!

Washington Pass with smoke from a nearby wildfire (Sep 2023)

As I've noted in recent blogs there are wildfires burning, or at least parts of them, in North Cascades National Park in Washington. News has been that crews are getting them under control, so we headed up into the pass this morning to see if anything's open yet. Nope. The trails we wanted to hike are all still closed, even the scenic viewpoint at the top of the pass is closed (the photos here are from the side of the road just below it), and the road at the top is one-way with crews signaling traffic.

We turned around when we saw the one-way traffic controls and headed back down the mountain, dejected. This was supposed to be our revenge trip. Instead Mother Nature is having the last laugh.

Washington Pass with smoke from a nearby wildfire (Sep 2023)

BTW when we got out of the car to make these pics at roadside pullouts we could smell the smoke thick in the air.

canyonwalker: Hangin' in a hammock (life's a beach)
Musician Jimmy Buffett passed away today. He was aged 76. A cause of death has not been released, though the news states that he died peacefully surrounded by family and friends.

Buffett rose to stardom in the late 1970s with a style of music that he called "Gulf and Western". It blended the easy, relatable themes of Western music with the rhythms and settings of the Caribbean. His best known song, Margaritaville, features the memorable refrain:

Wastin' away again in Margaritaville
Looking for my lost shaker of salt
Some people say that there's a woman to blame
But I know it's my own damn fault.

For the legions of Buffett fans who call themselves Parrotheads, it's a sad day in Margaritaville. Though this other lyric from the song might help them drown their sorrows:

There's booze in the blender
And soon it will render
That frozen concoction that helps me hang on

Update: Buffett's family released that the cause of death was skin cancer. I inferred from the fact he "died peacefully surrounded by family and friends" that he had a terminal illness and had chosen hospice.

canyonwalker: My old '98 M3 convertible (cars)
Last night we drove to Folsom, California, halfway to Bassi Falls. Yes, that's the same as we did 6 weeks ago. We're doing it again! Why? Because six weeks ago we had to bail out early when Hawk got hurt. Plus, Bassi Falls is beautiful. It doesn't hurt to see it twice. And we'll finish the rest of the trip, with a few other hikes, we intended to do 6 weeks ago.

How much the same is it? Well, we started from the same place (we live there, duh), we're going to the same trailhead to start the day Saturday, and Friday night we stayed at the same hotel— almost. Instead of the Residence Inn we're at the Courtyard. They're both Marriotts and they're literally next to each other in the parking lot.



The drive out to Folsom Friday night wasn't bad. Driving 142 miles took us 3:15 including a stop for dinner of about 45 minutes. Oh, and speaking of the same trip as 6 weeks ago... we ate dinner at the same restaurant as last time. πŸ˜‚ Though this time we left home 10-15 minutes later and made better time driving. We lost only 15-20 minutes to traffic. Thus we arrived 15 minutes earlier than last time.

You'll note driving 142 miles last night, with 202 shown as the total distance in the map above, is more than halfway. Yeah, that's because "Woooooah, we're halfway there!" is lyrical and "Wooooah we're 70.3% rounded up of the way there!" is not.

But back to things that are the same, or not. Last night after checking in we considered going to the same ice cream shop as last time. It was good! But this time I didn't quite feel like having ice cream; I wanted a beer or cocktail instead. Well, right next door to the Courtyard is a BevMo! It's, like, 50 feet from the hotel's side entrance. I grabbed a couple large cans of Negra Modelo (one for Friday night, one for Saturday) and took them back to the room to relax.

