9. Highway One

Pacific Coast Highway

The point of the trip being not to over plan, or to over-use maps to the exclusion of sight-seeing, adventure and chaos, I just drove off into San Francisco in what I thought would be the direction of Highway 1, or, barring that, generally south. There were times when we saw, or were even briefly on Highway 1 among the confusion of entangled streets, common to an old city that has been in constant flux for a long time.

We wandered around in late rush-hour traffic for a long time, drifting generally south. It was time to fill up; I stopped at a Chevron. I thought we were in San Mateo, or maybe thought we were on San Mateo Blvd., but the receipt clearly says “John Daly Blvd., Daly City, Ca,” and Daly City makes a lot more sense in reconstructing our itinerary.

Soon we did rejoin Highway 1 again and passed through Pacifica. We had been here over ten years ago in a Sunday evening rush hour (on Viannah’s or maybe Katy’s fourth grade mission trip, I thought). I didn’t recognize anything. Maybe we were in a different place. Maybe I was too busy watching the other people on the road, people in a hurry who knew where they were going, unlike us.

There was a segment of construction then we were in mountains, then we were out on seaside cliffs again. To our right, between the road and the ocean, was some sort of old structure. It didn’t look like modern development. I hypothesized that it was a gun mount from the WWII era. I had seen such things at Pt. Bolivar in Texas. We didn’t get close enough to really tell.

Then, as often happens in near-city suburbs, without really having been far from development, we were in Half Moon Bay. There were two things we were supposed to do here. Viann’s father had been stationed here in the war (perhaps back around that gun mount somewhere?); she wanted to make sure we saw what was here now. William Kapell had died near here in a plane crash in 1953 as we had discussed earlier. I was planning to drive up into the hills east of town and see what I could find, not expecting much.

1230 Half Moon Bay Pix 3138.8

First, I drove back and forth on the highway a few times just trying to figure out where we were. Next, we found the north-end city limit sign. I made John get out for a picture; this was the proof we needed for the visit itself.

Went up 92 then 35 along the ridge to King’s Mountain – all private. Took some pictures of what was there. Went down King’s Mountain road a bit then back up and down Tunitas Creek Road (poor single lane) to Highway 1 which looks great by comparison.

Having positively identified Highway 92, we headed east up into the hills and came to the intersection with Highway 35 that appeared, from the map, to go up the ridge line north west of King’s Mountain. This had to be the place. Somewhere up here on this road called “Skyline Blvd.” had to be where the crash occurred.

At one point, I pulled over and took a movie of fog blowing over the ridgeline, God, my tourniquet playing on John’s surround-sound I-pod in the background, though John himself was asleep.

Fog on the ridgeline; that was a bit eerie.

There was a park with a hiking trail, “Purisima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve.” I got out and studied the trail and the map. No mention of any plane crashes or any pianists here. It was all about the current wildlife. I didn’t take the trail. We drove on up near what could have been the summit then, drove down the east side for a few miles, turned around, went back up, and took Tunitas Creek Road down. This was exiting Skyline Blvd. in the middle. Maybe I missed it because of that. Maybe there was nothing there to miss. I ruminated that the music community probably had better things to do with their time and resources than erect monuments to “death sites.” Airlines too.

Well, I had been there; it was around here somewhere. I’d seen what I’d come to see. That was good enough. John was asleep.

[editing note: It doesn’t take much surfing these days to find sites like

http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM7E

that give latitude and longitude to get you within a hundred meters or so of the Resolution crash site, and numerous other such places “of interest.” Studying these coordinates today on google maps

http://maps.google.com/maps?client=safari&rls=en&q=N+37°+24.310+W+122°+19.530&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=%2B37°+24'+18.60%22,+-122°+19'+31.80%22&gl=us&ei=eVyDS5TEH4iSsgOvuZy1Dw&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CAgQ8gEwAA

it is clear that we had ended up in exactly the right place and that there was only one public road that went closer to the site than did the sections of Skyline Blvd. and Tunitas Creek Road that we had traveled on, namely Star Hill Road. Clearly at some point in our journeys we were about a mile from the target and the rest would have been a hike through seriously wooded underbrush in “El Corte De Madera Creek Open Space” which is just south of “Purisma Creek Redwoods Regional Open Space” of which we were aware.

