When Black Friday Comes

Benson, Arizona

On Friday, I'll turn 70. I've never felt better and I'm down 53 pounds and packing my old wardrobe for donation to the homeless center in Sarasota.

When Black Friday comes
I'll stand down by the door
And catch the grey men when they
Dive from the fourteenth floor
When Black Friday comes
I'll collect everything I'm owed
And before my friends find out
I'll be on the road
-Steely Dan

We drove though the desert for days to get back to Benson and pick up the RV. It has a new windshield and the damaged rear end is bright and shiny. It was a good vacation with the typical suitcases and motels....

On my birthday I plan to have some "top shelf" margaritas, Brie with pecans and apples  and Chateaubriand  for two at the Double Eagle in Messilla, New Mexico. It's my favorite restaurant in the world. Billy the Kid ate there. At least he was tried there and sentenced to hang in Lincoln County for killing Sheriff Brady....where he made the escape that sealed his fame...

In the grocery store today i was looking (not buying) in the ice cream row when a bearded fat man with a Navy Seal baseball hat barked at me to move to one side of the isle or the other.

I told him what to do to himself and he pointed to his hat and yelled that he had spent eight years saving my ass. I told him that at least he had the hat, and that I was flying missions in Viet Nam when he was still crapping in his diapers.

He told me to kiss his ass and I replied that it looked way too much like his face....you can sense at this point that we are regressing to kindergarten taunts....

He was behind me in checkout and so I waited just outside for him to come out for about ten minutes. He had 50 pounds and 30 years on me, but my switchblade is sharp. He never came out until after I left. What a poseur.

The Largest Living Tree (on Earth)

Sequoia National Park

I've always wanted to see a Sequoia Tree. They are inconveniently located at an elevation of 7,000 feet on the east side of the Cascade Mountains in California in the middle of nowhere.

The General Sherman tree (above) has a trunk volume of 53,000 cubic feet, a diameter of 37 feet, a height of 275 feet and an age of about 2,700 years. There is a mushroom that covers 2,200 acres in Oregon so General Sherman is not the largest living thing on Earth by volume...it's just a big tree.

By volume General Sherman is the largest tree on earth. The redwoods are taller and a Bristle cone in the Great Basin is far older.

These old trees have a tendency to topple over for no particular reason other than a shallow root system.

The  CCC Boys had a sense of humor. They carved out this tree tunnel after the giant toppled in the 1930s. Mrs Phred is driving the Honda.

The Sequoia trees are short and fat compared to the redwoods. The Crannel Creek Giant (a coastal Redwood) was about 25% bigger by volume than General Sherman, but it was cut down in the 1940s to make patio furniture. Here is Mrs. Phred in front of a small Sequoia tree.....I guess we need to go see the mushroom on the next trip....

The Nixon Library

Yorba Linda, California

The Nixon Presidential Library is located next to the house where Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, California.

I have a goal of visiting all 13 of the Presidential Libraries. I think I'm still missing Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Dwight Eisenhower  and the both the Bushes.

Nixon's time was tumultuous. You had to be there and be young to understand the anger over the war.

Give love a chance?

The Watergate section and timeline is very good with lots of touch screen videos and audio tapes. I spent a lot of time there remembering how all that unfolded.

 

The original "enemies" list included Leonard Bernstein. the list of 16 grew to 700. Nixon wanted the IRS to harass his enemies.

Richard and Pat Nixon are buried here. He lived 20 years after resigning.

Here is the house where Nixon was born.

Nixon came to Eisenhower's attention due to the notoriety he gained while investigating Alger Hiss...without that the world would have been different...

San Diego, California

It's possible that San Diego has the most pleasant weather in the continental United States. The average temperature is 72 degrees due to a phenomenon called the "marine layer"...

We spent the night in Julian, California. They used to mine gold there but now they mostly bake pies and cater to tourists.

 We hit San Diego about 10 in the morning and parked at the 1,400 acre Balboa Park. It has 14 museums and the San Diego zoo.

 We had some of these at our home in Tampa, but they seem to thrive here. I think they are called "bird of paradise" flowers.

We spent two nights on the beach. The boardwalk has a lot of young "hard-bodies" skateboarding, jogging, roller-skating  and jogging...

 We see two more presidential libraries in this area. Nixon's is up n San Clemente and Reagan's is in North L. A.  Maybe we can see them both tomorrow?

 I'd also like to see the Sequoia trees and Maybe Yosemite again before we start back to Las Vegas and then Arizona.

The San Diego Art Museum was worth the visit.

 Downtown.

 Train station.

 The Star of India and Mrs. Phred.

 Mrs. Phred in Old Town San Diego.

We had lunch in the old Coronado Hotel on Coronado Beach.

Walking in to Benson

Benson, Arizona

We're staying with Jil and Tom in Benson before beginning back to Florida. I'm walking the six miles to Benson and back every morning at dawn.

I cleaned the pictures off both Iphones this morning and found at least one shot I thought was lost. This is my brother David. We are having and interesting end game. We both have seven pawns and a king.

This is a cactus on the road to Benson.

Mrs. Phred took a lot of pictures of the Grand Canyon with her phone....this is a window in the North Rim Lodge.

I hit a tree leaving our site in Show Low Arizona. My $1,000 collision deductible has disappeared due to a lack of claims over the last five years. We also have to replace the windshield due to Rock damage from Alaska...

Train tracks in Benson...

Phred on the North Rim...down 53 pounds so far...