Tuesday dawned bright an early, or at least I assume it did as it usually does. I certainly wasn’t up in time to see it. We had to be at DK’s house early and Mikel was the only person with a car (DK and Vel had both gone home the night before) so she woke us in shifts to cart us over. I was the last person to get up, but had showered the night before so I wound up going to DK’s in the first shift. I hadn’t even taken the time to put my contacts in before we left, and wound up wearing glasses until the day we left to drive home. I’m so lazy. Mikel turned 21 on Wednesday and had already been claimed to spend time with her mother, so she just dropped us off and went home again. Vel joined us as our second driver and we managed to cram everything into the car. Barely. I had my backpack, sleeping bag, and pillow in the front seat with me. Mori and Tannen were in the backseat of Vel’s car and Mori decided to sleep most of the drive so I managed to pawn my sleeping bag off on him in the name of foot room. Vel and I listened to country tapes she had made back in high school, singing along merrily while Tannen listened to his discman and Mori tried to pretend he couldn’t hear anything. It was especially funny to hear me try to sing: the anti-inflammatory I take for my wrist periodically make me loose my voice so half the notes I’d be trying to sing simply wouldn’t come out. Dead silence. Considering my singing voice, the boys probably should have been thanking God for the mercy. The trip up was uneventful, though Tannen managed to take what I thought at the time was an incredible amount of pictures of the drive. He took pictures of flags, of freeway exits, of overpasses, and the scenery. He tried to get a picture of the Bay Bridge and Golden Gate but a truck pulled up along side of us and blocked his view. When he got off the plane Tannen confessed that he’d never refer to Perth as a city again, having flown in over LA and then San Jose. Then we drove for an hour and, while we changed towns and cities, never left the metropolis that is the Bay Area. And that was just the South Bay. Poor guy.
We spent an hour at McDonalds for lunch, I guess because we all felt cooped up in the cars and needed to stretch our legs, but I can’t imagine as sitting down for fast food helped relieve the stresses of sitting in a car.
The last stretch of the trip, along hwy 1, was my favorite. Tannen gapped at the sharp cliffs which dropped to the ocean, and the wall of fog that clung to the cliffs. Apparently in Australia, where he lives, you’re either in fog or you’re not. You’re never driving along a clear wall that you can see, swerving in and out of it as the road twists. Then we hit the road construction and tried to get Jarihn to run down and see why we’d come to a dead stop, but he refused to repeat last years adventures. Party Pooper. When they finally let us through we had to drive on the left side of the road and Tannen almost felt like he was at home. To help the illusion Vel kept her hands in her lap and steered with the bottom of the wheel while I held my hands up and pretended to drive.
We only drove past the campground once (which took us past the construction area so we had to make a U-turn and wait for permission to proceed again), and there was no ranger at the roadside booth so we just drove in and picked a nice big campsite, near the bathrooms but not too close, with space for two tents and interesting scenery. The tents went up quickly, and unpacking took not much longer, and we were just in time to make dinner. I made a point of helping to prepare every meal so I wouldn’t have to wash dishes (a plan that served me well) though I can’t for the life of me remember what I did that night, other than set up the Coleman stove. While we got things set up, DK, Jana, Vel and Mori went to buy ice for the coolers and check us in. I taught Tannen and Jarihn Phase 10 in the big tent until they returned and informed us that there had been a mistake and our reservation was at the campground on the other side of the road and we’d have to move. Apparently this little prank was Jana’s idea though DK was the one who decided to see how far they could string us along. Mori had tried to gesture to Jarihn that it was a joke and not to believe them, but Jarihn thought he was warning him not to question too closely because DK was on the verge of strangling someone, and so his attempts to ruin the joke wound up reinforcing it instead. It wasn’t until I went to take down the tent that Vel let us in on the prank, glaring at the chortling DK. I used the evil prank as an excuse to skip DK in every phase 10 game for the rest of the trip. I don’t like being made a fool of, and I really don’t see why it’s funny to laugh at someone as gullible as I am – if you know you’re going to fool me where’s the challenge?