Final difference: we're getting an earlier leave on things this morning. We rolled from the hotel just after 7:30am and are now eating breakfast nearby— at the same restaurant (Del Taco) as last time! I hope that leaves us enough time to enjoy lots of outdoors stuff today. Of course, we'll have to avoid injuries while at it!

canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
A few weeks ago I watched Blade Runner: The Final Cut. My impetus was reading an article about it. I saw the original Blade Runner (1982) back in about 1989 and enjoyed it a lot at the time. The article promised that this second director's cut, released in 2007 after years of wrangling over legal rights, was the truest to filmmaker Ridley Scott's vision. It was on one of our stream services, so I gave it a watch.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut (2007)A 1980s Vision of the Future

The thing I enjoyed most about the original Blade Runner was its vision of the future. The movie imagines a world where technology is more advanced but society is still gritty. There are flying cars and interstellar space ships, yet the big city of Los Angeles on Earth is crowded, disorganized with people speaking multiple different languages, and still has poverty and homelessness.

The filmmakers' choice to imagine the future that way was a fresh break from the predominant trope in SF through the 1970s and into the early 1980s that technological progress would create a gleaming future of material abundance. Blade Runner clearly had dystopian elements... but without going full-on dystopia. Especially as I watched it in 1989, toward the end of a decade that had seen real-world cities become increasingly plagued with drugs and crime, it struck me as the most realistic extrapolation of what the future 20 years out might look like.

The Final Cut keeps all of the atmosphere of the original theatrical release. Possibly it even goes longer on it, telling the story at a slower pace than I seem to remember from 34 years ago. I didn't re-watch the original back-to-back with this version so I can't say for sure.

How that Vision Looks Today

Watching it today, of course, the movies' vision of the future is laughably quaint. "Los Angeles - November 2019" reads the subtitle over the opening scenes. That's now 3½ years ago, and we don't have flying cars, let alone interstellar space travel. Oh, and why is it constantly raining in Los Angeles? I've lived in LA. It gets, like, two rainfalls a year, and everyone loses their minds when it happens.

Here are several more things I chuckled about as terrible guesses from the 1980s of what 2019 would look like:

  • Billboards for Pan Am airlines. Oops, they went bankrupt in 1991.

  • At least the billboards for Coca-Cola aren't obsolete. Though the movie does predate the whole New Coke fiasco of 1985.

  • The head of Tyrel Corp. is making a replicant that's "more human than human" but hasn't invented Lasik to get rid of his need for Coke bottle-bottom trifocal glasses? (Probs because Coke is an ad placement; see above. 🀣)

  • Soundtrack by Vangelis.... Wow, there's a name— and a body of music— I haven't heard since about 1993!

  • 37 years in the future and they imagine everyone still using crappy little picture-tube TVs?

  • In the club scene everyone's smoking. Haha, we (California) fixed that futuristic problem in 1998!

Original Theatrical Release vs. The Final Cut

The main difference between the versions is that 2007's Final Cut tells a more cerebral story. In particular, it strongly implies that Deckard (Harrison Ford), the blade runner himself, is a replicant. A few key scenes that I think were not included in 1982's theatrical version show him doubting himself.

Of course, "Is he or isn't he?" is a hotly debated topic. I've read stories that Harrison Ford outright demanded to know, Is Deckard a replicant? to portray him accurately. The same stories indicate that Ridley Scott initially wanted the answer to be Yes but was pushed to No by the producers. The Final Cut changes the calculus.

In making the story more cerebral it seems to get more ponderous. I was surprised that there was basically no action until halfway through the movie's full run time. Again, I haven't re-watched the original so I can't say for sure, but I feel like the original had more action earlier on. Either way, The Final Cut is definitely a slow boiler. But at least it doesn't suffer the bloating problem of most director's cuts stretching toward 3 hours (or more). It clocks in at a trim 1 hour 57 minutes.

canyonwalker: My other car is a pair of hiking boots (in beauty I walk)
Friday night was Friday Night Halfway in Folsom so it follows that Saturday morning was Saturday The Rest of the Way. Nevermind that after driving 141 miles last night with 60 left this morning means we were well over halfway; "We're slightly over 70% there" doesn't scan very well and certainly wouldn't have made Bon Jovi's 1986 song "Livin' on a Prayer" such a classic hit. 🎡 Woooooah, we're halfway therrre! 🎡

