April 27th – Newport Beach, California – Jim’s Blog #40

Ahhh! We just settled into our hotel suite in the Renaissance Hotel near the LAX airport to spend the night prior to an early departure tomorrow morning back to Puerto Vallarta. We thought it better to pre-position ourselves near the airport rather than have our daughter, Melissa, drive us up to the airport from Newport Beach in the morning traffic. It would also have rousted out our three small granddaughters a little too early in the morning to make them “happy campers” the rest of the day. We spent most of the week with our oldest daughter and her husband, Melissa and Tim, and their three daughters, Delaney (newly turned 8), Riley (an energetic 5), and Paige (a fully-on-top-of-things 3).

Delaney celebrated her birthday on the 22nd with just the family and both sets of grandparents at a Japanese restaurant of her choosing that featured cooking the meal on barbecues built into the tables – I can report that no one was burned in the process. Then the full-on birthday party was on Sunday afternoon (just completed) that featured three hours at a roller skating rink with about 20 small guests and their accompanying parents. The place was a bedlam of noise and activity, but Sheilagh and I both strapped on our skates and did a few circuits, even skating together during the couples skating. We both quit just as we were beginning to get overconfident with our resurrected abilities. It’s just when you think you’ve mastered a long ago competence that “the gods” visit you with a penalty for the sin of pride – like pitching you headlong at a wall and causing you to break something in the process. We could just imagine taking the plane out tomorrow with casts on our legs and walking with crutches.

Melissa had talked over the birthday gift situation with Delaney, and they had decided to forego personal presents in favor of having guests bring unwrapped toys that would be donated to the Orangewood Children’s Shelter in Orange County. Delaney and her guests already had plenty of toys and apparently another child had done something like that in the past; so perhaps the pendulum is swinging back away from the sort of luxurious birthday parties with chauffeured limousines that one of our daughters had been invited to many years ago. We are quite proud of Delaney and her parents for this charitable way to celebrate a birthday. The kids all had a great time skating and the roller-skating staff handled the pizza and the serving of ice cream and birthday cake in a separate section of the restaurant area devoted to that purpose. Melissa commented that it was one of the easiest birthday parties she had ever given.

I recall that in my youth roller skating rinks and bowling alleys were considered the places in town where undesirable kids used to hang out who would help turn us toward a life of drugs and crime. Sheilagh says I am showing my age when I mention stuff like this from “the old days,” but it does bring up the fact that there are cycles in everything and we are now old enough to see the extreme ends of a lot of the cycles. Now we are putting ourselves into a new life of cruising where everyone else is telling us how wonderful it used to be before there were a lot of cruisers. One of our reasons for going up into the Sea of Cortez for the summer is to get away from the fleet of sailboats among which we have been sailing for the last five months and find some of those isolated anchorages with crystal pure water where the bottom is visible to thirty feet in depth or more and the fish seem to be in a large fishbowl all around us. We’ll let you know what we find.

We also celebrated Tim’s birthday on the 26th, a low key dinner with the family and the grandparents present. After the age of 21 I don’t mention ages anymore; so Tim can be whatever age he wants to be. During the week we got to spend time with the family at their various activities, and we were amazed at how busy they all are in a given day. We were also impressed with the organization that the parents have set up to keep things organized. Each of the girls has her own room and each one lays out the clothes on the floor of her room that she intends to wear to school the next day, including shoes; so it looked as if there was a child lying face up on the floor of each room when we went in to kiss the real person goodnight. Each carries a specific thin shoulder-strap bag to and from school that contains the paperwork to be passed between teacher and parent each day. The student doesn’t need to remember to dig through a pile of homework to find the form that needs to be signed by the parent. Why didn’t we think of that?

Earlier in the LA visit we had attended the Long Beach Grand Prix with Lisa and Bob, my sister and brother-in-law, along with their children and grandchildren. They furnished the tickets and the ear plugs, and we got to watch very fast and NOISY racecars compete on some of the streets of Long Beach. Even more fascinating to me were the exhibits in the convention center, where the California Highway Patrol, LAPD, Long Beach Police, Navy, Army, and Marines (I didn’t see the Air Force there) were all manning recruiting stations – apparently targeting people who like to drive fast. Maybe the Air Force was missing because racecars are too slow for those interested in real “jet” speed.

