2023: THE CHURCH OF THE OPEN ROAD’S YEAR IN REVIEW

 Return to the Open Road

Let’s start with the Runner-Up Shot of the Year: Mt. Shasta ~ the Queen with an exquisite collar…

 

 

In January, was the drought over?

 

 

In February, it sure seemed so…

 

 

Can Spring be far off?

 

 

Ummm… Yes, it can be far off: Unheard of snowfall in the ‘hood.

 

 

Marching on:  Havana 1 ~ Typical street scene

 

 

Havana 2 ~ Father – Son?

 

 

Havana 3 ~ Wanna see my Mitsubishi motor?

 

 

Havana 4 ~ Dance like they’re all watching!

 

 

Carrizo Plain ~ Our visit was mudded out!

 

 

Carrizo Plain ~ A fraction of what we might have seen.

 

 

April: Spring arrives back home!

 

 

… and Edward departs telling us he’ll wait for us on the other side…

 

 

May be fickle about my motor-sicle: Here’s the new V-85.

 

 

June: Sea Ranch buck asks, “What ‘chu lookin’ at?”

 

 

Tidepool

 

Snoozin’ by the sea… Shouldn't you guys be out frolicking in the surf? (Nope!)

 

 

Rockin’ on…

 

 

Stable mates at a favored haunt ~ the Eureka Inn

 

 

This is among the reasons they call it “Adventure touring…”

 

 

July: A visit to my commute route of 40 years ago…

 

 

August: Evening in Astoria

 

 

Revisiting Hurricane Ridge ~ 35 years hence...

 

 

The Oregon Outback

 

 

Perfunctory old truck ~ Diamond, OR

 

 

In September we welcome Jethro, not sure if he’ll fill the holes in our hearts.

 

 

Local slough

 

 

October: Two roads in Oregon diverged…

 

 

One goes to Crater Lake (seen here through the bug screen)

 

 

Meanwhile, back at Sea Ranch…

 

 

Future California State Senate President Pro Tempore (and all around good guy) Mike McGuire visits the Cloverdale Democratic Club (of which I am the Vice Chair.)

 

 

In November this shot of Porterfield Creek made it into the Santa Rosa paper.  (Woo!  Hoo!)

 

 

December’s Perfunctory old truck

 

 

Alien Craft in our front yard ~ YIKES!

 

 

Jethro sez: “I’m working on filling your hearts with puppy love and you do this to me???”

 

 

Favored Art of the Year – Portrait of my late mother by my kid Merritt!

 

 

Favorite Book of the Year – Not much for best sellers because so frequently they are formulaic and disappoint.  This one surely doesn’t!  If you haven’t already read “All the Light…” move it to the top of your list.

 

 

3^rd Runner Up: Footsteps in the Snow

 

 

2^nd Runner Up: Under the Boardwalk

 

 

Shot of the Year: Evening in Astoria

 

 

What might unfold in 2024?  Can’t wait to find out!

 

© 2023

Church of the Open Road Press

THE BARN COAT

 …a retelling of an actual event…

 

The green barn coat I’m wearing I’ve had through three or four moves; far longer than anything else in the closet. I’ve swaddled infant grandkids now enrolled in college in the old thing and comforted a dying black kitty in it for his last trip to the vet. I seem to recall purchasing it at an outdoor goods store adjacent to the Arcata town square. Last time I checked, the store was no longer there. 

         I bought the coat because Dad had a barn coat: a big blue denim garment that hung on him like a blanket. He wore his while doing chores out in the orchard in the winter: hacking suckers off almond trees or knocking down the winter grass with a disk pulled by an old Ford tractor. Never laundered, it carried the odor of everything he’d ever done in it – sweat, dust, Zerk grease from lubing the tractor, rancid pipe tobacco smoke. The aromatic essence of Dad.

         My now-forty-year-old coat has a bit less history. I used to wear it while raking leaves in our suburban back yard, until I got too hot and steamy inside the thing. I’d drape it over a rhody or a rose bush and often forget it was there. Eventually we moved to a place with fewer leaves. I remember taking it camping – back when I was still comfortable sleeping on the ground – and let sweet and pungent campfire smoke wash over it. Haven’t felt like sleeping on the ground since I can’t remember when.  Generally, it now simply hangs on a hook in the mud room to be worn only when there’s the rare outdoor winter chore and the weather’s really dank.

