The game is afoot!

Or more accurately...Skip's Folley...Another Adventure...The Salida Project?

Whatever I choose to call it...it has started: a car project. More specifically: an old Porsche car project. Or is it "project car"? At any rate...

Recently driven from Portland, Oregon by yours truly, it is now sitting in my driveway...repleat with a shiny new drip pan under the engine. Yes, it made it the 651 miles on I-5 with only a minor glitch on the way (a dead battery, and possibly faulty generator)...easy fix.

It is a handsome pile of machinery...from 30 feet back or more (or under 6 inches as in the photo above) it's not it too bad too look at and not in too bad of shape for a 1969 Porsche 912. Many things lie ahead in the restorating process. In the meantime, it runs like a top...I will be driving it daily!

Loretta's take on this? She really is grateful that I made it back in one piece...and that the 912 is still in one piece also.

By the way, she got some new living room furniture last week.

Harvest Moon

One of the neat things about living in a rural area is harvest time.

Not only is it fall with all its special colors and nuiances, the locals take great pride in celebrating the harvest. Around here, in the northern San Joaquin Valley of California, agriculture abounds in almost every category. Around Modesto, where we live, the almond and walnut industry is huge...as is cotton, strawberries, lettuce, cabbage, corn...you name it. A little farther north, in the delta area around Stockton and Sacramento, there are immense rice paddy farms, apples, and other fruit trees.

Last night was my Rotary club's annual Harvest Moon fundraiser and dinner. We had a wine and cheese happy hour, a tri-tip, rib, and chicken barbeque, a raffle, and a dance. It is held at Vella Farms...the owner of which is a Salida Rotary club member. Their upgraded "fruit stand" is really a large building erected right next to a huge corn field, transformed into a corn maze. Hayrides are available as are thousands of pumpkins of all shapes and sizes displayed throughout the grounds. All in all, this event makes you feel as though you actually fit in here, ie, us city folk kicking back with the long-time locals...some of which from old, landowner families who have been here quite a while.

The little table we staked out for ourselves was warmly lit with a candle and decorated with several pumpkins and small gourds. I couldn't resist the impromptu shot of my wine glass in front of the orange flame backed by the pumpkins.

The night air has finally turned cool and the days are still warm up here in central California...the harvest is in full swing. So are the celebrations.

Oh yea...there are also a lot of wineries.

Cheers!

the purple berries...

As I strolled along the crushed bark-covered path paralleling the Samammish River park in Seattle, I noticed these little white berries growing just outside the fence. It is a deeply wooded section of a wonderful leash-free dog park at the facility...very surreal.

Although these berries were white, I couldn't help from being reminded of the Crosby, Stills, and Nash song called The Wooden Ships. It's a song about two people meeting each other in the forest, presumebly shortly after some sort of holocaust. "Say can I have some of your purple berries...?" "Yes, I've been eating them, for six or seven weeks now, haven't got sick once..." "Probably keep us both alive".

The song goes on..."Wooden ships on the water very free...and easy..." My take on the song was how we may not really be free until we lose everything (a holocaust). Maybe so.

Whether it be from a biblical event or manmade from one of the insidiously insane paths we are taking at this point...let's hope we can still find the berries...purple ones. And each other!

You chose which path to travel

Even with train tracks, you have a choice on which path to travel. It may not always appear so, especially with long, straight, seemingly endless stretches of track lying ahead of you. Those direction-changing elements are called 'switches', and they are there for changing directions.

You may have to wait a short while in order to find those switches. But you will come upon one sooner or later. It will always be your choice which direction you travel.

real coffee

Nothing beats a good cup of just plain real coffee. Not that Starbucks creations are not from real coffee, of course they are (I assume). But after having been in the volume restaurant business for many years, I came to learn a few things about coffee. The most disturbing of which concerned the fact that some coffee is not really coffee at all.

Many hugely busy chain restaurants use coffee products from hugely busy chain restaurant coffee suppliers (names to remain anonymous at this point). I have been told by somewhat reliable sources, that some so-called coffee "grounds" are in reality just freeze dried chunks of ground up cardboard soaked in coffee. If you are a coffee aficianado, you most likely can appreciate a good cup of real java, like the ones Jen and Roth are enjoying in the photo above at Cafe Campagne in Seattle. At home, we brew coffee (mostly Yuban) in a Cuisinart drip coffee maker. Jen and Roth have a similar machine (with an espresso maker and steamer). My mother: Folgers freeze-dried crystals. My wife, Loretta, can not drink coffee now without adding Nestle Coffemate Hazelnut creamer. It's all coffee. But, until you have had a rich, just-ground and press-brewed cup of French roast...you just ain't experienced what coffee was meant to be.

So, whether you are brewing coffee flavored chunks of cardboard, or pressing boiling spring water through expensive french roast grounds...savor the moment...we may not be able to afford coffee at all much longer!

The first Starbucks

Most everyone knows that the very first Starbucks is in Seattle. In fact, today, there is a Starbucks on almost every corner there. In fact, there is some kind of coffee joint on every corner and then some. I guess people in Seattle figure that if Starbucks can do it, so can anyone...probably ex-Starbucks employees.

That first Starbucks is located at Pike Place Market, the famous farmers/fish market where they throw the fish around. I was a little disappointed when I stood in front of Starbucks and found, number one: this raggedy group playing (more annoying than entertaining, seemingly playing the same song over and over)...and number two: a line inside too long for this impatient old fart. You see, I was hoping to get a latte at the first Starbucks...so was everyone else I suppose.

All in all, it was fun trip. A city born of the Alaskan Gold Rush and timber industry, now thriving on the tech industry and extremely over-priced seafood and coffee. The seafood I can understand. But $5.00 for a small cup of coffee (cost of coffee: $.25 at best) and foamy milk? You gotta hand it to them...and, unfortunately...we all do just that.