Christmas Travel (1)
Twas the day before the night before Christmas, and all through the brain were a bunch of empty rooms and few lights on. (Aaarrrggghhh! I’m even ending a sentence with a preposition.) I could blame it on being in the Southland, that grotesque, plague-like sprawl that is known loosely as Los Angeles, where the synapses originate in the brain stem, and everyone seems to think (sic) that’s just fine. Get food, drive fast, look ridiculous. It’s kind of a religion; unspoken, devoutly if pervertedly worshiped, if you can believe without thinking. Hey, sounds like a plan, to people who would lead by the nose instead of the mind.
Some looney-tune on a trans-Atlantic flight tried to light his shoes, which at this writing might contain some C-4. No telling what, if anything, might have been accomplished if he had succeeded in igniting the explosive, but seven miles above the ocean is not a place to try out such things. The man was subdued by flight attendants and passengers. For reasons unclear, he survived the flight, which he mightn’t have and few would have complained. Slow the plane down, open the door, stick him with pins, and drop him to the sharks. Looking at a Reuters picture of the man in the back of an FBI car, ya gotta wonder why they let him on the plane in the first place. He looked like your stereotypical terrorist — tall, dark ‘n angry — instead, they’re friskin’ grannies carrying fruitcakes.
The lovely Linda and I split our trip here with a stop in Yosemite Valley. We drove out from the somnolent greyish winterscape of Sacramento Valley, into a winter wonderland. You drive ‘round a bend in the Merced River and suddenly it is everywhere white. The trees, unrelieved by the wind, wear heavy mantles of snow. The meadows are untrammeled under thick white blankets, though if you looked carefully you’d find tracks of the unrepentantly ubiquitous deer.
Getting into the park required chains, or cables in our case. Linda had picked up a set before we left Redding, but it was our fondest hope that they wouldn’t be needed. The on-line road conditions said not; the sign at the entrance to the park said yup. The installation instructions had been written by some mecha-techie who went to sleep every night dreaming of the people, standing about in the cold, frozen in confusion.
Just before that bend in the river are two parking areas, on either side of the road, for people to chain up or down. (Aarrgghh, too.)I pulled in next to a parked bus, looked at the chain directions, and looked helpless. Linda suggested that I ask the obviously-knowledgeable bus driver for guidance, but I didn’t think he’d be apt to welcome my query, what with 40 passengers waiting on him in his coach. However, there was a fellow helping another fellow, and I asked if he knew how cables were attached. Yes, he admitted, with something that sounded like a sigh.
Turns out Greg was a mechanic at the garage in Yosemite Valley. He had the cables on in a few minutes, though he had to lie on the wet pavement to do it. The twenty bucks , which he protested to accept but relented when I insisted, no doubt helped. I’m sure I could have figured it all out myself, as night was falling, uh-huh. We made it into the park, and upon our departure the next morning, amidst a growing skyful of flurries, I managed to get the danged things off without getting more than a moderate amount of slush and sand on my coast. Surely, with all of our vast technology, we could figure out a better system than chains.
More on the trip tomorrow.
And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.
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