new hopes and dreams

well, it has been a long while since i’ve submitted a post to this blog and i have lots to catch up on. no promises about keeping this thing up. but, i will make an attempt to keep it a little more current.

things on the coast didn’t go so well: i hadn’t seen a paycheck since last june and living in california is bad enough when you have money let alone sans cash (yes, alexis. that was for your benefit. more on her later.).

so a few days after thanksgiving, which went uncelebrated in my carmel valley bungalow, i was packed and ready to head back across the sierra to the silver state.

unfortunately, my car decided it was going to stay where it was and died a painful death leaving me sans car (yeah, that one, too).

so, i’ve been staying in the less-than-lugubrious, albeit not overly spacious motor home at dad’s and mark’s in fallon.

at least i’m out of california!

stand by for a rare political rant. well, rare within my bog

let the illegal aliens (not to be confused with “undocumented aliens”, which is liberal for: “future voter”) have it!

let me remind you that i was born in chinatown in l.a. and spent the first 25-years of my life in los angeles county.

how did california go from being the best state in the country to what it has become?

liberals!

look at san francisco; quite possibly the most beautiful and charming city in this formerly great country!

well, it certainly would be beautiful if it weren’t for the homeless people who are sanctioned by the city to litter, panhandle and defecate in the doorways of hotels, restaurants and businesses.

there is just way too much reacting through emotions over there and not enough thinking.

but, all those poor illegals from rancho guadalacaca should have the right to come up here, bring their diseases, their (lack of) sanitation habits and their customs with them and suckle onto as many government programs as the mush-brained liberals offer them, right?

boarders; language; culture!

don’t get me wrong: there are some wonderful people to the west of the state line; there is a long list of people whom i befriended while living on the monterey peninsula, and others whom i have known for years, who are deeply embedded in my heart and soul! you know who you are you are as you read this.

i really miss my pad in carmel valley, despite the pervasive liberalism that hovers over, around and through artsy communities like “the village” and certainly there is no “village” like carmel valley village. frank, my landlord, neighbor, friend and fellow progger (well, he calls himself a progressive rocker. but, how the hell can that be when he doesn’t even own a single king crimson recording?) knows of what i speak. there are several other conservative (doesn’t necessarily mean: republican, especially in my case) friends living in california, too. but, i have withheld your names to keep you off of any subversive blacklists.

i named frank, and will keep naming frank, until he starts buying some king crimson and adrian belew recordings.

end of political statement!

so, i’m back in my second favorite state (utah being #1 on the monty wolf hit parade) and much preferring being in the des (desert) over the coast.

look: i love nature and all it has to offer. i’m not sure if there is anything man or woman can create that is as beautiful as anything nature has to offer.

(well, maybe a daughter. but, more on that later.)

i am, however, a strip-down-to-my-boots-and-grab-some-sunshine desert rat; this is the land that calls to me; this is where i feel like i am home!

the desert is my home!

word of my return to the great basin quickly made its way to both sides of the sierra and it was not long before i started getting pleading emails to begin, once again, producing geocaching-based navigational off-road rallies.

besides my friends, family and beloved desert, one of the things i missed most while i was mentally and emotionally wasting-away in california was scouting, plotting-out and creating the rallies.

since the club that i formed back in 2003 no longer had interest in producing an off-road rally, due to lack of local interest in participation (most entries come from the bay area/southbay and mid and upper san joaquin valley), taking on an event as logistically complex as the rally was something i could not casually do.

but, it wasn’t long before willy and i and rick and i were out exploring the des before various courses and improved methods of execution on my part began to become apparent to me in my over-active, never-ceasing imagination.

so, not only have i committed to producing a rally, i have committed to simplifying the rules, improving the event itself and offering two rallies per year, beginning in 2010.

“the nevada rally – v. 0.1 – beta” will take place in the deserts and mountains near fallon this october 3rd.

for the nevada rally, i have gone from the two-day format to just one day-into-night rally.

at this point in time, rick and i have one more trip to make to finalize the course. but, it looks like the first car off the line will be either noon or 1 and i hope to have the first car taking the checkered flag in the neighborhood of 10 pm. it looks like the total distance from gas station to gas station (not start to finish) will be around 220-miles +/- 5- or 9-miles.

the fall rallies will be limited to a total of 15 2-person, 3-person and/or 4-person teams and starting 2010 only teams participating in previous rallies will receive invitations allowing them to enter the fall rallies. with fewer entries, i will be able to offer more remote adventures into smaller towns like austin or tonopah, where there are fewer accommodations.

we may even see the fall invitational rallies evolve back into a two-day event with multiple venues (day one: fallon to winnemucca; day two: winnemucca to fallon).

the spring rallies will have the traditional entry limit of 40 teams from all three categories.

so, once again, rick is my co-course designer and has proven himself invaluable in the creation of the nevada rally. i believe that we now have, including the october’s course, 5 total courses that have partially, or nearly completed designs; i have around 4 others rolling around in my noggin with all the stuff that’s rolling at its own rate of speed, of which there is a bunch right now (more on that later).

also on board as an official for the first time is my sillycon valley friend, betsy, who not only participated with her husband, robert, and brother, dave (is that right, betsy?) in 2007, but wrote a very nice article on that event for sand sport magazine, has agreed to be my assistant rally director. she and robert have also volunteered to be “sweep” and will run the entire rally route after the last car leaves the line to make sure that nobody has broken-down, run out of gas or cannot figure out how to work an “ambiguous waypoint”.

so far, betsy says she doesn’t see that she has offered me, or the rally, anything of importance.

