A week ago Thursday was not a bad morning to set out,
after nearly six months away, so after breakfast on the porch I
went to the gate,
down the desert,
over Sand Pass to Fish Springs Road
and Doyle,
then clear sailing through Sierra Valley
all the way to Truckee…but then, thanks to the Disastrous Storm
[just LOOK at all that snow piled up over Donner!] white-knuckled 25 mph Subaru drivers and
other 4×4 ninnies held up wall to wall semis in both directions all the way down;
a California Welcome. Crossing the Valley into Solano County was nothing by comparison
and then it was Benicia and
the industrial luncheonette on Saturday
as prelude to the raison d’etre for being here now, that being
Tiburon
and my brother Kirk’s eldest son’s wedding wherein the happy couple took over the entire upper floor of the Bungalow Kitchen, one of Michael Mina’s many upscale restaurants,
for ceremony, ritually rich foods* and celebration.
We were successful in making it home before the next day, the next day encompassing its own
social event as Enrico and Itaka stopped by enroute to Paris for lunch and a windy afternoon
walk…and the next day another one, feet sorely sore from pavement and salt assaults*,
with remnant Wagyu beef salvaged from the profligate wedding dinner**.
Tuesday, stormy through the morning, brought
another visitation, this time remnant wedding guests; my brothers Bryan, Kirk
and Italian niece Rebecca Natalia, she and Bryan the brother on their way back to
Strada in Chianti…but not before another very windy walk in the wake of the storm.
*Too many well-salted dinners out definitely affected aging joints and other moving parts.
** As son Bryan’s mother Jeanne Rose said of the menu “a carnivore-heavy meal, how quaint” and although few vegetables were harmed in the presentation much was sadly returned to the kitchen nonetheless.
The pale green Chevy brought back a yearly civic ritual in Twin Falls ID: The car dealers were pretty much sprinkled just off Main Street, and all of the show rooms had full, almost floor to ceiling windows of plate glass. Before the yearly new models arrived the window were covered with brown paper, then the new models were snuck in in the middle of the night. The brown paper was left in place to build the suspense and then all of the dealers removed it during the same night, thereby creating a simultaneous reveal of the new models. A big chunk of the population (and all the teenagers) showed up and checked out all of the new models on what became a local holiday. The invention and revelation of the tail fin one year was a major civic event. So many of your highway photos still look pretty much just like they looked at that time. (and a note to spell-check: I will not give up the word “snuck”.) And a P.S.: Every year there were NEW colors. You know all of that of course, but some of your readers and most of their children may not.
EXACTLY the same in Montrose, California, where there probably aren’t car dealers anymore having moved to “Auto Malls” and purveying mostly interchangeably-appearing grey, black and silver products…