If you want adventure, wear a pink cap
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We just came back from a trip
drone
hunting and going to the California wine country
with some good ol' friends from Texas, who were in California
visiting their grandson. One problem with visiting vineyards is
that you end up tasting wines in the middle of the day, then
you have to get back into your car, when all you
really want to do is lie down in the grass under the warm sun,
amidst the buzzing bees and passing butterflies, and close
your eyes and take a nice nap. (The driver,my husband,
didn't drink, of course.)
Big Basin
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We didn't really expect to see any drones, but Whitley was
interested in looking at the light in the Big Basin area of
California, to see if the photos of drones taken there were
the work of a designer, or real snapshots. He took quite a
few images, one of which is shown here, and came away
convinced that the drone shots were almost certainly
authentic and taken in this area.
Going from place to place, we repacked several times and
during one leg of the trip, Whitley remembered his Ipod, and
even his Ipod HEADPHONES, but he neglected to pack our
underwear. I will always remember waking up to the sight of
him "toasting" my damp underpants (which I had washed out
the night before) in front of the space heater in the wall,
trying to get them dry. He looked like someone toasting
marshmallows over a camp fire.
On the way home, we drove through a desolate, dry area
that looked just like Texas and Whitley kept saying, "Isn't
this BEAUTIFUL?" There's an old saying that when it came
time to create Texas, God was tired, so instead of creating
beauty, he just made some people who liked it the other way
instead. We saw a lynx cross the road and were close enough
to see its WHISKERS. We also saw a roadrunner (another
reason the area reminded me of Texas).
The wine country is filled with lovely little towns which are
delightful to walk through. In one of them, I went into a store
and bought a pink baseball cap that says "Wild Women on
Wine." I wore it into another store, where I had spotted a tee
shirt with a big bottle of wine on it. While I was there, the
proprietor said to me, "Is that a breast cancer cap?" (breast
cancer items are always pink and generally some of the
revenue is donated to breast cancer research).
I explained to her that this was a wine cap, but I said that I
did have some pink "breast cancer solidarity" sneakers once. I
think that all women like to wear pink because we feel a
kinship with breast cancer sufferers, since we all know
someone who has had (and hopefully recovered from) this
disease.
This led her to tell me that SHE was a breast cancer survivor
herself and that she had been cancer-free for four years
now. Since after five years without a recurrence, you are
generally considered to be cured, I was very touched. I
stopped trying on tee shirts and reached my hand across the
counter and held hers for a moment.
When we plan a trip, we're always worried about where we'll
stay, what we'll eat, what we'll see, etc., but there is no way
to plan for these fleeting moments of connection with a
stranger, although they are the best reason of all for
traveling.
Related Entries:
10-Nov-2009: On NOT Going to a Movie about UFOs
20-Oct-2009: The Laughing Buddha
11-Oct-2009: The Red Coat
22-Sep-2009: Four Days
07-Sep-2009: Portents, Synchronicities (and Coincidences?)
27-Aug-2009: Two Birthdays
12-Aug-2009: Held Hostage by Hummingbirds
05-Aug-2009: The Irish Milkmen of the Dog World
27-Jul-2009: Two Surprising Events
29-Jun-2009: Trickster Coyote