well, let me tell you, constant reader (i stole that from stephen king; always loved that phrase!): betsy has been my voice of reason throughout this project (and a couple of others on which i will enlighten you in a few paragraphs) and is, certainly, one of those people in cali that i dearly miss.

and of course my brother, mark (ivan, devil in my ear) and darryl (willybee; willy of “the adventures of monty and willy”) have been ever-flowing fonts of inspiration.

btw: i badly need volunteers to work checkpoints as timers! all you get is a free t-shirt, a meal and bunch of smile and thank you from all of the teams when they reach you point. if you’ve volunteered before, you know what i mean!

moving on

i also have two new additions to my family. well, one new addition and one re-addition.

first:

last winter, my brother’s dog, lollie, had puppies. lollie, a mixed-breed dog they found in the des a few years ago, had an illicit affair last fall with a dark lab/lab-mix of some sort.

one of her pups, the runt – a male, has adopted me as his daddy.

i had no choice in this!

he’s a cute little guy with a great personality and seems to be pretty smart. maybe not as smart as sky-dog, but still pretty sharp. he also has a very expressive face and smiles when he is happy. every morning when i exit the motor home to go into the house to get my coffee he runs full-speed with a smile across the driveway to greet me.

i wanted to name him eno, after producer and self-proclaimed non-musician, brian eno. but, the vet said: “you can’t name him anything that rhymes with ‘no’!”. so, i was thinking about miles, as in: miles davis. but, betsy suggested “cache” or “rally”.

so, i now have a growing puppy named: rally.

rally only has one problem: he’s got a birth defect that is causing some type of restriction in his digestive system which makes him vomit after he eats. the vet says, otherwise, he is in good health and is a happy dog. which means that he has to be an outside dog. but, that’s not what rally or i want. so, with the help of betsy, the vet is going to take a look at rally to see if there is anything that can be done to help him hold down his food.

the poor little guy; he doesn’t know that there is anything wrong with him. but, he knows he’s not supposed to just toss-up anywhere. sometimes it just happens. but, when he knows he’s going to have to vomit, he looks for “a place” in which to do it.

i had to go back to the coast for a couple of weeks in may and when i returned rally started “yipping” when he realized it was me getting out of the truck with mark.

i missed him, too.

but, it was something that occurred within the past few days that has changed my life forever!

you’d better sit down for this:

in 1978, my then wife stole my daughter, alexis, from me in a sadistic game that has kept the two of us isolated from each other for the last 31-years (that's the shortest i've ever told that story!).

until this week!

i got a letter via snail mail and it was from alexis!

after years of hearing tainted, one-sided stories of what a loser i am, alexis decided to find out what’s what for herself.

so, we have spent several tear- and laugh-filled hours on the phone since tuesday getting know each other all over again. well, since alexis was 11-months-old when i came home to find an empty house, except for my dirty laundry and racecar, it is her first opportunity to get to know me at all.

31-years!

but, wait… there’s more:

she’s a woman with a husband and two children of her own.

that’s right: i’m a grandfather!

how cool is that?

this is so wonderfully amazing! i cannot tell you how happy i have been since reading alexis’s letter.

now here is the bad news, not that there is really any “terrible” news in this deal: she lives near fredericksburg, virginia; not exactly like driving into reno to see her and play with the grandkids.

but, i’m trying to come up with a way to get my joyously, happy ass there this august.

talk about sensory overload: i’ll be getting to know alexis, danny (my son-in-law), cameron (my grandson) and lauren (my granddaughter. isn’t lauren just about the bitchenest name this side of alexis?!), in the heart of the birthplace of our country, an hour-an-a-half outside of our nations capitol, surrounded by civil war battlefields and the unique beauty that nature has to offer.

guess i’d better get some additional ram installed in my brain so i can absorb every wonderful second.

this changes everything!

now i’ve got to come up with a way of being bi-coastal: 31-years is far too much time to have already missed; time that neither of us will ever be able to reclaim.

it’s funny all the characteristics that alexis has picked-up from me, despite having any input from the ol’ man: attitudes; writing; thought processes; feelings and myriad other things that become apparent with each phone call.

even coincidences, like: we both love the movie “the bride of frankenstein”; we both love halloween; neither of us likes fresh or frozen green beans, only canned; we both have burn scars on the inside of our right wrists; i have loved the name lauren since before i met alexis’s mother and a bunch of other things that we discover with each conversation.

and she also has the bowles (pron: bowls) bump on her ear that my grandfather and my mother had, and my brother, sister and i have. this calls for a thorough examination of cameron’s and lauren’s ears. those poor kids are going to think i’m some crazy old man: “come over here, son, and let me take a look at your ears!”

so, now i’m feeling things that i was afraid to hope to ever feel again.

i have new hopes and aspirations!

i have a new dream!

i’ve less-than-stellar internet speeds as of late, so alexis and i have not been able to exchange for than a just a couple of pics; that should be remedied soonish.

just in case you’re wondering: i have already planted the geocaching seed. i believe that it is slowly germinating by curiosity, if nothing else.

i did do a cache-search: only 3 “real” caches (1 virtual) in a 5-mile radius of alexis’s home. but, as you get closer to fredericksburg, which is just down the road, the count climbs quite rapidly into the hundreds; thousands at 100 miles out. as you might expect: there are several hundred inside the d.c. beltway.

so, besides sharing my favorite hobby with my daughter, her husband and my grandchildren, who will love-the-shit-out-of-it (there has got to be a geocaching merit badge by now, isn’t there?), i’ll be able to add a state or two to my map of states in which i have cached.

ah… but, more than anything…

more than anything than i have ever looked forward to in my life: i can’t wait to get off that plane and hold my daughter for the first time in almost forever!

that is my new dream!