In yesterday's blog (linked above) I explained all the benefits of our Friday Night Halfway technique, among them an good night's sleep, an easy morning departure, and getting to the trailhead well before noon. Alas, it didn't quite work out that way. First I stayed up like a stupid until 1am. Then my body wouldn't fall asleep until after 2 (when I said "fuck this" and took an OTC sleeping pill). I got up at 7:30 not wanting to let too much of the day slip by. But Hawk was even more wrecked than me (she was up most of the night) and we didn't leave the hotel until almost 9. Then with breakfast and a gas fillup we didn't get back US-50 up into the mountains until just after 10. Altogether we didn't start hiking on the trail to Bassi Falls until a few minutes before noon.

Getting there at noon wasn't all a result of things gone wrong. A few things went right! One of them was an unplanned stop.

Bridalveil Falls along US-50 (Jun 2023)

This photo shows Bridalveil Falls along US-50 in Eldorado National Forest. It's just right there, on the roadside, as US-50 winds through the forest. Yes, that's the same US-50 that runs 3,073 miles from Sacramento, CA to Ocean City, MD. These falls are waaay closer to Sac, though, so don't try this from the beach. πŸ˜‚

These falls will surprise you the first time or two you see them. In fact you may drive right past them because they aren't well marked. But they're at least 80 feet tall, and right now with spring snowmelt after a record setting winter they're flowing beautifully.

From the falls we continued up US-50 to the turnoff for Icehouse Road. Icehouse goes further up into the Sierras toward the Crystal Basin. Along the way we stopped at a ranger station to check information on trail conditions. Bassi and a few other things we wanted to visit are open; but the amazing Wrights Lake is still socked in with snow and might not open for another month.

Parking at the backcountry trailhead for Bassi Falls (Jun 2023)

Fortunately everything we want to do today is below about 6,000 feet elevation and is clear of snow. Though as we drove up into the mountains we could see the peaks of the Crystal Range beyond us still capped in snow. Still, it was an easy and pleasant drive through the basin. We enjoyed how the sky turned such clear blue as we ascended, contrasting with the green of the fir trees, the reddish brown of the earth, and the occasional yellow and orange bursts of wildflowers.

The photo above shows the trailhead for Bassi Falls at the end of a dirt road. This is one of (AFAIK) three trailheads for hiking to Bassi Falls. It's the hardest to drive to because the road can be rough. Though for our real 4x4 it was mostly a walk in the park. I didn't even activate 4wd mode until one little hill climb near the end where there were deep ruts in an alternating pattern. Still, our Xterra made such short work of it I didn't even have time to pull out my phone to shoot video. Maybe I'll get it on the way back.

For now, though, it's time to hike to Bassi Falls. Stay tuned for more!

Update: Bassi Falls!

canyonwalker: My old '98 M3 convertible (road trip!)
Folsom, California. A suburb of Sacramento. It's where you go if you've shot a man in Reno, according to a famous Johnny Cash song... or, in our case, when we're staying halfway between hither and yon on a Friday night.



Yon this trip is Bassi Falls, where we decided a few days ago we'd like to hike tomorrow. The drive is almost 4 hours best case, though, plus extra time for stops. Could we do that, there and back, all on Saturday? ...Yes, but it'd be a tough day. We'd want to be up by 6 and rolling by 7, only to start the hike a noon and then still have to drive home 5 hours (including a stop for dinner) afterward. We wouldn't have time/energy to double- or triple- up with other short hikes in the area, and we'd still get home exhausted anyway.

Enter Friday Night Halfway. Instead of spending 5 hours on the road tomorrow morning we knock out 3 or 3.5 tonight (including stops) and have a gentle 1 hour 15 minutes tomorrow. We start the hike earlier and with more energy, we have more time and energy to tack on an additional short hike or two in the area, and we get home not as wrecked. Oh, and we don't have to get up at 0600.