         Made of heavy cotton canvas and lined with some sort of wool or flannel, the thread and woven practices that were employed when it was manufactured have been replaced by all manner of lighter more insularly efficient fabrics with labels from The North Face, Hi-Tek or Gerry. I was wearing one of those recycled soda pop bottle sweaters one night when, while sitting next to the fire, a log popped and a spark landed on my belly. Within seconds, the pleasant aroma of the Cohiba Robusto I’d been enjoying was overwhelmed by the chemical-rich odor of a refinery fire on my lap. I dropped the new age wrap on the ground, stomped out the ember and went inside the house to retrieve the barn coat. 

 

 

Today was one of those last-minute-before-Christmas days when I needed to make the rounds downtown to pick up stocking stuffers that would garner a laugh and then end up in the kitchen junk drawer for eternity. I parked a block or two away from the main drag and, as I exited the car, snapped the top snap of the barn coat and pulled my felt hat down tight against my forehead. Passing through the town plaza – a meager space this time of year when the holiday lights are doused and the area is cloaked in a gray fog – one of the denizens there greeted me: “Merry Christmas, man.”

         Our homeless population is fairly small and quite benign, yet on many days, I’ll simply nod – maybe not even that – rather than further engage but, on this day, I responded, “And to yours.”

         He roused a scraggly mongrel whose head had been resting on his lap, “This here’s all the mine I got.” The gent smiled a gap-toothed smile and rubbed the dog’s ears. “Had him the whole while.”

         “The whole while?”

         “Yep. Ever since the rent went up.”

         I couldn’t help but stop.

         “Damned rent went up and up, and with the drought and the pandemic, my lawn care business – cuttin’ grass, fixin’ sprinklers, takin’ out dandelions – sorta crapped out. Had me sixteen, sometimes twenty regular customers ‘fore they turned the water off.” The little dog licked at his fingers. “The wife and the boy moved in with her mom down to Stockton, but I thought I should stick by my clients if I could.” He offered a wry grin. “Didn’t work out all that well, I ‘spoze.”

         I thought about the money I was about to waste on triviata that would occupy the junk drawer. “Need anything?” I asked, reaching into my pocket.

         “Honestly, man, nothing. Just a Merry Christmas from a passer-by.”

         His request was easy to grant and – holiday spirit and all – it made me feel good.

 

I hadn’t walked fifteen steps when the door to an office building opened and a well-dressed man stepped out. Shined shoes. Creased pants. Silk, I’m thinking, tie. “Happy holidays,” I said with a wave and a smile.

         The man quickly glanced down and grunted something as he walked past.

         As it so happened, the next business up the street was the little sundry store I’d planned on visiting. It was fronted with a plate glass window. Holiday goods were displayed on the other side of the glass, but they didn’t matter. What mattered was the reflection in the window. It was of a skinny, bearded older man in faded jeans with a slouch hat pulled low across his forehead – wrapped in a weary green barn coat. All that was missing was a scrawny little mixed breed cuddling in my arms.

         I turned back toward the square, but the homeless man and his dog were gone.

© 2023

Church of the Open Road Press

JIMMY LEE

 … a new “Eden Indeed” recollection …

 

Jimmy Lee cleaned the old downtown post office in Chico before the new one was built on Vallombrosa Avenue. Dad stayed on to deliver the mail near downtown after the old building was renamed the Mid-Town Station. Jimmy stayed on to clean.

As a nine-year-old, I didn’t know Jimmy very well. I do recall once going over to his tiny house positioned in the middle of a peach orchard near Sandy Gulch; an area that has since been sub-divided. We’d visited because Jimmy wanted to share some of his home made peach brandy with Dad. The formula for the concoction was something he’d picked up from his formerly enslaved grandpa back when Jimmy was a tad in Arkansas. The sip I took tasted sweet and fiery all at the same time. Dad brought some home in Mason jars and stored it in the cellar, but I don’t think he ever drank the stuff.

 

When I’d visit the Mid-Town to join up with Dad after his routes, the clerk would stamp my hands and arms with those rubber stamps that said things like “First Class” or “Via Air Mail” and send me, tattooed, to the back room where mail was sorted and thrown and where kids weren’t supposed to go. As Dad headed out the back door rubbing my burr-cut noggin, Jimmy pushed and twisted a wide dry mop sweeping cigarette ash, paper scraps and dust from under the sorting stations and across the slick concrete floor. 