Maybe I’ll go back one of these days, but, what for? 2/22/10, cbd.]

Tunitas Creek Road was mostly single lane, much like an upscale logging road. Luckily it wasn’t busy. The only real traffic we encountered was a green forest service truck, someone (as always) who knew where he was going and what he was doing and was in more of a hurry than we were. After a few miles of tailgating, I found a turnout and let him go on. No logging trucks were seen, fortunately.

Toward the bottom of this descent, we started to see private property postings along the gates and fences, sometimes just nailed to one of the myriad trees. There would be a shack in view or a nicer house just out of view of the road, sometimes down in the ravine, sometimes above. The canopy was thinning, we were seeing more gray, and fog above the coast.

1340 3166.6 Highway 1 62F

And then we were back out on the coast highway, today’s peculiar diversion finished.

1357 Pigeon Point 63F

1413

And then we were at Pigeon Point. This was the other place that John Henry Owens had talked about from his military duty. He had been out here in the cavalry.

Pigeon Point had a lighthouse. We stopped to take a look.

The lighthouse itself was not operational, nor open to the public. In fact, one of the main displays was a discussion of how there was no money to support upkeep of this historic structure and that it would soon collapse.

There was a trail through the coastal grasses. There was an overlook of the surf in the rocks below. There was a hostel; one could stay here if there was a vacancy.

1445 3207.1 KFC somewhere – Santa Cruz

Next down the road was Santa Cruz, but I wasn’t watching the map or the signs, so didn’t really know what city this one was. We were starting to ease back towards the home routine. Going to a familiar fast food place had been unthinkable for much of the trip, but now a Kentucky Fried Chicken looked allright. We went in and had a little ordering incident. We were eating in, but they made up our order as if to go and it sat there on the counter for ten minutes or so while we watched other customers, in and to go, come and go. Finally one of the employees, noting this, straightened it out. We ate … in.

1528 continue

We were in some rare grid squares (amateur radio locating identifiers) up here, rare to me anyway. I was oblivious. We were off of the North California Atlas now too, but John had the maps, and the whole plan was obvious from here on in. We didn’t need maps. The well worn, oldest (by far) Southern California Atlas, stayed in the box with the others.

I missed a turn; we ended up driving around the mission. Took pictures out the window only. I told John about the priest who had painted the picture of all the saints (maybe the California saints, I didn’t remember) who had struck up a conversation with us in the mission bookstore and ended up giving us a copy of his painting (a $14.95 value). John didn’t remember this. “Oh, you know, the picture that hung by the front door for a long time.” He didn’t remember that either.

John’s three priorities:

Shanghai Gardens

The Bridge

No other priorities

My two:

Fairness

Getting acquainted – one on one

Since the trip was winding down, I thought it was time to talk about what it was supposed to have been. I asked John what had been his priorities, then purposefully shut up so that he could actually tell me without me interrupting with more stories or philosophy.

His three priorities were simple.

1. Eat at Shanghai Gardens, Seattle.

I was glad we had gone to the trouble to make sure that happened. I had learned there that beans and tofu could be connoisseur, and edible.

2. The Bridge.

He had wanted to ride the bikes across the Golden Gate Bridge. We had done that, more or less. If I were going to do it again I might (or might not) approach it a little differently, but I wouldn’t change what we had done this time around.

3. Have no other priorities.

Simplicity. He didn’t want a two or three week trip up and down the coast to be too complicated. Of course, this was an obscure nod to the fact that I might have extensive plans myself.

In a reversal of initiative, he asked me what mine had been.

What had been my priorities? Two seemed to stand out.

1. Fairness.

This was John’s turn. The trips with the girls had had more focus, specific goals, more of a plan. This one had been harder to treat that way. The focus had always been mostly driven by me. I was older now. John was less driven himself than the girls had been, less obstinate too. “Training” had been much the same with all three, although few of the preparatory things any of us had done together could really be called “training” in any kind of formal sense. This trip, on the other hand, was something like twice as lengthy and twice as expensive as either of the girl’s trips had been. Well, I was older now, had more time and money to spend, and this was “the boy” the one I was supposed to be mentoring more closely, although to divide up by gender like that really trivialized the relationship between any parent and child, and the mentoring I was doing was certainly not coaching or even instruction, for the most part, as we’d already seen.

