23-aug-2022
Had a great ride today with Ralph and his friend Russ, the man who owns a stuffed giraffe in his living room window. ( Hey, I’m not one to kink shame, and I think giraffes are cool). We rode south to Miranda for lunch, which means we got to ride through the Avenue of the Giants! At times these giant redwoods are so close to the road that you could reach out with your hand and touch them.
This is such a great road, as it meanders through part of the Humboldt Redwoods State Park. If you haven’t seen a Redwood tree up close, you owe it to yourself to go see them. It doesn’t seem possible that trees which have withstood hundreds of years of drought, fire, earthquakes and who knows how many different political parties can be this straight, this tall, and so large in diameter, some even wider than a car.
After a great lunch in Miranda we went back to the bikes and Ralph handed me a picture to hold while he took my picture holding it.
It’s a picture he took of me back in 2001 at the same spot, with (from left to right). Emile Nossin and Patricia from The Netherlands, Rick Corwine from Minnesota and myself back when I had a forehead instead of the much taller fivehead I’m sporting now. It’s sad to see what 20 years can do to a person, and if I am still around in 20 years I should make the effort to go there again and hold a picture of the picture of me holding a picture, and take a picture.
This picture was taken September 10th, 2001 about 18 hours before the world as we know it would change and I would lose a good friend to the insanity of the next days events. Life really sucks some times. Another friend of mine, who passed this year, had made up small laminated cards in tribute to our mutual friend who was killed September 11th. I have one of those cards in my tank bag on this trip, and will think of him when I ride the Pacific Coast Highway.
While today was a great day, I’m still dealing with the lack of service on my Virgin Mobile phone while I am roaming in the US. I was stunned today when my phone rang, especially since we were on some small back road where any cell service would be questionable. I was livid when I answered it only to get asked if I wanted a deal on duct cleaning. Yup. I just paid a $12 daily roaming fee to get a spam call. It’s shit like this that makes me realize that the fall of humanity is coming. Since I was forced to pay a roaming fee to receive a spam call, I may as well enjoy it so I let the scammer go through his whole script and then when he asked me if I wanted my ducts cleaned I sad I was very interested, but not for my ‘ducts’. I asked if it was the same price to clean my geese and chickens. He kept saying “No no Sir, ducts, not ducks”. and I would reply “No no Sir, Geese, not ducks”. Then he started spelling ducts and I would say “No no Sir the proper spelling in english is D u c k s ” . I wish I spoke his language. I think I just learned some new swear words!
It’s the little things in life that bring me pleasure.