 

“Have a good evening, Mistah Delgardo,” Jimmy would holler as we left. “And you,” he said to me, “you bettah wash them ink marks off’n your arm or your Dad might just decide to mail you off somewhere and I’d nevah get to see you agin.”

 

His words made me glow, but I thought it odd: Nobody ever called Dad “Mister Delgardo.”

 

 

One Friday, after a week of wet and cold weather, I was snuck into the back room to discover Jimmy Lee absent.

 

“Where’s Mr. Lee?” I asked.

 

Dad explained. The Mid-Town was the place mail was left to be carried on the rural route up the Deer Creek Highway to Forest Ranch and points beyond. Occasionally the mountainous five-mile road to Butte Meadows and Jonesville was closed at Lomo Junction due to snow. The rural route carrier was stuck with mail he couldn’t deliver. 

One day Jimmy was talking with the guys about a pair of snow skis he’d fashioned out of some hardwood or other and used ‘em when it snowed in the Ozarks. Overhearing this, the postmaster asked Jimmy if he’d like to try his hand at delivering the mail to Butte Meadows when the road was closed. He jumped at the chance. 

 

Eventually – but only when the weather had turned cold and sloppy and snowy up the hill – the Mid-Town Station would not get swept out, because the “ask” had become an expectation, rather like a demand.  This had been one of those weeks.

 

Dad explained all this adding, “Jimmy Lee knows his place.”

 

 

My father was anything but racist. He adored Leontyne Price’s soprano. Dad sympathized with the famed baritone Paul Robeson as he left the country. He knew Satchel Page should have been in the majors and Willie Mays was worth every penny.  He applauded as Roger Mudd reported on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 being signed by the President – I remember there being tears in his eyes – and the voting rights act a year later. Dad, without Mom, attended the local Unitarian Church and often hosted that group’s pastor – a black man and his son – at our table for dinner.  

Mom was appalled. She more than once voiced, “What will the neighbors think?” 

 

She, a child of deep south Houston Texas in the 20s and 30s saw nothing wrong with referring to little black kids from the poorer side of town as “picaninnies.” She also called the bubbles that float atop a mud puddle “nigger babies.” As a kid growing up in the 60s, I somehow grew past thinking that such terminology okay. Maybe somebody once boxed my ears. At any rate, Mom didn’t know any better and Dad, when it came to maintaining a harmonious relationship on the home front, was wise enough – or timid enough – just to not say anything.  

 

 

Jimmy Lee was a genuine man. A good man. A friendly and honest man. From my nine-year-old point of view I thought him a man willing to accept any challenge – someone to look up to. The relationships among those at the Mid-Town Station were honed by upbringings from the era when the Civil War was still less than a life-time distant. People’s biases were sadly acceptable. Jimmy operated in that world. So did my father, I guess.

 

Reflecting many, many times on Dad’s off-handed “Jimmy Lee knows his place” comment, I’d like to think that had Dad grown up in the 60s, he never would have said such a thing as an adult. Dad wasn’t racist. He just didn’t know any better.

And reflecting back on Jimmy Lee, I’ve always sorta wondered if he carried a flask of his peach brandy on those snow-bound delivery trips to Butte Meadows.  You know – to keep himself warm.

 

© 2023

Church of the Open Road Press

MAKE WAY FOR THE DUCKLING

 First impressions of my ’22 V85tt Travel

 

A couple of years ago, I rashly decided I was through with long-distance multi-night touring.  Better to hop in the Subaru with my wife and the dog (now deceased) and do life’s highway that way.  Shortly thereafter, I received bad news as the result of a PSA test.  Prostate Cancer.  I knew I was gonna die.  (But, obviously, I didn’t.) Still, in that moment, I decided to take a bath on my Yamaha Super Tenere and trade it for what still strikes me as the most beautiful retro-roadster then or now on the market: a 2021 Moto Guzzi V7 Special in blue.

 

Then I found out I wasn’t gonna die of Prostate Cancer.  And I found I still yearned for a day or three of long rides punctuated by a couple of nights on the road.  So, I took another bath and purchased the V85.  Great ride.  Nice looking enough, but no V7 Special in blue.  Students of Hans Christian Andersen will ‘get’ why I’ve named the Travel model the “Duckling.”

With only fifty miles on the clock, I set off for one of those protracted who-knows-where rides.  A layer of overcast was sure to melt away, but if it didn’t, I packed layers.  Northern Sonoma County (California) is a treasure trove of great roads that wind through redwoods and vineyards, over mountain ridges and into fertile farmlands, into the state’s interior or out to the Pacific.  There are no wrong choices on a spring morning.

