The Party's Over

It only took about 30 minutes or so for the bus to haul our pink fundaments to Pismo. I suppose that it beats paying 20 clams for a taxi ride (har har …I crack myself up). That is, if there was cell service available by which I could even call a cab (and, for some reason, there just wasn’t cell service at Oceano Airport). Hey, Joe Clearance Sale is always looking for a bargain, eh?

We relieved the bus of its burdensome two and began to take in beautiful downtown Pismo Beach. It is a place teeming with …diversity (I can’t think of what else to call it and if I don’t use the word “diversity”, the liberal thought police will shut down my blog and haul me before Nancy Pelosi for judgment).

I like Pismo. Even if I don’t want my nose, ears, nipples, and belly button pierced and don’t want tattoos on my buttocks and pectorals proclaiming that I’m in love with “MOM”, roses, and skulls. You can buy a boogie board, a great low-fat yogurt (akin to low-fat milk drenched card board but with sugar added), coffee latte (oh, yes. I did manage to partake of one of those delectable goodies), saltwater taffy (yep…I was definitely tempted but passed), and can visit a myriad number of other book stores, chowder shops, and other interesting places.

You can play pool or you can rent a bicycle for two, a surrey-cycle with a canopy, an ATV, or even a Segway two wheeler. You can get your palm read (though not at all advised by this un-lax’er), get a load of sea food for lunch (very much advised by this un-lax’er), and perhaps top it all off with a luscious ice cream cone (muy tempted…but we passed on that, too).

In about an hour of taking in the local shops and reveling in the wonderfully cool air and coastal sunshine, we decided to catch the bus back to the airport. You could probably say that we were suffering a sensory overload but it was still a nice time.

We walked back to the exact same bus stop at which we debarked and parked on the amazingly uncomfortable solid steel grill bench (making it more difficult for the illegal aliens to steal, don’tcha know). The bus schedule says that we only had to wait a few minutes but in reality, we had to wait about 20 minutes. So much for “on the hour” scheduling. Oh, well. Getting a tad redder on my already sunburned face isn’t all that big of a deal. We have some aloe vera on hand at home. Thankfully, there’s no one there that recognized me. In fact, I’m not sure that, after being wind swept and sun burned, my mother would know me.

Boy! I usually think that 2 and 2 makes 4. Well….not this time. We boarded the bus and headed back to the airport. Or, so we thought. Yes, we were heading north first to continue the route. Then, we headed south after reaching the uttermost northern parts of Pismo Beach proper. In only about an half an hour or so we exited Pismo for Grover Beach. OK, says we. It’s not a problem as long as we are headed south.

Headed south we were. Ah, but there was a catch. In strict accordance to the bus route, we were headed all over the place in Grover Beach (guess they forgot to ask us about the route we wanted to take). Fine! We can deal with seeing parts of Grover Beach ….again. Oh, but wait, folks! There’s more! We’re now headed for Arroyo Grande away from the airport! I wasn’t expecting the cook’s tour of the place. For corn flakes! I just wanted to go to the airport!

OK….at this point we are “bus prisoners”. What can you do but just force your fanny to conform to the concrete like gorilla-proof space-age plastic seats and wait it out. *SIGH*. We realized that it was obvious that we will not get the Cessna home on time. This is not making me smile.

On the northbound trip we had to stop at a transfer point in Grover Beach. It was a right-nice park of sorts where folks would swap buses. A few folks were parked in the grass resting and reading while other were availing themselves of the modern plumbing that was nearby (that would include us).

On the southbound ride, we found that we had to stop there again. Thanks to my side-cook, full-time wife, and assistant navigator, Connie, I was prompted to ask die busen fuhrer if we were still on the bus that goes to the Oceano Airport. Can you even imagine my surprise when he said, “No”? My jaw dropped so far down that I could have swallowed an entire Monterey cypress tree.

He pointed to another bus that was patiently waiting to haul ignorant sun-burned tourists like me and said, “That’s the one you want”. He graciously handed us a pair of transfer tickets and we bade him “farewell” (he probably would have understood if I had said, “adios” but I’m not a conformist, don’tcha know). As I stepped off, I asked the nice man about how long it would take to reach Oceano Airport. He advised that it would be in about a half an hour. Great. We had already gone only three miles south and it had only taken us an hour. We have but a mere two more miles further south to go to be able to leave this fair and sunny land of tattoos and seagulls and we can depart for home. Can you spell P-A-T-I-E-N-C-E?