After dinner everyone except Mori (who doesn’t like card games) played a round of Phase 10 at the table and slowly froze. Or at least Jarihn, Jana, and I did. I don’t know about those two, but I have lousy circulation and cold goes right through me. So when we finished the game and sent people off to wash dishes it made perfect sense that playing cards in the tent was suggested as an alternative. No one ever joined me though. I was so cold I couldn’t bring myself to leave the warm tent and my warmer sleeping bag, and so I just fell asleep to the sounds of them talking outside and the light of the inviting lantern. When I woke up at 4am the light was still on, even though everyone was in their sleeping bags, asleep.
Wednesday morning we slowly dragged our happy little bums out of our respective tents. I lay in my sleeping bag listening to Tannen walk around taking pictures most of the morning, as I refused to be the second person up. Finally I heard Mori rustling around so I decided I could face the morning (even though I’m sure it was close to 11 by then). The three of us were hungry and all the food was locked in Vel and DK’s cars so I stole Vel’s keys out of her purse (it turns out DK was sleeping on top of her keys so it’s just as well it didn’t try to look for them) and unloaded all of the food in search of breakfast. Luckily the breakfast claws were in Vel’s car – the rest of the breakfast foods were in DK’s.
After everyone had gotten up, got dressed, and the food was once more packed in the cars we drove back through the construction in search of a beach. We finally found one, or rather Mori did as the road down to it was on a blind turn and you couldn’t see it until you’d passed it. I radio’d ahead to Jarihn about this beach we’d just passed and DK decided we’d make a U-turn and investigate more closely. Unfortunately, Vel hadn’t been paying attention and, when she saw DK pull over onto the shoulder, she assumed we were just letting cars pass us. DK made a U-turn and Vel went just to pull back onto the road, then had to do a 3-point turn in the middle of the hwy. A car was approaching in the other direction, and he didn’t look to be stopping but Vel kept on with her 3-point turn like the road was clear. As you may know, I’m paranoid about car accidents and here’s a car zooming towards me, looking to broadside the front passenger seat – my seat. I was still loosing my voice so when I screamed I missed about 2 octaves. All I could get out was “Christin-“ in my regular tone of voice and “aaah!” in an extremely high squeak. Of course the other car realized that Vel wasn’t going to get out of the way and stopped so disaster was avoided. When we got to the parking area for the beach DK was joking that she could hear me screaming from the other car.
The beach wasn’t sandy, but instead made up of pebbles that all fell into my shoes with every step. I felt like the Dread Pirate Roberts when he finished climbing the Cliffs of Insanity ‘cause there were more rocks in my shoes than on the beach. The water looked really cold and no one had brought a swimsuit or towel so we didn’t go swimming but instead set out to inspect the little cove. Everyone else headed over to a small rivulet off to one side but I felt called by a large rock formation rising out of the “sand.” “Climb me!” it called, and I listened. “Look,” it said, “I even have an invitingly easy side to climb!” And I climbed. There was another, smaller, rock formation near the rivulet which caught Jarihn’s attention, but not for long. Soon the call of my rock lured him up to join me and soon, siren-like, it had called everyone but Vel to sit on top. Of course, once everyone was on top it didn’t seem as interesting anymore so we all climbed down again. That was when we discovered the cave. It was a tiny little sea cave carved out of the cliff and of course no one had a flashlight so we couldn’t see into it. As our official spelunker (he seemed to lead the way into every cave) Jarihn led the way inside. Mori, Jana, and I followed and we made Tannen pass his camera in after us so we could get a picture to illuminate the darkness. It was a really tiny cave though, so no one else would fit.