Who's Got the Folsom Blues? Not Us!

We made good time getting out of the house this afternoon. Hawk worked from home, which made things easier. We started packing at about 5:15 and were rolling at ten of six. We stopped for dinner along the way and checked in to our hotel in Folsom at 9:30.

Yeah, there was traffic along the way. It cost us about 45 minutes vs. best case conditions. But we were able to be more mellow about it because we knew we'd still get there at a completely reasonable hour (versus, say, having to drive until midnight+).

Once we got to our room we faced a choice. We could slip out to the hot tub for a soak before it closed at 10pm... or ice cream. There's a fantastic home-made ice cream shop two blocks from the hotel, and it's open 'til midnight. Hmm, hot tub or ice cream, hot tub or ice cream? Ice cream. It was hardly even a question. πŸ˜…πŸ¦πŸ€€

Now we're back at our hotel room for the night. We're winding down though we may also stay up a bit late. It's not like we have to get up at 0600! And when we do get up, we've got a full kitchen in our hotel suite so we could cook a big breakfast if we really wanted. But instead we'll settle for some meat, cheese, crackers, and bread we packed from home in a cold bag.

canyonwalker: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Travel! (planes trains and automobiles)
New Orleans travelog #2
French Quarter - Friday, 21 Apr 2023, 11:50pm

We landed in New Orleans around 4:30 today. Our flights from San Jose connecting in Dallas were thankfully uneventful... though not exactly on time. Remember I quipped that one benefit of leaving early in the morning is Southwest hasn't had time to fall behind yet? Well, the obvious corollary of that is when taking an afternoon flight....

I'll book this Southwest flight... and it's delayed

Yeah, it was delayed. By about 30 minutes. But it could have been worse. The flight that was headed to New Orleans 90 minutes before us left about the same time we did. 😝

Getting to the hotel turned out to be a mess. Everyone at the airport wanted a ride from Uber and Lyft. I spent at least 20 minutes trying to hail a ride and having my request canceled after timing out. When we did finally get matched to a driver it was almost twice as expensive as the first offer.

Well, again, the benefit of leaving early is that we got in in time for dinner. Even with 45-60 minutes of delays we still got in in time for dinner.

The folks at the hotel gave us a few recommendations for dinner. We decided to walk up and down Bourbon Street and neighboring streets and check things out ourselves. We ended up eating at their recommendation. 🀣

After dinner we went to a jazz bar and sat and listened to a few sets from a local band. They weren't really jazz, but their lead was really talented. The man could play sax, sing, tell a story, and dance... pretty much all at the same time.

After that we basically headed back to the hotel. The trek back along Bourbon Street just wasn't that interesting. Maybe it's just the getting-older codger in me, but I found it too loud. And full of fat, drunk people. And reeking of pot smoke. ...Okay, 24 year old me wasn't a fan of those things, either. Bourbon Street is not what it used to be.

canyonwalker: My other car is a pair of hiking boots (in beauty I walk)
The last several weekends have been tough for enjoying the outdoors. We've had a lot of rain... and cooler than normal temperatures, too. This weekend looked like it was going to be more of the same. The 10-day forecast at the start of the week showed rain all weekend. We monitored the forecast during the week to see how it developed, and by late yesterday it was showing a halfway decent morning for today. We set our alarm clocks early and headed up into the hills to Sierra Vista.

Sierra Vista Open Space in San Jose (Mar 2023)

Sierra Vista is part of the Open Space Authority of Santa Clara Valley. That's one of two open space districts in our area dedicated to conservation and low-impact recreation. And those two are in addition to countless city and county parks in the region.

Open Space Authority Santa Clara ValleyOne cool thing about both of the open space districts is that their parks are free. Another cool thing about Sierra Vista, in particular, is that stunning views start right at the parking lot. You can see an example of that in the photo above.