But, fairness was one of my responsibilities in setting this all up. It was one reason why we weren’t on a six to eight week trip to Alaska, or on a two or three-day bike trip just a few miles from home.

2. Getting acquainted – one on one.

Although my main fault in these endeavors was to do most of the talking, I had come to realize that the value of these trips was in getting acquainted, or bonding if you like that term. No matter what we actually did, this was the point, and had been in all three cases.

It was interesting, though, to see that John actually had a direct and exact answer to this question and that the answer addressed both the trip and me as the instigator. Had he anticipated the question? Thought about it in advance? That didn’t seem John-like, but maybe I didn’t know.

There was also a third priority, “live through it,” but I decided that it could go unstated.

We got into rush hour traffic in Monterrey, and it was made worse by an accident on the other side of the road, a fairly major one but which had some slowing effect on both sides. While we waited in traffic, I mentioned to John that this was the city, I thought, where Clint Eastwood was mayor. He said, “Really?” and I told him about Eastwood getting tired of whatever was there and taking over. I didn’t really know the story. I didn’t really know that it was Monterrey, but something like that had happened somewhere along here. Maybe it was Carmel-by-the-Sea. That was next down the road.

“I only watch TV on vacation.”

The subject of all the shows we’d been watching came up. I asked John what he knew about the various ones. “Not much, I only watch TV on vacation.”

It seemed like he spent a lot of time in front of the TV at home. Probing, I found that watching movies on video didn’t count and video game playing didn’t count. Our TV antenna didn’t work well enough to make it worth watching much over the air (no cable). Maybe so, but there was still The Simpsons and King of the Hill.

Fox hunting

Another ham radio topic was transmitter or “fox” hunting. You could use the properties of radio to find the direction of a transmitter. Some hams made a sport of this (in fact, in the rest of the world it was called “RadioSport”) by having transmitter hunts. One guy would hide with his transmitter and transmit on a prearranged schedule, perhaps thirty seconds out of every three minutes. The contestants would start out from the same place and try to triangulate or otherwose find him. The first one to do so was the winner.

As a senior in college I had built up a small loop antenna for a transmitter hunt that the Heart of Texas Amateur Radio Club (Waco) was going to stage. Dad was going to come drive for me and I’d run the radio and my antenna.

Dad was delayed that day and wasn’t going to be there in time, so I asked Tommy my roommate to drive. Problem was, I was driving a ’57 Chevy and Tommy had never driven clutch.

So, with half an hour left, we went out to teach him, but I made mistakes. First, I had started him out on a hill. He just couldn’t do it there, nor could anyone have. And, since he didn’t really know how to do the radio part either, I drove and ran the radio and he rode along as an observer.

Most of the guys in the test were using beam antennas. They heard the first transmission from the “fox.” My loop didn’t have that much performance. Its directional quality was a null off the side, but not much gain edgewise. I heard nothing and so did what all good transmitter hunters do when they don’t hear the fox: I followed everybody else out of the parking lot.

Everybody else had separate drivers and operators and knew what they were doing. They sped off and had soon left us in the dust. Switching to the car antenna, I could hear the fox but not get directions. I started guessing, driving around town.

By the end of the hunt, I was close enough to hear the fox on my loop, but everyone else had gotten there and they were packing up to go home before I could arrive. Due to the generosity of the other club members, it ended up being kind of an “honorable mention” situation.

There was another case I’d read about where the fox was down a manhole with his antenna at street level under an orange traffic cone. He had a “distractor,” a guy sitting in a station wagon talking on a CB radio right by the traffic cone. That hunt had been legend, tough.