Here we go…on to the next bus and wherever the heck it may take us. Sure enough, we did get the full cook’s tour of Arroyo Grande prior to entering Oceano. Granted, Arroyo Grande is the home of the “Strawberry Festival”. But, that’s wasn’t until May 28-29 (this previous weekend). But, there wasn’t much else to see that couldn’t be seen anywhere else on the coast.

After only a couple of stops in Oceano, we could see familiar territory in the distance. We unloaded our bodies, complete with the flat spots on our newly-polished shiny hineys, and walked across the street to the airport.

Now, get this. Only in the modern world can this happen. It only took an hour to fly from Visalia to Oceano and the distance was almost exactly 120 miles as the Cessna flies. It’s only about 5 miles from Pismo Beach to Oceano and it takes an hour and a half to make the trip by bus! Boy, howdy! If that don’t make you want to eat grits and throw biscuits at the neighbor’s dog! 

Finally, we able to preflight the 150 horse power high-winged creature that had brought us thus far and plop our tired airframes inside. We strapped in and lit the fire. The Cessna was most compliant and came to life without a complaint. After we taxied to the end of the runway, we announced our departure and poured the coal to the Lycoming O-320. Off we went into the stiff cross wind.

Departure at Oceano is quite beautiful. Watching the ocean and beaches glide by is quite spectacular.  And, you have to fly runway heading until you are passed the town prior to making any turns. After that, you can do as you please. We took a few pictures of the coastline and of the many kite flyers that were beneath us. It was a most gorgeous sight.

In a tad more than an hour (due to a bit of a headwind), we arrived back at the Visalia Municipal Airport. The owner of the FBO was most understanding about the fact that we were a half hour late in returning his ship. Apparently it had not been scheduled for that evening so it was no big deal. We had to first bed down the plane and do the paperwork.  After that, we were headed to a pizza place in Hooterville for a political meeting of like minded folks who think that abiding by the Constitution is a good thing.

When we finally got to Rancho Relaxo, we were…uh…how you say in English….pooped and sunburned….but happy to have had a great day and adventure at the coast. If our bodies can handle it, we may even try it again ….someday. In one day we had driven in a car, flown an airplane, ridden on a bus, eaten in a train dining car, and had transported ourselves all over Pismo Beach by shoe. Such a deal.

The recovery continues. According to dear friends, Don and Shirley Gerber in Apple Valley, CA, we are suffering from “fun poisoning”. No doubt in my mind.

YOU CAN DOUBLE CLICK ON THE PICTURES TO ENLARGE THEM. THE OCEANO AIRPORT IS AT THE TOP RIGHT AND JUST BELOW THE LARGE SAND DUNE MASS.

Randy and Connie's Day Off

There’s an old adage that says something like, “All work and no play makes Randy and Connie tired and proves that they aren’t dealing with a full deck”. So as not to be iconoclastic, we took a day off from tending Rancho Relaxo and went west for some R&R.

Those of you who are rather savvy know that, from here, you can’t go all that far west until you run  into a natural barrier that some folks call the Pacific Ocean (while others call it Mar Pacifica but we won’t go there for now and will reserve comment for another blog called “Randy’s Rant Roost”). That was our destination, the big blue Pacific Ocean.

To be specific, it was a little quaint but bustling little burg called Pismo Beach. I’m not sure but, I think that the town was named after San Luis O’Pismo  who was the Irish Catholic second cousin by marriage to well known San Luis Obispo whose town is 8 miles away. It is rumored that Luis named the town after the 5 pound namesake pet clam that he dug up from the local beach.

Pismo has long been noted as a place to rent a boogey board, an ATV with which to try to kill oneself on the sand dunes, and a great place to pig out on fish and chips, clam chowder, coffee latte’, or a myriad of other things that may please the palate. You can also dig to your hearts content for the local bivalves.

We didn’t drive. Oh, no. That takes far too long and we didn’t want to spend all of our time on the highway dodging people whose IQ test turned out negative but who have nonetheless been given a drivers license. And, it seems that, as I approach being “aged to mellowness”, it is no longer great fun to cradle my over-weight middle-aged airframe squarely on my buttocks for hours at a time. In fact, as time progresses, it takes greater and greater effort to remove the flat spots from my heiny after a long trip in a car.

What did we do, you ask? We rented a Cessna 172 and flew over there, of course. I’ve been flying with Western Air in Visalia for quite some time (previously Sierra Aviation). They have a couple of Cessna 172’s, a Cessna 150 (which I refuse to fly except solo since it’s incapable of flight with more than two cups of gas when two people are aboard) and a Piper Warrior. The plane was scheduled in advanced for the day so all we had to do was show up.