 

 

Heading north, I parallel US 101 on a country road through Mendocino’s Sanal Valley. Six weeks into bud break, the leaves on row upon row of vines look like a carpet of green backed by hillsides just beginning to turn golden.  River Road is a pleasant blend of curves and straights that allow me to honor the break-in rules on the new 850cc engine: avoid singular RPMs.  A bright amber banner flared atop the TFT if I over revved things, which, on this road, why would I?

 

North of Ukiah came a first choice: Head east into Lake County with its roads twisting around volcanic residue and along the shore of California’s largest natural lake, or head north and see what other choices availed themselves.  The latter choice finds me in Willits, taking a westward bent on CA 20 crossing the tracks of the California Western and heading toward Fort Bragg.

 

CA 20 is a thirty-three miles ride from hell in the back of a ’63 Ford Fairlane Ranchwagon, especially when the way-back seat faces the rear.  But on any bike I’ve ever owned, it is a pure joy. Nice pavement courses through pasturelands and into redwood forests with the occasional shaft of sunlight splitting the canopy.  Tight curves and sometimes too much traffic, but not this day.

 

 

Perhaps the best fish n chips I’ve found in my travels, I’ve found at Silver’s by the Wharf at Noyo Harbor on the south edge of Fort Bragg.  The lunch I enjoyed, I’m sure was swimming in the waters below the restaurant at about 6 AM this morning. It was that fresh.  And it always is.  The view of the water is superb and a glass of Sauv Blanc would have been nice, but I was riding and the wine would have to wait.

 

 

Now: north or south on the vaunted Pacific Coast Highway.  Again, there are no bad choices, but the little berg of Mendocino, and the headlands there by are always a treat.  Town this day was unusually packed for a Thursday before Memorial Day, so I opted to simply drive through keeping a wary eye out for tourists focusing more on the surging Pacific than some random guy on a V85tt. The pickup that backed out in front of me bore a bumper sticker that read “Look twice for Motorcycles.”  I figure he must have only looked once.

 

CA 1 is a delight that cannot be over-enjoyed.  Each time I ride it is like the first time.  The weather is always changing.  The light.  The time of day.  The smell of someone’s woodburning fireplace or the beached kelp fermenting in the ocean air.  Again, great pavement makes the process a joy and the ins and outs and ups and downs make each view of the surf or the prairie or the introductory hills of the Coast Range a marvel.  Light traffic.  Light fog.  Put on that layer.

 

The V85 shifts effortlessly, never missing a cog.  Whatever tires they put on this sample like the pavement, grip the curves, and stop with aplomb.  I’m noting that the cockpit space better fits my 33-34” inseam better than that lovely Special did.  The windscreen keeps the blast off my chest but not my Shoei.  Not sure if a modification will be in the offing.  Let’s get a few thousand on the thing before we do anything rash.

 

 

The rugged coast is a delight.  One can easily imagine the issues surround the transport of harvested redwood to markets in San Francisco Bay prior to the advent of the diesel truck.  Fishing boats bob out there just this side of the curtain of marine layer.  A great bridge crosses at Albion.  A wonderful little market rests in Elk.  There’s an ATM with my credit union’s name on it in Point Arena and I need some cash.

 

Skipping the lighthouse this time, I head south through the Sea Ranch development.  This massive subdivision, though nicely laid out, prompted enough concern that California formed a Coastal Commission to ensure fewer miles of our shoreline would be subjected to development.  About halfway through, I take the turnoff east toward Annapolis, a lovely winegrowing, formerly lumber producing hamlet tucked into the hills about seven miles from the coast. I pass through ‘town’ about the time school is getting out.

 

Venturing on, just past a circa 1922 steel bridge, Annapolis Road tees into the Stewart’s Point-Skaggs Springs route.  This road has a thousand curves and the westernmost portion can be single lane at washed out places.  Toward Healdsburg, though the road is a mecca for sports bikers with sweeping curves and some of those magical views where you see a portion of the road you’re going to be riding on the opposite ridge.  What a delight.

 

Passing the Warm Springs Dam that embargos Lake Sonoma, I am only fifteen miles from home through the scenic Dry Creek viticulture region.  

 

 

210 miles on, I’m convinced there will be more long rides and some over-nights in my future astride the Duckling.

 

© 2023

Church of the Open Road Press