Returning to the daylight, such as it was with the fog held barely at bay by the sun, we engaged in different activities as caught our fancy – looking at snakes half in the water, skipping stones across the rivulet, and building towers out of rocks (you’ll never guess who did that). I stretched out on a comfy looking driftwood root system and when I looked up again everyone was gone except Jarihn. We started walking back to the cars only to meet everyone else halfway – they’d gone back to get the beach blankets and food. After our picnic lunch we played phase ten and played with the pebbles. Tannen and Mori were trying to drop pebbles down each other’s shirts, then they started throwing pebbles back and forth with Jana and I tried to slip pebbles into Jarihn’s pockets when he wasn’t looking (I’d tried piling them up on his nose when he wasn’t looking, but that quickly proved difficult). I know he knew what I was doing but I’m pretty sure I got some in that he hadn’t known about.
In the morning when we were driving out of the campgrounds in the second car we saw two girls in their early teens standing on either side of the road laughing hysterically. When we got back that evening we saw them again, on the same side of the road this time, laughing and laughing. Back at the campground, DK popped out of her car and asked if we’d seen the two girls who kept jumping out in front of their car. “Yes,” replied Mori, without missing a beat. “We ran them over.”
I started a fire (which Jarihn later took over and rebuilt ‘cause he apparently didn’t like mine) and then DK and I started dinner. We were supposed to have hotdogs and hamburgers, but DK had bought ground beef instead of pre-pressed hamburger patties so we had fun trying to create patties that were thick enough to hold together and thin enough to cook quickly on the little propane grill she’d brought. I wound up as the official patty flipper and everyone else stood around laughing at my attempts not to burn dinner. They ate everything right quickly enough though. After the food was put away again and dishes were washed we all retreated to the big tent to play some more phase ten, and that’s when Jarihn became The Evil Wizard Raoul. I had always made a point of sitting next to him after the first game because he was always nice and would help me (I was always losing by the most and he felt sorry for me), when suddenly he realized that he was in second to last and decided to let the evil side of his personality play. For the official record I do –not- like The Evil Wizard Raoul (who is ticklish, whatever he may claim). The boys decided that it was too cold in their tent and they didn’t want to leave the warm big tent so they ran back to get their sleeping bags and made us scoot over to make room for them. DK and Jana went to the payphone to wait for a phone call from Mikel that never came, and we continued playing cards into the wee hours of the night.
At this point I really should explain what a nice guy Jarihn is. Most people came to visit bringing supplies for themselves. Then there were those of us in California (namely Mikel and DK) who provided sleeping bags, towels and whatever else was needed. Jarihn came to visit and brought a lot of communal property with him. He brought a wonderful down pillow, shoes, socks, sunglasses, a discman (with cds), and lovely pj bottoms that no one else ever actually borrowed, but they looked incredibly comfy. See, when you’d wake up in the middle of the night, or morning, and need to walk to the restrooms but didn’t want to take the time or effort to put on your own shoes, Jarihn’s were always there, the perfect size (13) to slip on over your socks and shuffle off. And if someone else had already beat you to his sandals, his tennis shoes were there, big enough to slide on without untying. It was wonderful. Poor Jarihn was usually the last one up, and he’d roll out of his sleeping bag to discover he couldn’t go anywhere because both pairs of shoes were gone and DK’s size 5 tennis shoes wouldn’t fit. Everyone except Velchan and Morio (who had his own flipflops) was seen shuffling around in Jarihn’s shoes. Even Tannen stole Jarihn’s sandals at one point. Then, at night, when Jarihn went to put socks on his cold little tootsies DK took one look at them, grabbed one out of his hands, and pulled it on – they came up past her knees. If I’ve ever seen a kitty in love, that was it. At least now I know what to get her for Christmas.
