We made the 130-mile trip to the Wilderness Lakes preserve in fine fashion, notwithstanding some hefty wind. We found a site not far from the one we had earlier---near the entrance. The Wheelers are here, about 1/4 mile away in a distant site. It's good to see them again.
For quite some time, the gizmo that raises and lowers the legs of our trailer (allowing us to connect to, and disconnect from, our truck, and to level the trailer) has been subtly telling me that it was going to fail at some inconvenient time. Tuesday, it failed---just after I disconnected from the truck. As luck would have it, there was a mobile repairman visiting another hapless RVer. He wasn't able to get to us until Wednesday afternoon, whereupon he diagnosed the problem and, after determining that the necessary parts were available locally, announced that he could fix it forthwith. I gave him a check to cover the parts, and haven't seen him since (but it's now only Monday morning). I hope to hear from him soon.
Also on Wednesday, I played pickleball for the first time since we were last here. I was a bit rusty, so I quit after three games. No use embarassing myself unnecessarily. Becky went to Claremont to have lunch with Michael Sessum, one of her former asssociates at both Union Bank and Sanwa Bank.
On Thursday, we went to Disneyland and California Adventure with Steven Vivell, Honoria's son, who is a "cast member" at the park.
Because he is a cast member (which, incidentally, they call all employees) we got in for free. That's worth $200 these days. Maybe that's at least in part why we we had such a terrific time. Actually, it was a lot of fun. We hadn't been there in at least ten years, and it was fun to visit old friends like the Matterhorn and Space Mountain,
as well as some of the new stuff at both parks. Thank you, Steven, for being such a great host.
The downside of the day was driving to and from the parks. We got stuck in both morning and afternoon rush hour traffic on some of southern California's most congested freeways. The combined 124 miles to and from Anaheim took more than four hours. Very frustrating. We comforted ourselves by having dinner at a sushi bar in Menifee. Yum!
Friday was Becky's day to make the long trek to visit her favorite chiropractor, Mark Adachi, in Glendale. He's a great guy and, as usual, pronounced her hale and hearty.
After her relaxing session with him, she then faced monumental traffic returning to Menifee, and was tense and exhausted by the time she arrived---thus largely defeating the purpose of the trip. Oh, well.
On Saturday, we ventured to Carslbad to visit Bill and Patty Fister. Bill's family lived two doors away from Becky during the many years she lived in San Marino. Bill had been unable to attend the 40th class reunion last year, so Becky took him pictures of the festivities. It's amazing to me how many of the folks they both remembered. I couldn't tell you the names of more than three or four of the people I went to high school with. We had never met Patty---they've been married only 20 years. Nice lady. They treated us to a very nice brunch at the Beach House restaurant in Cardiff-By-The-Sea.
On Sunday, we made the short trip to Temecula to have lunch with Roberta Ruddy and her husband, Steve Walde. Roberta and Becky worked together at Citigroup. They recently moved to the San Diego area from New York City where they had been based for many years. We had never met Steve. Nice guy. Tall.
We had a delightful lunch at the Thornton Winery, then decided to visit some others---to give Roberta and Steve a feel for the "scene" in Temecula, which they had not previously visited. The first winery we went to was Gershon Bachus, which we had enjoyed our last time in the Temecula wine country. We never got to another winery. At this winery, the owners (Christina and Kenny) and winemaker (Joe) chat with the guests.
It turned out that Roberta and Christina grew up in the same part of Long Island, and we spent the next two hours drinking their wine and, in general, partying with them. It was great fun.
The repairman showed up Wednesday evening, and soon realized he had mis-diagnosed the problem with our front legs. He went home to find out whether he could get the correct part locally, and promised to let me know that evening whether and when he would return. I heard the next morning that he would return on Friday. He showed up when he said he would, and fixed the legs. Of course, it cost more than we had thought, but it works!!! He also cleaned our sir conditioners (for the first time in years) and solved a problem we were having with one of our slideoouts. Thank you, George. Good job.
The rest of the week was a combination of pickle ball and shopping. After playing pickle ball on Wednesday, we returned to the rig to discover that Ramsey had torn apart one of our lounge chairs. There was stuffing all over the place. I immediately went into action calling upholstery shops, quickly determining that it would be a wholly uneconomic exercise to have the chairs recovered. (The chairs have to match, of course, so both would have to be done even though only one was damaged.) Becky the seamstress immediately went into action locating some compatible material at a local Joann fabric store, and, on Thursday, patched up the chair in a way that made the damage almost invisible. Good job, Becky.
On Sunday morning, the two of us were the only people to show up to play pickle ball, so we played singles---and did rather well, I thought. When we returned to our rig, though, we discovered that Ramsey had been at it again. This time he tore into both lounge chairs.
Becky quickly did an emergency fix, but it's clear the chairs cannot be saved and we will need to replace them.
Sunday night we had dinner with Dr. Bob and Beverly Newhouse. They had just returned from a trip. We enjoyed seeing them again. Monday, we will be off to Palm Springs for a couple of weeks.
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