The downside to free + beautiful is that it equals crowded. One time we tried visiting this park in the early afternoon on a nice weekend day, the small parking lot was full and we were turned away by rangers vigorously patrolling it.

We've found that it works to get here early in the morning to beat the crowds. Plus the morning light makes the views extra special. Thus we got an early-ish move on things today. We left home at 7:45am. I was still eating my breakfast of a protein bar and a bottle of Coke Zero as I drove. We arrived at the ridge above San Jose by 8:15am. The parking lot was already half full.

Hiking Sierra Vista Open Space in San Jose (Mar 2023)

We laced up our boots— well, I laced up my boots; Hawk went in sandals because the trail looked fairly free of mud— and headed down the ridge on the Kestrel Trail. I don't know why they call it the Kestrel Trail; we've never seen a kestrel on it. Though today we did see a northern harrier swooping high over the grassy ridges in addition to a few of the usual turkey vultures.

Inapt name or no, the Kestrel Trail has a zig-zagging drop before intersects another trail and levels out. We've hiked that trail in toward the mountains the last few visits here. Today we decided to hike it out toward San Jose.

Do you know the way to San Jose? Sierra Vista Open Space (Mar 2023)

This branch of the trail is always fun because of the great perspective views lurking around every bend. Does anyone remember that old song Do You Know the Way to San Jose (YouTube recording of Dionne Warwick singing, in case you don't. Or in case you do.) Well, on this branch of the trail it's like, "Duh! It's right there!" 🀣

Update: It's a two-fer! We hiked another trail at Sierra Vista.


canyonwalker: Malign spirits in TV attempt to kill viewer (movies)
A few weeks ago we watched "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story". It's available streaming for free on the Roku channel. How was it? Well, it was... just too weird. I hated it.

I know that's a strong statement. You might think, "Well, you just don't 'get' parody." (BTW, if you think that you have no clue about me.) Let me contextualize it.

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022)I loved Weird Al's music since 1984, when "Eat It", his parody of Michael Jackson's hit "Beat It", came out. I heard it on the radio, and it was like a revelation to me. Music could be funny! And not just slapstick or bathroom humor funny, but poke-fun-at-things-that-people-hold-sacred funny. I.e., satire.

I told all my friends at school about it. At first nobody knew what it was. They all cracked up laughing when I repeated some of the lyrics, though. Soon more of us heard it on the radio— but not very often. I got bold and called a DJ to play it so my friends and family could all hear it.

I remained a fan of Weird Al's parodies for years. I bought a few of his albums. I eagerly watched the movie UHF (1989) as soon as I found out Yankovic wrote & starred in it. I think when I rented it on VHS I watched it 3 times in one weekend, then rented it again 9 months later.

Thus I was pretty primed to see "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story." Perhaps because of the title (which I took literally) I expected it to be a biography. A funny biography, to be sure; and likely parodying the biopic genre, as parody is at the heart of what Weird Al does. And that's where my dislike for the movie spawned.

You see, Weird is not a biography. It starts out as a sort of parody/biography, taking satirical liberties with the truth— which is exactly what I was expecting— but then gradually becomes completely unmoored from reality. Pretty soon it's a Weird Al self glorification fest on LSD, and it's not amusing.

Among the run-on jokes I found tedious:

  • Al's parents hate him, like sadistically hate him, and treat him as a failure even when he's objectively successful

  • Al insists repeatedly that he wrote Eat It as an original song, not a work of parody, and Michael Jackson wrote a little-known parody based on it

  • Madonna threw herself at Al, made him an alcoholic, and tried to turn him into a murderous drug cartel leader.

Let me reiterate: these gags were funny at first, but like too many jokes Saturday Night Live runs into the ground in their many bad seasons, they were made unfunny by excessive repetition.