Some had made this into an industry. One of the practical applications was to be able to figure out who was jamming your repeater. I described the “dopplescant” system where you had six antennas in a circle on the roof and electronically drove them at six hundred revolutions per second. This modulated an FM signal with a tone and you could calibrate the phase of the tone and determine the direction of the fox regardless of signal level. Being on top of the car, it was like a normal antenna too. I had drooled over the possibilities for this technology for a long time. Now you could just buy a kit, but I no longer had that kind of interest in the sport.

GPS – Why “time”?

This led naturally into a discussion of GPS, the Global Positioning System. Ground stations did not talk to the satellites but only received their signals and solved for position in three dimensions and time, the fourth. John did not understand how to solve for time. I tried many verbal approaches: spheres, circles, straight lines, but without drawing a picture on paper, difficult while driving, I was unable to convince him that it could even be done.

people per foot

We were seeing a lot of city limit signs with population and elevation on them. Ever since turning south, when I’d see one I’d say, “Population 12250, Elevation 70, hmmm. That’s, er, about 180 people per foot. The measure was meaningless, that was the joke. Occasionally a small town higher up in the hills would have six or seven feet per people. That was more sensible. If everyone who lived there stood on each others’ heads from sea level, the top one would be at about town level.

Hearst Castle – “Puff Graham”

We passed the turnoff to Hearst Castle after six. I figured it was too late in the day for any exhibits to be open. I zoomed in as far as the camera would go and got a fuzzy picture of the castle from the road.

Told John the story about Billy Graham. He was a young evangelist in the 50s, staging crusades in various cities around the country, not yet famous. Then there was the first famous crusade, in Los Angeles. Legend had it that publishing magnate William Hearst, consulted for an editorial opinion on how to treat the crusade story had issued a two word directive, “Puff Graham,” meaning to give him big publicity. Whether it was being in the right place at the right time, or God working through Hearst, the rest was history. Billy Graham had become a denomination-transcending phenomena in Christianity, the chaplain to the nation, and the world.

1826 Stop for a whale 3320.8

I started noticing groups of cars parked on the side of the road, everyone staring out over the ocean. I didn’t see anything out in the ocean, like an aircraft carrier or something. This was a “follow the people on bicycles with maps” moment so I pulled over too.

They were seeing a whale, maybe one or two miles off. You could tell when the whale spouted or surfaced, people in our turnout would start yelling. I got the camera. The whale was out of range, and I mostly watched it through the viewfinder, but I did get some shots and a movie in which something that could be a whale spout could be seen.

1938 Morro Bay Motel 6 3373.5 62F $72.59

And then we arrived in Morro Bay. It was threatening to get dark. There was a Motel 6 right on the highway. I pulled in.

They were having trouble in the office. Some young employee going off duty wasn’t balancing with the cash register. There was consternation. I nearly walked out. “Jenny,” (my niece, who had had similar hotel jobs) I thought as the young woman in the back of the office kept talking about which drop had how much money in it.

1947 Room 235 3373.6

805 772 5641 #235

9, 254 0024 doesn’t work

995 4016

But we did stay, drained what seemed like ten gallons of water out of the Igloo, and brought our things up to the second floor. I called the “earthlink number” number as usual. This was the first time that the first number they gave wasn’t working. The second was. It looked like APRS was working all right again; it had just required enough local support after all.

Went to Chevron for chips and dip dinner. Walked way down the road and back first – only a Taco Bell.

KFC was one thing, but we still weren’t ready to eat at Taco Bell just yet. And, I didn’t want to drive. Taco Bell turned out to be the only place open within walking distance. Another small café with a big sign, “Real Food” was just locking up.

We walked half a mile down the street only to find nothing open. A furniture store, a small office building, something that looked like a private club, all seemed uninhabited.

The police made a traffic stop right behind us. I was afraid they’d stop us but they didn’t. Kids on skateboards rolled the other way.

We walked back towards the Taco Bell right next to a Chevron Station. Went in the station and bought chips and dip, our dinner. Didn’t get the amount. We were getting really sloppy.

John didn’t have his wallet

The Motel 6 desk had my driver’s license

Police stopped someone else on the street, fortunately.

Back at the room, there was a message on the phone. That was strange. I called the desk. Yes, it was for me: at check-in, they had not returned my driver’s license. I could come get it. John had been on the long walk without even his wallet, neither of us had any identification, should the police have stopped us.