The Marines had two chin-up bars side by side to challenge attendees to see if they were tough enough for the Marines – brilliant marketing! Having just attended a sailboat show in Oakland that week, I noticed a vast difference in the two events. At the Long Beach Grand Prix there was something for everyone, and most of the exhibits got kids interested in cars and racing, whereas the sailboat show didn’t really have much for kids, and a certain basic knowledge of sailing was presumed to pre-exist in the attendees. I was fascinated by both events, but the Long Beach Grand Prix really reflected the heartland of America for me, and I realized I was more interested in a quiet sailboat race than a noisy road race – so much for being a “true” American.

Tim and Melissa started a restaurant, called the Beach Pit Barbecue, three years ago in Costa Mesa on Tustin, just off 17th – yes, we are being flagrant supporters of their efforts by publishing this. During this visit we were able to visit their latest Beach Pit Barbecue at the Tustin Garage (historical site) in Tustin, California, which is about three to four times as large as the first one. After the Long Beach Grand Prix we showed up with my sister Lisa’s extended family of children and grandchildren, meeting up with Tim and Melissa and their children, and taking over four tables with our crowd. The place was as loud and active as the race had been – a very popular place after opening only a few weeks before. Melissa and Tim took orders for our group and ran them back to the kitchen without bothering the waiters and waitresses.

They soon came back out to report that the kitchen was backed up with orders and the computer had gone out. What was to have been a family get-together soon became a rescue operation by Tim and Melissa, who had to leave us to get things fixed. Melissa went to fix the computer system and Tim began to marshal the forces. Soon each one was popping back out with pitchers of beers and sodas, and a particular waiter and waitress began bringing orders to the table. In all the confusion we didn’t get our specific orders exactly, but all the food we got was great. And it was inspiring to see our oldest daughter and her husband wade into the confusion and bring order to it all.

Sheilagh and I could appreciate all that was going on, but I think we both longed for the peace and quiet of cruising on a sailboat by the end of the week. I can’t forget to mention that while we have been cruising, I have more or less perfected the playing of Sudoku – to the point where I don’t bother anymore with the “easy” and “medium” level games, which offer no challenge anymore. My sister, Lisa, however, reminded me that she had beaten me in a timed Sudoku at our last meeting, and she desired the opportunity to defend her “championship.” I have to explain that our previous competition involved an “easy” Sudoku game that I tackled in the normal manner that I do the complex ones. She did a great job of taking shortcuts to win hands down.

So this time I insisted on duplicating a “hard” puzzle and timing our efforts. I hate to brag (not really), but I was finished before my sister had placed a quarter of the numbers in the blank squares! We repeated the competition on another puzzle with the same results. Granted my sister is 10 years younger than I am, nevertheless she has accused me in the past of being not just over the hill, but way down the hill from her; so it was very satisfying to show that we old codgers can still compete in mental challenges. Now, if I could just remember where I put my book of Sudoku puzzles and my pencil!

One last family mention: we had the opportunity to meet with a cousin of mine and her husband, Sheila and Billy Fernandez, along with my two sisters, Linda and Lisa, and their husbands, Barry and Bob. As a couple, Sheilagh and I had last seen Sheila and Billy some 30 years ago when we and they were both stationed in Hawaii. Billy worked for the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) during his career and was transferred to a number of locations, including New Orleans and the Bahamas, before retiring first to Hawaii (too hot and muggy) and now to Oceanside – just a few miles from San Diego (where we have our retirement condo). The lunch together stretched to an enjoyable three hours as we caught up on the lives of all four couples, and now we can look forward to visiting with Sheila and Billy when we leave off cruising in favor of a more conventional retirement.

We thoroughly enjoyed the visit with our oldest daughter’s family, but we can’t imagine being that busy on a daily basis ever again, and we marvel that we used to operate at something close to the speed that all of our children are now operating. Thank goodness we can now slow down in retirement and not feel that we have some need to keep up with the younger folks. On the next blog we will be back in Puerto Vallarta and will keep you up with what we are doing to prepare for our departure north into the Sea of Cortez on or about May 7th. More later . . .