Now, despite the warm tent arrangement, we still had a tiny little problem. See, we were one short in sleeping bags and so poor Jana was faced with sleeping wrapped up in the beach blankets, which didn’t look the least bit warm and fuzzy. When it was just the girls DK and Jana spread out the blankets to sleep on and then used the unzipped sleeping bag as a comforter which reportedly didn’t work so well. When the guys joined us, DK and Jana commandeered Mori’s sleeping bag so they’d have a warmer surface to sleep on and then kindly offered to let him have the very edge of the blankets, on the outside of the tent. Wasn’t that generous of them? When Mikel joined us the next day she brought two sleeping bags (yay!), decided she wasn’t interested in squeezing into the tent, and spread the one she was going to use out in the little tent. It had been so foggy and cold the night before that water condensed on the trees above us and dripped down like rain, leaving everything quite wet in the morning. Turns out that the two wettest things were Mori’s disposable camera, which he had left on the picnic table, and the small tent, which now had a puddle in it. Right where Mikel dumped her sleeping bag (boo!). So Mikel claimed a spot in the middle of the big tent and Tannen “volunteered” to sleep in the BMW with the beach blankets.
On the second full day of camping (Thursday), Mikel joined us and we set off to Fort Ross, which I had wanted to see and DK decided we’d visit when Mikel was there. DK wanted to play soccer, a quest that turned out a lot like Jarihn’s efforts to get people to play Pinochle with him. She carried the ball with us everywhere and only once got anyone to kick it around. Jarihn shuffled his deck constantly and couldn’t get people to sit still long enough for an entire game. But I digress. The fort was very forty, a fact that must have come as a complete surprise to Mori who couldn’t believe the doors and windows actually opened and shut. I had been on an overnight field trip to the fort when I was in 5th grade and had wanted to go back as a trip down memory lane. Later in San Francisco, we went to a light house I’d had lunch at one day during Science Camp – it’s funny how after 12 years I finally make it back to not one, but two places I visited in grade school. If we’d seen Angel Island and visited the California Missions I could have relived 4th grade as well.
The Fort was worth poking around in but not terribly interesting in and of itself, so we eventually found our way down to the cove bellow it. After two days of looking, while walking down the side of the cliff, I finally found some Poison Oak to show Tannen. Apparently in Australia all the animals are poisonous but none of the plants are. From the time we mentioned it, Tannen spent the entire trip avoiding plant life, and constantly asking if anyone saw any Poison Oak so that he could avoid it. I was more than half tempted to push him in so he’d realize that you just get an annoying rash and stop hyperventilating, but unfortunately it was growing halfway down the cliff and I’m not that mean. Hmmm… Maybe I should send him some leaves as a belated birthday present… *weg*
This beach was more interesting than the last, with tide pools to climb over and splash into. Unfortunately tide was coming in so most of them quickly became submerged in the tide and we couldn’t torme—ahem, play with the animals. Jarihn wasn’t going to let this stop him though, and decided to stand on top of a big rock and lean over to see the crabs living on the seaward side of the rock. Most people have the sense to watch the waves when they’re exploring and avoid getting splashed, but no, not him. Silly freak.
We slowly meandered back to the car and from thence the campsite where I once more built a fire only to have it taken over and rebuilt by Jarihn. Recognizing the futility of my efforts I joined the cooking crew and once more attempted to fry up a few buggers with markedly less success than the night before. But the guys still ate them with every indication of enjoyment and so I’m going to remember that, not the snickers and guffaws of laughter as the patties fell apart on the grill and wouldn’t flip like I told them.
While the rest of us were being productive in some way shape or form, Mori, Jana, and Tannen got into an elaborate (yet subtle) fight over possession of the chair Velchan had brought with her. Mikel had brought little campstools, which were a helpful addition, but they just weren’t as comfortable as the big chair and it quickly became a hot commodity. Tickling fights broke out, as people tried to get other people to vacate the chair. After dinner we made s’mores and then retired to the tent to play cards. Half the group tuckered out after playing Phase 10 leaving Velchan, DK, Jarihn, and I hunched quietly in one corner. After teaching us “Oh, Heck!” Jarihn tried to teach us Pinochle, but it was at least 5am by then and I don’t think anyone was particularly coherent. The night before we’d tried to figure out who had been snoring: Jana or Mori. That night we learned it was both of them, their own little chorus. Then Mori suddenly woke up, just when we started playing Oh Heck and told us it was 4:30am like that would matter to us. Then he went right back to snoring. It was awfully cute.