As I sat through to the end of the movie I was reminded of what a writing teacher said to one of my classmates years ago about his absurdist comedy story written in the fashion of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. "John," he said— I think his name was John— "Your story is like a hot air balloon with no ropes. It rises and it's beautiful. But it's not moored to the ground of reality. It starts floating away, further and further away from reality, until the audience can't make sense of it anymore."

"Weird: The Al Yankovic Story" is that untethered balloon floating farther and farther away.


canyonwalker: Walking through the desert together (2010) (through the desert)
5 Days in the Desert travelog #13
Kelso, CA - Sun, 25 Dec 2022, 2pm

In the middle of the Mojave National Preserve, in the middle of the desert, is a beautiful train station. It was built in 1924 in a Spanish Revival style. ...So it looks like a certain building memorialized in a classic, classic rock song. Trains still pass by on the active rails, but the station hasn't seen a passenger in probably more than 50 years.

Kelso Depot, Mojave National Preserve, California (Dec 2022)

A big depot was built out here back in the 1920s as part of the infrastructure for steam locomotives. The Cima Grade to the east has a rise of 2.2% over 19 miles. That's too steep for steam locomotives pulling a full train to ascend. The depot was built as a base of operations for "helper engines", locomotives that would join the train to help pull it up the grade.

Servicing these helper engines required significant staff: not just pilots but also boiler-makers, mechanics, hostlers, and water tenders. Oh, and there was a water pipeline several miles long to bring lots of water down from springs up in the Providence Mountains. And once you have hundreds of workers in all these various trades housed in the middle of nowhere you also need cooks, housekeepers, plumbers, carpenters, accountants, constables, etc. Plus there was a mine nearby.

The depot saw its heyday during WWII. Not only was the mine running at peak operation to support the war effort and trains busy moving cargo east and west, but passenger trains carrying draftees to ports on the West Coast for deployment to the Pacific theater passed through.

Not long after WWII the depot shut down. ...Not because trains stopped running on the tracks, but because diesel engines replaced steam engines. A diesel locomotive individually isn't as powerful as a steam locomotive (that's what I learned when I visited the California State Railroad Museum, anyway) but diesel engines are much easier to synchronize to run in tandem. Watch any train passing through this area nowadays and you'll see they usually have 3 or even 4 engines.
canyonwalker: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Travel! (planes trains and automobiles)
Thanksgiving '22 Travelog #2
Woodbridge, VA - Sat, 19 Nov 2022, 9am

Three hours. That's the answer to the question I posed in my previous blog. That's how many hours of sleep I got while crammed aboard a 5 hour overnight flight in coach class.

The flight was fairly uneventful. At least during the 2 hours of it I wasn't asleep. It took me a while to nod off because the seating position isn't conducive to falling asleep. And then once I awoke just before 3am California time (6am destination time) I couldn't get back to sleep.

Putting on my headset and listening to my music helped the remaining time go faster. In fact, it was a bit of a revelation to have my tunes going, because they blocked out the ridiculously large number of totally insipid announcements the flight attendants were making on the public address system. I know they were insipid because I dutifully paused my music to get the gist of what they were talking about... most of the time. After their minute-plus infomercial for the United Airlines credit card I decided I know enough about commercial aviation to recognize when something urgent is occurring, and blocked out everything else they had to say. I know the drill on wearing seat belts, staying seated, and being careful when opening the overhead bins.

I continued blocking out insipid stuff while navigating through Dulles Airport. Man, busy airports are a lot more peaceful when you don't hear anything except your own soundtrack. And again the music helped pass the time; getting through Dulles takes a long time because of the way it's laid out.

As a result I didn't get to my rental car until 8:00, after having landed at 7:20. But once I had keys in hand I made good time down to my hotel.

Home Away From Home, I titled this entry. That's what this Courtyard Hotel feels like. Between it and the Springhill Suites next door, I've stayed here more times than I can count. These have been my usual places for staying when I've visited my family 10+ years.

Update: Oops, I forgot to include a picture of my Home Away From Home. It's a few blogs later.

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