The day after. A time to catch your breath from the all-out sprint of the engagement party, regroup, get back to the things that really mater. Like cleaning up the leftover guacamole someone left behind the divan (Carl, we know it was you). Or putting back together the chimes that the kids used for their dazzling George of the Jungle impressions. Or eating the last four of those six dozen croissants from a couple days ago. Things like that. Like a diver returning from the deep, one needs to decompress gradually from an A-list event so as to avoid the social bends. How's that for a simile?
By the way, most will neither notice nor care, but that title up there is a reference to the early 80's made-for-television movie of the same name...remember? Reagan was in office and nuclear winter didn't seem quite so far away. Our friendly television execs fed our cold-war fears with what was supposed to be a harrowing thriller set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where human beings reverted to their animalistic ways. Parents were warned for weeks not to let their children see this horrifying spectacle, lest they be branded as unfit to rear a daytime talk-show host. Naturally, we all tuned in to watch Jason Robards, et al, make complete asses of themselves in what felt more like black comedy than any kind of horrifying psychodrama. I think you can rent it in finer video stores, now. Check it out, if you've got a taste for kitschy thrills.
Now, lessee...where were we? If memory serves, I'm pretty sure we were wresting convoluted metaphors out of thin air, leaving them there to float as we digressed our merry way down some lengthy, ephemeral tangent that only mattered to me. Yes. That's exactly where we were. In any case, The Day After started with a bang, all four of us up and at 'em, striving to get the cabin all shipshape for turning the keys back in to the rental agency. We coalesced into a blur of dish-cleaning, food-packing, garbage-tossing action, whipping things into shape in no time. Last seen in our Newport episodes, the Bohner Precision Dishwashing Drill Team was back in action, washing and drying with an elan usually reserved for Shriners in those little parade cars. Beautiful.
By noon, we were done. Everything was packed and loaded in cars, and we headed out, back to the Bohner cabin for lunch. Still a bit exhausted after the previous day's excitement, lunch was a quiet affair of two-day old charred hot dogs, stale tortilla chips with salsa, and potato salad. Hmmm...now that I think about it, maybe it wasn't the exhaustion that made us quiet. Afterwards, Calvin and Rosalie headed back to San Francisco, leaving me and Kristanne to our devices.
Our devices, as it turned out, were twofold -- I decided to go fishing, and Kristanne decided to write thank you notes, breaking by two hours the previous world's record for Shortest Amount of Time Between Party's Conclusion and Writing of the Thank You Notes. Yup -- I'm durn proud of her. Fishing was fun. I drove up to Huntington Lake and parked at the back end of the Sierra Summit ski area, mostly dormant now for the summer months. From the back of the parking lot, I hiked up a tiny Sierra stream and fished classic dry-fly style, sneaking up on fish and casting upstream. The fish were tiny, but wild, and the scenery was unbeatable. After five hours, or so, I began to wonder about that gate at the front of the Sierra Summit ski resort I'd passed...they wouldn't lock that, would they?
Well, actually they would. And did. Huge bummer. There was no way out other than that locked gate. There was also no phone at the Bohner cabin, so I couldn't call Kristanne and tell her I was spending the night in a locked ski area. Uh-oh. I began to canvas the area, looking for a security guard, or something. After knocking on a few trailer doors, my anxiety turned out to be short-lived. I found a nice fellow named Lee who, in addition to letting me out, also gave me some fishing tips. By this time, though, it was way past dark, so I headed back to Kristanne and the Bohner cabin, both of which were in fine fettle.
Which brings us to the Extreme Shot of the Day. Now, most of you have no doubt noticed that Extreme Moments have been somewhat few and far between in the past weeks as we have no longer needed to take our internet access where we've found it. Staying with family and friends made internet access easy. We were even beginning to wonder if we might not have gone a little bit soft, unable to cut it out there in the real world. As luck would have it, a test was in our path. A test right where we least expected it -- in the house the Bohners rented for our engagement party.
The rental company told us at the get-go that this house did not feature a telephone. "It's a vacation cabin," they said. "No phone, no way." We were prepared to believe them until we saw the "cabin." It was, as we've said before, nothing short of palatial, featuring all the latest amenities, up to and including a jacuzzi bath. There had to be a phone here -- we were sure of it. We figured since they probably had no way of charging renters for any long-distance calls they might make, they just decided to take the phone out. But there still had to be jacks. And unless they were really on top of their game, those jacks had to be active.
We began to search, starting with the most obvious places first. The master bedroom. The kitchen. Behind sofas in the living room. Nothing. I was starting to get discouraged...maybe there wasn't a phone jack after all. That's when Kristanne started to, as she said later, "think like a phone jack." It was a bit disconcerting to watch as she screwed up her face to resemble an RJ-45 phone plug, but it seemed to be paying off. She was sniffing in places I'd never even thought to look. And, then...paydirt.
It was behind a picture next to the breakfast bar, a genyooine, youbetchya phone jack. In a trice, we were connected up and ready to dial out. Would there be a dial tone? Yup. Good to go. We were up and at 'em on our 1-800 dial-up line before you could say "pass the cheese log and never mind the mayo." Success is sweet!
See you tomorrow as we leave Shaver Lake and the Fresno area behind, headed west for that California Coast!
Total Miles for 8/11 = 55