Because we’d kept her up so late, Velchan made us promise to let her sleep in (or else she’d get a stomach ache, a problem she’s been having for a while), and so when Mori, Mikel, Tannen, and I woke up early the next morning we decided it was in everyone’s best interests if we didn’t hang out at the campsite making noise, and went for a hike. Just outside of the camping are there was a trail marker pointing to the sea declaring it to be a 0.8mile hike (1.3km). “Wonderful,” we thought. “A nice easy trail, hang out at the shore for a while, and a nice easy walk back.” Boy were we wrong.
The trail did well enough until we’d crossed the hwy, at which point it split in twain: one fork heading straight to the ocean, the other looking more like a bike trail and running parallel with the hwy. We started down the flat, easy one for a while but it just kept following the hwy and clearly wasn’t going where we wanted. So we doubled back and decided to push straight through to the ocean. The problem was that there’d been a fire (about two years previous, judging from the new growth) and the trail quickly became hard to follow. We climbed over felled logs, pushed past baby pines, wadded through tall grass, shuddered away from spider webs, and yet the idea of turning back never came up. Finally, after all this work and effort, we broke through the trees to see…a road… winding bellow us… with cars parked… and campgrounds… Grrr. We climbed down to the tide pools (no beaches, just big rocks) and played for a while but it was awfully hot, we were all thirsty, and going home to see if everyone else was up yet sounded like a better and better offer by the minute. We walked back along the road until it became a paved parking lot with restrooms and picnic tables, and then started back along a trail… marked 0.8 miles. Fortunately for our sanity it didn’t take us back to where we had started, but rather to the entrance to the campgrounds, and we started hiking up to our campground. I swear that in the cars it was a minute drive, tops. Walking it took at least half an hour. We tried hitch hiking at one point, but the people in the truck just laughed and kept driving. We saw the same truck when we reached our campsite and the driver called out the window to us “You should have gotten a lift; you’d’ve been back by now!” Gee, thanks for pointing that out. We saw the giggly girls again, and noted a group of teenybopper girl scouts on a camping trip, and reflected with gratitude that we wouldn’t have to spend much time with them. Jarihn, DK, and Vel had finally gotten up and were just about to make lunch so we happily joined them in drinking soda and eating lunchmeat. We’d had everything needed for sandwiches but lunchmeat seemed perfectly sufficient. Then we once more piled into the tent to play Oh Heck. Mori, Mikel, and I fell asleep on our respective sides of the tent, and I’m presuming time passed in rapid succession ‘cause when I woke up it was starting to cool off and they were now playing Phase 10 again. I was on the very edge of the tent with Vel sitting next to me, playing cards, and Jarihn on her other side, talking about something I couldn’t quite make out. Mikel was on his other side, still asleep, and he sounded like he was having a conversation with someone (he’d mumble something, pause a minute as if listening to a response, then mumble again), but I couldn’t figure out who he was talking to. So I asked Vel and she said that she thought he was explaining Pinochle to her again but she couldn’t concentrate on that and her card game at the same time so she wasn’t really listening. Poor Jarihn. He quickly realized that even half asleep (I hadn’t yet managed to lift my head off the pillow or put my glasses on) I made a more likely audience than the distracted vel, and so he started passing me hands behind her back. Half asleep, and completely blind, I pointed out that this was a stupid arrangement and so Jarihn and Vel switched seats and I became his captive audience. When everyone woke up we built another fire and started dinner and watched the campgrounds around us fill up to capacity. At one point two women came up, carrying a bottle of wine, and asking if we had a bottle opener. Apparently they were here in a RV with two bottles of wine and nary a bottle opener to be seen. We found one on Vel’s Swiss Army (knock-off) Knife and they managed to get it halfway into the cork before it snapped off. Fortunately it’s a feature she doesn’t plan on using as it’s just her stable knife so no harm was done.