Ah, yes…the details. Prior to showing up, we did greet the morning soon enough. It wasn’t exactly the crack of dawn. It was more like the widened fissure of developed sunshine or such. It took a couple of doses of strong coffee latte’ (from my new Breville espresso maker) right straight in the eyes to initiate forward ambulation.

The plan was to depart the house in time to be at the airport at 0830 hrs local time so we could prep the plane and saddle up for departure at approximately 0900 hrs. However (there’s always a “however”, eh?), I double checked the weather for our route and it confirmed my suspicions. I had called the Flight Service Station (FSS) the previous evening for an “extended briefing” for our planned route. The forecast didn’t sound all that bad but it still sounded a bit “iffy” to me. My experience with flying to the coast led me to believe that there was a significant possibility that there would be coastal fog and weather that would “burn off” around 11 AM or just a bit after that. That turned out to be exactly the case. The “standard briefing” that morning confirmed my concerns. Soooooo…..we just downshifted and took our time loading the van and preparing for the trip and left the house at about 8:30 AM. The extra latte’ (home-brewed with a special coffee mix) was greatly appreciated.

We drove the 42 miles to the Visalia airport contemplating and discussing the possibilities of the day and the adventures that it could bring.  Because Porterville no longer has an FBO (fixed base operator) that rents aircraft, a trip to Visalia was cursory. This is almost mind boggling given the fact that Porterville has had an FBO continually from 1955 until 1995. It was almost a no-brainer because Porterville Municipal Airport has a 5908’ x 150’ runway and had plenty of room for practice areas et. al.. The location is ideal for flight instruction. It had been a USAAF bomber and fighter base during WW2.

For reasons not completely understood by this private pilot, interest in general aviation seems to be on the decline so there simply aren’t enough student pilots to warrant flight instruction at our airport. It is sad to report that there is only one flight instructor available who is on call. If I have my way about it, there will be two by next year.

After arriving at KVIS, we headed to the office of the FBO (Western Air). It doesn’t take long to pre-flight a C-172. And, the FBO filled the tanks and de-bugged the windscreen prior to our arrival. So, we had only to toss our flight bag and some jackets on board then strap in.

The nice thing about this old bird (N96836), was that she had a spiffy new Garmin GPS-430 stuck in her instrument panel. The 430 is to airplanes as the astrolabe was to ships. This beauty will keep you apprised of everything while en-route but the TV channel the folks below you are watching! You dial in your destination airport and it will not only direct you there, but will show you alternate airports and has VOR navigational capabilities! It’s a great buy for a mere 5, 000 dollars (the Garmin 530 is 15, 000 bucks, so the 430 is a real steal!).

Our departure turned out to be at 1005 hrs. The local weather showed scattered clouds to the west as was forecast by the FSS. We climbed above them to smoother air and parked at 6,500’. In an hour we were nose to nose with the Oceano Airport (just a few miles south of Pismo which doesn’t have its own airport). The landing was passable. But, due to the stiff offshore wind, it wasn’t quite the “squeeker” that I had desired. We did walk away from our arrival at 1105 hrs.

What do you do when you go someplace in an airplane and don’t have even a bicycle or Avis waiting for you? You walk. Oh, great. My body has a difficult time hauling itself around Wal-Mart and now I’m making it walk from the airport to beautiful downtown Oceano six blocks away!

I hadn’t been to Oceano since flying there in 1999. The buildings were actually about the same. However, someone forgot to keep the same businesses and restaurants the same! Connie and I wanted to suck up a bit of clam chowder but the place I had in mind was now being used for a storage shed. The rest of the businesses rented ATV’s.

We moseyed up the hill to the old liquor store that was there in ’68 when I flew there for the first time and which will likely be there until the Millennium. The nice lady there advised that we could dine at the Mexican restaurant two blocks east or hike a couple blocks further south from the Mexican place to the “Rock N Roll Diner”. Mexican food was not our first choice because we had recently knocked over a local place call “China’s Alley” so we weren’t much interested in “comida Mexicana”. Plus, we’re at the coast, for crying out loud! Let’s do seafood!

Given such options (which included calling a cab but …there was no cell phone service there!!), we strolled on over to the “Rock N Roll Diner”. We purposely ate a light breakfast so that we would be hungry when we got to our destination. Also, we ate light so we wouldn’t have to land on a distant alfalfa field halfway to the coast for “relief”.

The diner was a hoot! The restaurant was two train dining cars hooked together with other buildings glued to them for support. The interior was 100% a blast from the past. The walls were plastered with vintage movie bills and rock and roll memorabilia. In the background, they continually played R&R music! The rest of the décor was up to 50’s par and you can trust me on this; I was there.

