06 Dec 2003 - With family and back to the ship
Next
morning, Larry came over and the group of us went out for breakfast in San Juan
Capistrano. Dan and Larry know everyone in San Juan Capistrano, having
lived there so many years. Dan told me he's waiting bar at the
Swallow's Inn one night a week. It's a local landmark bar - a cowboy bar -
where folks have been known to ride their horses in.
After
breakfast, we went back to Dan's and admired the baby some more. And then
we were ready to depart on our trip up the Ortega Highway to drop the supplies.
When Dan was young, in the 80's, he and I drove out the Ortega many times with our .22 rifles to go shooting past the Blue Bird campsite almost to where you can look down the backside of the mountains onto Lake Ellsinore. At that time, there was a small canyon littered with beer cans and old refrigerators and such and folks used it for target practice. We spent a lot of good hours there. Our trip today would take us out the Ortega, off onto the Blue Bird gravel road and quite a ways past the old shooting site. Dan reminded me that he still has my old .22. Ann, like Sharon, doesn't understand our fascination with shooting at tin cans but it has been something Dan and I have shared for a long time.
Out on the Ortega is where the Nichols Institute finally ended up after several years in temporary facilities in San Juan Capistrano. Later it was acquired and became Quest Diagnostics. There are still people working there that I knew back in the late 70's when it was still in San Pedro. In '95 I dropped in and Brad Holland in the computer section showed me around. It is quite a jump from the half a dozen rooms it occupied when I first went there to San Pedro in the summer of '74 to wash glassware for them. Larry moved on the Allegren and has been there 15 years but he ran down all the folks we both knew and where they've gone.
We drove out the Ortega. Again, the places all along the road were tugging at my memories and poignant feelings.
...I saw a deadhead sticker on a Cadillac
Don't look back, don't you ever look
back...
- lyrics from a song that came to me as we drove
Once we arrive at the trailhead, we each put on a small pack and walked for about 3/4 of a mile to where Dan and Larry wanted to drop the supplies. At the drop point is a small tree beside the trail that they have 'adopted'. For the last three years, they've come up and placed Xmas decorations on it and, true to form, they'd brought some along in there supplies. Here's some pictures of this adventure.
Dan and Larry placed the supplies into a metal tool box which had been left there on an earlier expedition and then hid it off the trail. They were hoping that the box would be sufficient to keep the coyotes out overnight. They'd placed eggnog, beer, water, chips, Xmas decorations among other things there.
The plan was that on the following day, a number of people would meet at some point about 35 miles away and then ride up here on their mountain bikes and then have a tree decorating celebration. It sounds like a strange sport to me but Dan and Larry live and breath for it.
After stashing the supplies, we walked back out and then drove back into town. We grabbed a bite at a hamburger stand and then took off back to Dan's place. it was getting to be time for me to make my way back to the ship.
At Dan's house, I called the ship's Captain. He'd been expecting a diskette drive from Germany and I wanted to see if it had arrived. If not, I was going to stop into Fry's and grab one. It hadn't arrived.
I got Dan to give me an envelope and stamp so I could mail my ticket to Sharon because I wasn't going to be back in time to deal with it. We said our goodbyes and I was gone.
Back in the rental car, I headed up the 405 and jumped off at Crown Valley and went to a Sports Chalet store Dan had told me about. There, I bought a 15 pound hand weight for working out on-board, mailed my letter (with the ticket) and then pressed on.
Next stop was Fry's Electronics again. In and out quickly, I grabbed a 1.44 MB diskette drive for the ship.
Then I blazed up to San Pedro, called the Captain again to confirm our sailing time (it was still 0500) and located a Starbucks up on Western above San Pedro. Once there, I set out my laptop and got electronic again.
Dan and Ann had sent me photos by E-mail which I quickly integrated into the web site. I talked to Sharon by phone and she e-mailed me some new text for the nursery's hours web page. And again, to facilitate things, I had the requisite decaf eggnog latte.
All my electronic duties sorted up, I packed up the laptop and headed out for the Sheraton Hotel on 6th street in San Pedro. Enterprise Car Rentals was closed at this point so I had to drop the car and the keys there. By luck, a cab was there so I was able to immediately transfer my stuff to the cab, park the car, drop the keys and be on my way back to the docks very quickly.
At the docks, I showed a copy of my ticket for the Direct Tui and caught the shuttle bus for the ship. On-board, I lugged my stuff upstairs to my cabin and a long and interesting day was nearly over.
I unpacked my laptop and hooked up everything into my on-board configuration. I tested the new USB keyboard. I called Gertraude in Cotati and caught her up on my doings since I'd left her place on the 3rd.
Then I called Sharon and we talked and caught up on things in general and said our goodbyes for what might turn out to be two weeks if we cannot get the ship's e-mail computer working.
I went out and took a few photographs of the LA harbor at night. It is one of those places where it never gets dark. The huge lights burn all night long and the loading and unloading of ships never ceases. These were views from up top on the flying bridge over the main bridge.
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Then I showered and lay down to read until I got sleepy at midnight.