After dinner we once more roasted marshmallows and Tannen took some cool pictures of us around the fire. When the fire finally burned down we pilled back into the tent and went to bed early as we had to actually get up and leave the next day. By this time the word “shower” sounded magical and mystical and packing was done with a minimum of fuss. We didn’t get to Mikel’s San Francisco apartment quite as early as I’d hoped so we had to rush through our showers and get dressed quickly in order to make it to the dance lessons before the ball at Gaskell’s. Jana’s dress had somehow gotten too big in the week since she packed it so she borrowed a dress from Mikel after posing for pictures and finally those of us going to the ball were off. Tannen, Mori, Jana, and I rode the bus to the BART station and BART to within 3 blocks of the dance hall feeling extremely overdressed, but we made it. We weren’t even that late – all we’d missed were the waltz lessons, which left the polka, gallop, mazurka, zweifsomething, schottische, and the Congress of Vienna. They all took to dancing really quickly, especially Tannen who surprised me by stealing the lead when we were galloping. After lessons there was a break so that people could go eat and get dressed or whatever it is they do while we sat on the steps waiting for time to pass. Before the dance started again there was an abbreviated dance lesson and both Mori and Tannen would try to stand right next to me so that they could dance with someone who they assumed knew what she was doing. It was really rather flattering. I kept introducing them to various friends from The Plough and my guild and flitting around like a social butterfly. When the first Congress of Vienna started I asked the boys who wanted to dance with me, but they weren’t fast enough – Jana jumped forward and claimed the dance so we walked off and left Mori and Tannen gapping at each other. I introduced Jana to lots of different guys hoping they’d ask her to dance but unfortunately most of my guy friends are really good dancers and at such at a premium at these events. In the Victorian times women would wear little cards with every dance written on them so gentlemen could sign up in advance for a dance. Nowadays the guys need the cards. But one of my friends, Chris, did give her a waltz and she later told me how amazed she was – he was leading and she didn’t have time to think about where to step, it all just happened naturally. It’s a wonderful thrill, and I should know ‘cause that’s how I learned to waltz. After all of the dance lessons, and opening set dances, and then dancing with Jana, I finally got a waltz with my friend Gabe, who owed me a waltz from two months previous. We were a fourth the way around the floor when suddenly I realized that I was still trying to back-lead and fighting him for control. I apologized profusely and relaxed into the music and had a wonderful evening. The best part of the evening for me was seeing the friends I dance with who I hadn’t seen in two months and having them yell out my name happily upon seeing me and tell me how much they’d missed me, and demand to know when I’d be able to join them again on a regular basis. I spent the whole evening feeling warm and fuzzy and loved.
Laura had been supposed to join us for the lessons and the dancing but she never showed up. I talked to her after the social and she said I never gave her directions or times or anything while I swear I gave her the URL for the webpage which has all of that information, but oh well *shrugs* I guess it’s just one of those miscommunications that happen. I asked all of my friends who live in the area or who might be going through SF but couldn’t find us a ride so we got all of our stuff together half an hour early and were just about to leave when a guy (Clifford) whom Cindra and I had met at the previous Gaskell’s pointed out that it wouldn’t be far out of his way and offered to give us a ride. He is such a sweetheart. We got especially lucky on the way home as well. I found the street Mikel’s apartment is on and wasn’t really sure which direction we needed to go or how far we were from it so I picked what I thought was the right way and not three blocks later, at a stop sign, I glanced up and there was the building! I love my sense of direction. We stumbled back into the apartment just in time to see the last episode of Escaflowne, change into jammies, and put on Labyrinth which Mori had never seen before. I fell asleep during Magic Dance and can tell you no more.