The menu offered a seafood sampler so we opted for that. The most I can say for it was that it was off-the-shelf Smart and Final. I had hoped for a tad more than that but it didn’t happen. According to the write-ups and reviews I looked up afterwards, I should have ordered from the breakfast menu. Oh, well. It was our day off and things were moving along nicely and we were enjoying it all.

Having a full tummy will insure that your mind thinks creatively. Mine wanted to find a way to immediately take a nap. When I tried to convinced it that naps were not on the menu, it merely mocked me and advised me that my intelligence was sorely lacking and on par with a box of crackers. It then reminded me of the bench at the nearby duck-laden park down the street on which to lie down. It was duly apprised that I was still looking for options.

We were almost to the point of just calling it a day and flying back home. However, it was only when we ambled (well…more like hobbled) back to the airport (some 5 blocks away) that we did have an option. That was because we noticed that there was a bus stop bench across from the airport.

“Sit down on the bench! This is not a request!!”, my lower back loudly demanded. “If you do not sit down now, I am headed to Florida and moving in with a Cuban Rumba dancer who gives Swedish massages and you and your enlarged gluteus maximus can stay in California!”. OK. So, I caved in to the demands and parked on the bench. I still needed my lower back for now and it was much too early to contend with such difficult negotiations. I just tossed in the chamois and called it a day.

In only about 30 minutes of the hairdo wrecking breezy day and baking in the delightful coastal sunshine which toasted my moon tan to hell, a modern municipal bus, powered by compressed natural gas (CNG), picked us up. We boarded the bus and, for a mere 1.25 each, settled in for a ride to Pismo. My feet were high-fiving. My back simply grunted, “Good call”.

Stay tuned for part two.

Build, Baby! Build!

After what seemed like an endless monsoon season around here, we finally have a dry spell. It isn’t so dry that the frogs in the ditch out front have stopped croaking their love songs at night. The bulls are mindlessly singing their alluring tunes to attract females. It must be working, in fact. They are still happy and they are still making more frogs for the next wet season. However, it is dry enough to hang clothes on the clothesline again.

 Oh, boy….here he goes again on a 500 furlong tangent. We have a nice clothesline out back and adjacent to the garage. It’s a beaut that is surrounded by a white picket fence. However, it has to have a willing participant to maintain it with an equally willing weedeater because the enclosure is too small for a lawn tractor (*sigh*). If one is not mindful, the small plot becomes an impassible jungle with a pocket gopher as the only tenant and supervisor.

Perhaps some folks don’t recall having sun-and-air dried clothes but I’m here to tell you that this procedure is coming back in vogue. Well….sort of. Some people have yet to retrograde their laundry process for the sake of frugality. You have to admit that you can save enough in electricity costs to feed a large ‘possum by letting your undies flap in the breeze. And, there is the wonderfully fresh smell of nature that is lodged in your socks (whaddayoumean you’ve never whiffed your socks?).

Of course, there is a small price to pay for this one-with-nature blast from the past. You have to endure a bit of abrasion from the stiff towels when you take a shower. It’s not all that bad, I suppose. It’s sort of like drying with maybe 180 grit sandpaper, but not much more than that. And, of course, you have to bend them into shape and loosen them up a bit before you use them. However, the upside is that you get to experience layers of aromatic nature and sunshine trapped in the fabric of the sandpaper that exfoliates your tender epidermis. Hey! Think of it this way. You will never be troubled by excess dead skin cells again!

Yeah, I suppose that there are certain areas of my epithelium that I don’t want to purposely abrade. Somewhere in the back of mind there’s the thought that my body will compensate by building a callous or two or at least respond with some skin thickening. Uh….I’m trying to get a visual on this and it isn’t looking very pretty so far. I can always use the localized drip dry method, I suppose. Oh, well.

I survived the first 20 years of my life using this archaic method so I reckon I’ll make it a few more years with some minor scratch marks. Besides, winter will always show up which forces the use of the gas dryer which produces a soft, warm, and fluffy towel which allows time for your reddened skin to heal. You also get to smell like Bounce lilac flavored softener sheets. Not a bad trade.

OK, so I haven’t actually met anyone recently who is hanging their skivvies out for the neighbors to see. But, I know that times are getting more financially trying and I am convinced that there are some secret “hangers” out there somewhere. More are sure to follow this time-tested method of drying everything from tea towels to didys. Rancho Ran’s tip of the day is: you may want to buy some clothes pins while they are still cheap!

