SLO Time - Travel

You’ll find Las Pilitas Road in San Luis Obispo County when you get off the 101 freeway, going south, just before you head over the grade . It’s quite a ways down to the old Las Pilitas Railroad bridge. You have to drive SLO, and watch out for animals that might stray across the road.

Go ahead, park the car and, walk across. You just may find more than a view of the creek on the other side.

Take your chances in 1917. You’ve got a guide waiting, after all. What’s her story?

Click on the picture above, to get the details.

New Girl In Town:Eight Legs And Takin' Over

It's been a really spider'y summer, and I've gotten a kick out of every different eight-legged visitor I've managed to photograph. At this age I don't shriek like I used to. OK, I admit I talk to them as I pop the container on top, slide the old piece of postcard stock underneath and carry them out on a move to the garden.

I've had a lot of spider visitors in my bathroom. Maybe their running short on toothpaste.

My new girl has baffled the crew at spideridentification.org. I like to think she's special, but it may simply be that she was unhappy about being photographed and I didn't manage the kind of record that's needed to properly id her. Possibilities so far have included the thought that she's a Hacklemesh Weaver or a descendent of the Corinnidae family.

Time Travel: It helps to Picture Times Past

Basin and Range, Nevada

Standing on Mt. Lewis looking down into Crescent Valley, across to Mt Tenabo (left) and Roberts Mountain (background), I find that things haven't changed much to look at for quite some time.

How hard might it be to drift back to, oh say, 1893?

Click on the photo to better focus on the details of your destination in time and space

Los fideos versus Pasta

This story was inspired by our families experience creating homemade pasta this afternoon. One thing we learned was that none of us is likely to pursue a career in noodle making. Please click on the picture for more fun poster-style details.

The first time I met up with my daughter to study Spanish at C.P.I. in Costa Rica, we studied at the Monteverde campus and stayed in a beautiful school apartment. One afternoon, after our morning classes, we wandered along the dirt road through the cloud forest. There we stumbled upon a grocery store. Happy that we wouldn't have to walk back the other way into town for ingredients for supper, we set out to get in some Spanish language practice.

It gets dark a lot earlier in Costa Rica than in the U.S., so we ate our larger meal midday after class, in one of the local restaurants. Later we prepared a small simple supper in the evening in our apartment. So many food words are universal, or close to words we use in English that food shopping is a comfortable activity for language practice. How hard would it be to locate cereal, tomatoes and various types of frutas when so little alteration is necessary to make ourselves understood? And what could be easier to prepare than salad and a bowl of pasta with delicious local Monteverde queso shaved on top? An even bigger plus- how hard could it be to locate a package of noodles.

Donde pasta? We asked. Surely a universal word, if ever there was one!

"Pasta?" the clerk answered. Except that he followed the 'pasta' word with something we couldn't quite make out. Probably the type of noodle, we guessed. No doubt they do something unusual and cunning with the local shapes.

"Si," we answered confidently and followed him around a corner of the small store. There we were confronted by a long row of long, shiny containers.

Neither Mollie or I will every forget how to say "toothpaste" in Costa Rica.

It's "pasta dental".

"Noodles", by the way, or as we managed to learn after we stuttered, "ah, no - como spaghetti?" are "los fideos".

Dreaming of Nirvana

How good do I have to be, to be reincarnated as an orchid bloom next time around?

* * *

Please click on this picture to see more lucious details

altered photo

Cattleya, Brookside Orchids, near Stanford University on Alpine Road.

Kidhood Memories: Singing In Harmony

* * * *

When my parents took a break from laying the cement blocks for our house in Lizard Acres, they got into the front seat of our long black Ford station wagon, and set out for a good long drive through the wide-open valleys that lay around the Huachuca Mountains. Sometimes we headed for Naco Mexico, closer than a drive into town, other times a longer ride to Bisbee, Tucson, Nogales or Cochise Stronghold. And all on twenty five cent a gallon gasoline.

Sometimes it was the radio that kept us entertained, but most of the time we amused ourselves. My father kept his big silver harmonica in the glove compartment and we sang all the classic American childhood songs: Polly Wolly Doodle (Oh I went down south to see my gal), Clementine (I particularly enjoyed the verse Till I kissed her little sister, I forgot my Clementine), and I've Been Working on the Railroad (I had a clear picture of the Someone who was in the kitchen with Dinah. He was a handsome miner in jeans and a red-checked shirt, who always flirting dreadfully with Dianah, in her blue dress and a ruffled white apron, as he strummed away on his old ban-jo).

I get a big kick out of plugging my ipod into the car when I head down the driveway, on my far-from-twenty-five cent a gallon gas. But I sure wouldn't mind a short trip back to the dusty gullies around Lizard Acres when Daddy Sang Bass and Mama Sang Tenor.

Kidhood Memories

With my older sister, Trisha, at Pike's Peak Colorado 1962

Back then, it seemed like everybody in the U.S. ate biscuits

1960's Style Buttermilk Biscuits

We often eat these with our homemade Damson Plumm Private Eye Raspberry Jam

Bake 450 degrees Bake 8 – 10 minutes till tops brown

In a bowl Mix the dry stuff: 2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, ½ teaspoon baking soda,1/8 cup sugar, some cinnamon (½ teaspoon?)

Make a little well in the dry stuff pour in ¼ cup corn oil and 1 cup buttermilk (if using regular milk*, use 1 tablespoon bak. powder and no baking soda). Do not beat, just mix softly until combined.

Pam spray/oil muffin pan/ cookie sheet/pan

Additions: Raisins (Golden raisins are my favorite) or a few blueberries (mix these w/ dry stuff) or A spot of strawberry or raspberry jam in the top of each biscuits (jammy biscuits)

*or make buttermilk substitute: A tablespoon of white vinegar or lemon juice plus enough milk to make a cup, let stand 5 minutes