I'm not against camping although I joke about it.
Right on, jaybethel. I've nothing against camping. It's just that, unlike a bear, or the Pope, there are certain things I don't enjoy doing in the woods. I, too, have spent most of my life living near (or practically on) the ocean. Mine was just a bigger, bluer one. That is certainly living with a constant awareness of nature, isn't it? I miss it, but as soon as my youngest finishes high school (one more year) I think we'll head for big, deep waters again.
Like Gossamer, I've been on crutches and a cane for the past ten months. I was going down some stairs (to the indoor range at a local gun shop), and toward the bottom did something wrong and ended up landing on both kneecaps on the concrete floor below. No bones broken, but I managed to rupture both quad tendons, requiring double surgery on both knees, to reattach them, with incisions that started at the point of each shoulder and ended up between my big and middle toes. Big suckers, anyway. I'm a fighter, so I got my range of motion back in half the time of a man a third my age. But the 6 weeks of total immobility caused a lot of atrophy in those quads. I only use the cane, on doctor's orders, in public now - just to keep the public at bay, since I'm a bit easier to tip than a cow. In the early days of the recovery, I just felt my exertion better applied to getting into Morton's, or up the front stairs to the Saddle Peak Lodge, than to some place where I could look for a bigger rock to use as a pillow.
Speaking of the Saddle Peak, it's one of my favorite places in the world. It's an extended, expanded old cowboy bar in the Malibu Mountains. Malibu was one of the biggest, and certainly most beautiful, of the old land grant ranches in California, and the last, female descendent of the land-grant family married the ranch forman, and it became known as the Rindge Ranch. Their daughter, Rhoda Rindge, in the 1920s, had mounted, armed riders patrolling the barbed wire fences trying to keep out the "eminent domain" folks from extending the Coast Highway through her property. As usual, the lawyers got all her money, and the State got the land. All she saved was the Adohr (Rhoda spelled backward) Dairy, which is still very big today.
The Saddle Peak is a reminder of those days. It is very rustic in appearance and filled with beautifully mounted trophy heads. They serve a LOT of game dishes but prepared in unique American/Continental sauces. They have the wine list to go with the food, but I used to take some from my own collection for special dinners. There were a lot of those.
I wish some of your contributers were a bit more tolerant of California. Like everywhere else in this country, it's filled with Americans. Just because there are a higher percentage of politicians who are f---ed, has no bearing on the people who live there. Having been raised (and now living) in Western Pennsylvania - "Deerhunter" country - I'll guarantee you that there are many more gun shops, and ranges where you can shoot them, in Los Angeles than there are here in Pittsburgh. I think that many more people in LA carry concealed than they do here as well. They don't have the CC Permit that I have in my wallet right now, but just have better holsters because of that. Short magazines - no semi-autos - no assault rifles? I don't know what the California laws are now, and I'll guarantee that most of the residents don't either. The Arizona border isn't that far away, and you can buy anything there. Can & do! Boys will be boys and girls will be girls. Californians are well armed.
I'll tell you a few funny things about Arizona, but that's another letter. Meanwhile, back in the woods . . .
Later,
Bill (k39noodles)
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