I won Cattan! I think this is the first time. (No, second.)

We set up Settlers of Cattan. It was the last photograph of the day. I actually won. (I had also won in Weed, the first night of the trip, but that was judged mostly luck.)

Kerchunk report: found 146.800 down, no PL, listed as Cuesta Peak, no ID. “L”

443.425 up 127.3 not there, should be local.

More re-entry to normality. While John was watching TV, I got out my twelve-year-old repeater director, looked up 2-meter and 70-centimeter systems that should be in range from here, then tried to hit them with my hand-held radio from the room. One worked as advertised, the other did not. I listened for over an hour and hearing no one talking, put it all away.

2006 August 16 Wednesday Morro Bay

This is the first time I didn’t wake up at 6:30 but was awakened by cars leaving at 5:58 and John had an alarm at 8:00. Now it’s 8:38.

Throughout the trip, whether camping or in hotels, I had been regularly waking at 6:30, about the normal time at home, then, after determining where I was, going back to sleep for an hour and a half or two. This, the last day of the trip, was the first day that I didn’t do that. Perhaps it was because I had been awakened by all the noisy people leaving on motorcycles just before 6:00.

Regularity has been good. First thing nearly every morning for me. John has had trouble but is OK with these long stops, is taking care of himself. Not involving me except for gas.

I sleep well and have dreams – new ones generally – don’t remember them.

And I’d been sleeping well, generally having dreams. I never remembered the dreams, however, except that it felt like they were new, not the old flood, steep ramp, and falling dreams from years ago. The new dreams were not just about vacation, they were this whole year, or more.

Kids are different combinations of the good and bad qualities of their parents.

Brought in a belt notch.

Something about traveling upsets my eating. Not overeating as usual, my pants were starting to get loose. Maybe I could keep this up after I was home.

1006 drive to the beach

1008 3374.0 cold water – snowy plover preserve – like Santa Rosa

1030

By now John was “good” on the subject of testing the water at different latitudes (that is, didn’t need to be doing it anymore), but I wanted to check the water temperature one last time here right next to Morro Rock. It was only half a mile or so to the water and we thought of walking from the hotel and back, while we could still use the room to clean up, but at the last minute I decided we weren’t that laid back and we drove four tenths of a mile instead, parking and walking the last five hundred feet.

The dunes on both sides of the path down to the water were roped off. It was a Snowy Plover nesting preserve! This was the same as at Santa Rosa Island which, now that I thought of it, wasn’t that far south of here. In addition to having most of the island off limits due to a “family hunt” the weekend Katy and I had been there, Skunk Point, the nearest to the campground, was also off limits due to Snowy Plover nesting. Interesting. This was something that John’s trip and Katy’s had in common.

While other people in long sleeves and jackets walked around looking for shells, John and I ran right into the water. He insisted that we both get in far enough to dive in and get totally wet. He did this immediately; it took me longer.

There was a power plant, or some sort of three-stack industry, nearly on the beach behind Morro Rock. I studied both, wondering about the kayaking rules for such objects. No kayakers today. Indeed, I had seen none on this trip. Maybe the west coast was unfriendly to such sports.

1032 hotel

Another silly cop movie – Sam somebody

Back at the car we used up the rest of our drinking water washing sand off our feet. Back at the hotel we left some more sand in the comparatively warm swimming pool. No sign of administrative troubles in the adjacent office today.

Some of the housekeepers were old guys with not many teeth, more old hippies possibly. A couple of them were out smoking, shooting the breeze, noticed my JPL shirt and asked if I were a mad scientist. My reply, “Oh, not mad all the time.” They thought this was funny.

In the room some silly cop movie was playing. Sam somebody was an obsessed hero. He was chasing some guy who was wrongly accused. We didn’t know that. They had chases through cemeteries, across rooftops, inside freighter ships, running up streets with Olympic athlete prowess, all the usual action scenes. One of the team got killed in a dramatic surprise. I couldn’t really follow it. Carried some stuff out to the car.

The beds had “Motel 6” bedspreads. Too good to not photograph.