In fact, a lot of folks are starting to be more conservative with their finances what with the economic climate with which we are dealing (for more on that, you may want to check out “Randy’s Rant Roost” at http://randyminnick.blogspot.com from time to time). We’re stocking up on lots of items that will come in handy if the fertilizer hits the ventilator (economically speaking).

Back to the barn….on Wednesday the contractor advised that he would “drop off” the lumber on Friday. Imagine our surprise when Connie and I came home from Torrance on Saturday night and found that the barn had been framed in! We were almost dancin’ in the moonlight! If we hadn’t been so tired… and so middle aged… and so...overweight, the neighbors may have seen us doe-see-doe! There had been a concern that the barn would not be completed by the time we have the big (we’re talking big) yard sale at the end of this month and would have to postpone it again. It appears that we’re good-to-go.

The dimensions of the big barn are 20’ X 40’ of storage space with an upper loft that’s 8’ X 40’. It will be the same color (powder blue) and have the same siding as the house. There are two windows on each side with a 16’ roll-up door in the front. I’m planning to stick a big swamp cooler on the west side too. There will be electrical outlets everywhere and it will be insulated. The Ford 8N and the big Craftsman GT5000 lawn tractor will now have a nice home.

The upper loft will likely be used for storing dry goods and dry foods like flour, rice, and beans. The garage is currently being used to store both goods and food. It shouldn't take too awfully long to transport most of the items from the garage to the barn. In fact, I will be hiring a friend of mine to help with that chore (I’ll hire ten guys if I have to because I’m not lumping anything heavier than fishing tackle).

Speaking of yards sales, on the way to Torrance, we knocked over a few of them. It was “home run” season that day! We made out like bandits! Treasures included a 15” flat screen monitor (10 bucks!), an IDE hard drive enclosure (5 dollars!), a couple of powered USB hubs (2 dollars each!), a really nice metal storage rack with 5 shelves for the barn (15 dollars!), and a couple of items for Ebay selling. The shelving was easily disassembled so it fit into the back of the already crowded van. Connie scored with some goodies that she got for the grandkids.

Sometime in the near future we hope to return to Morro Bay and catch the yard sales they have over there. We cleaned up last year! People were almost throwing bargains at us!

Here it is the end of the first week in May (Mother’s Day, to be exact) and Connie and I have only been fishing once so far this year! What the heck is that all about?! We now have more than 30 freshly overhauled rods and reels, several tackle boxes, and hundreds of dollars of tackle and have only caught…one fish and one tree branch (at the expense of a new Mepps spinner).

We just returned from a couple of days in Harbor City/Torrance where we went to see Trixie’s newly born baby boy. This is her fourth child. That makes two boys and two girls. Can you imagine being a boy and having two elder sisters?! From what I can tell, though, the girls, Liesel (6) and Cosette (3), really love their new gender-opposite sibling. I saw them smooching him on the forehead a time or two.

As you can guess, Grandma Honey, held fast to the sleeping wee one a lot. How could she not do so?! He was as cute as a bug’s ear (which I’m sure he’ll appreciate that accolade a lot when he’s 25 years old). The little guy slept like a log due to the hyper dose of melatonin that God gives newborns.

Also, guess who got to jam with the best Country and Western musicians in the south valley? You bet! Ol’ Tele Slinger, Ran! There was a big benefit concert in Pixley at the Risi’s Pond Campground last week and I was invited. I’ve played with most of the guys before but it’s always a hoot to strap on the Telecaster and hook up with these great singers and players! The weather was most pleasant and the temperature was accommodating so we stayed for the duration.

The icing on the cake was to get to re-unite with picker, Paul Dobbs, who happens to be among the premier steel guitar player in country. He has played with a number of Nashville greats! I met Paul back in 1978 while living in Fresno and when he was playing in a local Christian band. It was great getting to play with him back then. We hadn’t seen each other until about 4 years or so ago when he played at a huge jam session in Exeter, CA. It was a great pleasure to get to play with him again!

My selections were “You’re Still On My Mind” (The Byrds) and “Excuse Me I Think I’ve Got a Heartache” (Buck Owens). I almost loaded my Huggie when Paul kicked the songs! Oh, man! Talk about good music! Paul had to head back home shortly after. So, after a big hug, he was gone back to Fresno.

After all was said and done, I had played about 5 hours with some of the best pickers between Fresno and Bakersfield! These guys are great and I had the distinct honor and pleasure to be included with the group!

When we got home, I was dog tired and ready to “un-lax”. It took a couple of days to recover but it was well worth it. It was a long but memorable day.

Stay tuned for the adventures of Rancho Ran and his side-cook, Connie. It’s never dull at Rancho Relaxo.