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| McCovey Cove and the San Francisco Bay Sailboats. Baseball views don't get much better than this! |
After finding time for an enjoyable visit with my old Roomie
from nursing school, Helen, we headed for the San Francisco Bay area and the
Giants and the Oakland As. And our luck finally ran out. Big time!
We pulled in to a Costco for fuel for the motorhome and
couldn’t pull out (the very nice employees of Costco pushed us!) because it
wouldn’t start AND there was a trail of colored liquid coming from somewhere
under the motorhome. This is never a good sign. Nor, of course, is being unable
to start the motorhome. We do have AAAPlus or something like that and they send
a very large rig to tow us somewhere.
Where? We really had no idea nor did we care at this point as it was about 104
in the shade (40 for our Aussie friends who don’t need the conversion as they
probably know the equivalents far better than anyone). The good news in this
particular tale of woe is that this all happened about 10 miles from our
daughter’s home. Also good news for THEM, they were on vacation. Not so good
news for the Lordiers (our friends and Kathy’s in-laws) who were housesitting,
we called and asked them to come wait with us and then take Randy back to the
house. Why not drive ourselves? Pam had an appointment to get her hair cut by
Carmella and WAS NOT GOING TO CANCEL! Anyway, $2900 later (we found this out
much later) and several hotel stays in Southern California later, we got back
to Ken and Kathy’s.
That was the first problem. Second was our cabin: our
friends who were renting the cabin emailed us that there was a BIG lightning
strike near the cabin and the TV doesn’t work. Sigh.
Third, our friends watching our house called that the
refrigerator sprung a leak and water was all over the floor of our house. Sigh.
And we thought we wanted to go home!
We’ll deal with all that when we actually GET home.
Meanwhile we are very, very grateful for friends!
Before the baseball games we went to Sacramento and went to
see the soon-to-be-closed-for-renovation Sutter’s Fort.
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| This helps keep me grounded, when I think about all my modern conveniences and how, in 1847 THIS is what a modern kitchen looked like! |
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| And travel was in this, not a motorhome with satellite entertainment and air conditioning,. |
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| If you wanted clothing, you MADE your cloth! |
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| And cooked your bread (from the wheat you grew) in an oven like this. |
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| The doctor's office at Sutter's Fort. |
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| More modern kitchen appliances. |
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| Your transportation might include this and you probably had to either make it or trade for it. |
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| A grocery store meat department was this. |
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| Capt Sutter (he wasn't really a captain, he just called himself that) slept here. |
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All the ranch/fort tools were made here in the blacksmith shop. |
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| And it was protected by these. |
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| You slept here if you were important enough to have your own room. |
On to the Oakland game. Oakland Coliseum is far from the
most beautiful venue we have been in. Very far! Aside from being the archrivals
to the San Fran Giants (Aside: Never, never, NEVER say “Frisco” instead of San
Francisco; San Fran is OK but San Francisco is better and “The City” ONLY
refers to one city. The only Frisco is in Colorado.) after the archrival LA
Dodgers, their stadium sucks. Not that I’m prejudiced or anything, but walking
around the stadium after entering for a game is like walking around a really,
really old building where you expect a mugger to jump out at any time. It is
not a pretty ball park or building.
The Oakland game was a Throwback Thursday game and they were
the Kansas City Athletics playing the Kansas City Royals. That was fun and we
even dressed Cubby in the T-shirt they were giving away. At least the weather
was fabulous. But not to the Bay Area residents, they are in the midst of a
horrible drought and have to endure onerous water restrictions. When we lived
here in the 70s, the drought saying was, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s
brown, flush it down.” At that time Jerry Brown was running for governor and
that became his opponent’s slogan. It didn’t work.
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| Cubby in one of our KC Athletics' t-shirts. |
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| Oakland stadium |
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| Charlie O's mule/ |
Ah, but AT&T Park, the Giants’ home field, it so
beautiful. It helps that it is right on San Francisco Bay, specifically McCovey
Cove where the boats all hang out and the kayakers hope against hope that they
will be able to retrieve a “splash hit.” There have been only 68 in the history
of the park (about 15 years since they left “The Stick” [Candlestick], where it
got so cold that baseball fans who stayed for extra-innings games got the Croix
de Candlestick as a reward!), 35 by Barry “Steroids” Bonds and the most recent
by Brandon Belt on September 25, 2014.
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| The Gay Pride band. |
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| The original Brooklyn (Dodgers) Sym-phony Band |
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| Cubby and friend. |
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| Cubby at the restaurant. |
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| Part of AT&T Park |
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| Only a couple of more games, Cubby, and you can go home to Mom. |
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| At the entrance to the Giants' home field. |
Still homeless, we drove to the LA area for the Angels’ and
Padres’ games. We are definitely getting ready to go home. I can’t even
remember who the Angels and Padres played or who won! But I DO remember the
drive from San Diego after the game to Santa Clarita where we were staying that
night. 130 miles took about four and a half hours through late afternoon LA
traffic. How do people live and work with these horrible commutes?
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| Interesting entrance to Angels' park. There is a full size infield in the entrance plaza. That's home plate at the front right. |
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| Cubby at Angels' park. |
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| Pam enjouing the great seats! Except for the railing that obscured the view of the infield. |
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| We didn't spend ALL our time at baseball games. |
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| Cubby at his next to last game; at Petco in San Diego. |
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| The San Diego Padres' mascot. |
And so back to Sacramento for the 4th of July
holiday and to pick up our home and part with several thousand dollars.
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