What's going on with Byxbee parkrun and the new Baylands Nature Preserve parkrun?

As many of you know by now, the Byxbee parkrun, for a while the only parkrun in California, has been paused. In its place, a new parkrun has started about a half mile away - the (wildly wordy) Baylands Nature Preserve parkrun. 

Why was Byxbee parkrun paused?

Byxbee parkrun ran for six years and hosted 250 events. Shortly after it held its first event, the park was told that at some point "soon," work was going to begin on the tidal gate that was crossed as part of the course. After the COVID shutdown, parkrun was told the work was imminent, so for the restart in the summer of 2021, the course was changed to avoid that tidal gate. 

This change meant the course went from a single out-and-back to a double out-and-back. Some liked the change while others were not so thrilled - having a turnaround on a gravel trail is a bit risky since slipping is common and falling on gravel is never fun, so going from having one turnaround to three turnarounds increased that risk significantly. But you got to see everyone multiple times!

And guess what - that work on the tidal gate never started.

This summer, three projects were about to start. None of them directly impacted the Byxbee course, but they all added significant challenges:

• The tidal gate project was FINALLY going to get started. While the current course was not directly impacted by the work, the workers would need to drive on the course, potentially causing issues on event day. (Spoiler alert: As I type this, this work still has not started. Heavy sigh…)
• The Palo Alto Water Treatment Plant, which is next door to Byxbee Park, started a project that took away two lanes and a LOT of parking along Embarcadero Road - the event's primary parking option. This made attending Byxbee parkrun quite challenging - parking was always a bit difficult and required a 10 minute or so walk, and this made that worse, now requiring a 15 minute or so walk.
• The Treatment Plant also started work on a flood prevention levee right next to the event's start/finish area. Again, this did not directly affect the Byxbee parkrun course, but placed a lot of loud construction equipment very close to it, closed an access trail (forcing people to either walk in the street or cross the street to use the sidewalk), and resulted in periodic partial closing of lanes on the road.

I know, this is a lot. It shows the work areas, the two Byxbee parkrun courses, and the parking for the new Baylands Nature Preserve parkrun.

All of this added together made it challenging to try to hold the event at Byxbee Park, and the park rangers, who supply the Byxbee parkrun permit, requested us to move, at least until these projects are completed.

Oh! When is that work going to be completed?

Well, that's a good question. It could be as little as six months for some of the projects (the levee and tidal gate projects are at the whims of the winter storms and tide charts) and maybe up to two years for others. Note that all of these projects are being done by outside agencies - the actual parks are not involved in the work at all, just in dealing with the fallout.

Tell me about the Baylands Nature Preserve parkrun

First, this is casually being referred to as the Baylands parkrun, since Baylands Nature Preserve parkrun is a mouthful. Calling it the BNP parkrun is a little confusing and potentially problematic with other groups using those initials, and BayNaP parkrun is just too weird.

The parking, briefing, and start/finish area.

The overall course.

There are several very good things about the Baylands parkrun, compared to the Byxbee parkrun:

• There is quite a bit of nearby parking. If you get there a bit early, VERY nearby parking. 
• It's a single out-and-back course. Even better, the turnaround is on pavement - no more slipping on gravel as you try to get that new PB.
• You still get to go along the water and see lots of water birds (and birders watching the water birds). 
• You also get to go alongside the runway of Palo Alto Airport - some will like that (kids love it) and some will hate it (it can be a bit noisy), but the weirdness of running across near the end of the runway just as a plane is taking off over your head is kind of cool. 
• There's a golf course after the airport - the event is generally done before the golfers are set loose, but it's kind of fun to pass time looking for errant golf balls laying along the side of the trail.
• By a very small amount, the course is flatter. (But, and I can't stress this enough, is technically downhill from the turnaround - just not much.)

There are also some drawbacks, compared to the Byxbee course:

• The toilet situation isn't as nice - there are two porta-potties, in two different directions, that are each a few minutes walk to get to. (If you know you need a toilet, one thing you can do is, when you first arrive, drive into Byxbee park, use the nicer toilets, then drive over to Baylands.) A bonus nice toilet is available not far from the turnaround - if you get to the halfway point and find you really need a toilet, you can go a bit past the turnaround and find one there.
• The trail is narrower than the Byxbee trails in places, and also some stretches have more tripping hazards than is ideal. You'll notice that the event goes through some trouble to get people spread out very quickly and strongly encourages you go single-file.

The event still starts at 8:00 AM, and getting there a bit early is a great idea, both to get good parking and having time to make a toilet run if needed (although even the "bad" parking is better than the good parking at Byxbee parkrun).

Now that there have been two events on the new course (as I'm writing this), the process is becoming a bit more routine with few tweaks. Feedback has been mostly positive with many preferring this course. 

An open question is what sort of impacts winter storms might have on the event - this area is a bit more prone to flooding durning king tides, especially if they coincide with a big winter storm, than Byxbee Park is. That's an issue to be faced later though. 

In the end, all agree that this new event and course is way better than the other option, which was to not have an event in the area at all.

That's it - move along…

PS: If you've never done it, take the time to wander out on that boardwalk that extends from the Lucy Evans building. It's always accessible, even when the building is closed, and it's fun, in that special way of boardwalks! 

PPS: Over by what I labeled as "Parking 4," there's a boat dock! So yes - this event is accessible by boat! (I think this is officially called the Sail Dock - there's a pier that you use to walk down to the dock. People carry kayaks and such down there. Boating to a parkrun event has got to be pretty epic!)

Attending a Jeopardy! taping, take six

To help celebrate the 44th anniversary of our first date (of course that's a thing!), Mrs Notthat and I headed back down to Culver City (motto: "What is not LA") to attend a Jeopardy taping day. As we did last time, we signed up for the morning session, which covers three shows and lasts until about 2 PM, then once we were escorted back to the parking garage, we got back in line to see if there were seats available for the afternoon session (two shows) - and there was! (When you sign up for tickets, they really don't want you to sign up for both of a day's sessions.)

So we ended up seeing a week's worth of shows taped in one day. It's a long day - the actual show taping goes fast, but you spend a lot of time before and after the shows just waiting. (The morning session has bonus waiting since the players are getting to practice on the stage and the audience isn't allowed in until that's over.)

I don't know why I thought this would be a great shot - I was just killing time while waiting to be let into the studio.

The shows themselves went great, as usual. It's always remarkable to see how polished the team is that puts these shows on, and how quick and smart Ken is as he banters and drives everything. 

At the end of each session, before we're escorted back to the parking garage, they do a raffle drawing (actually, two drawings). Each audience member gets a raffle ticket with a number on it. We've attended six sessions and never really come close to getting drawn (there are maybe 100 or so people with tickets). During the morning session, after the second show, the couple behind us had to leave, so they gave their tickets to Mrs Notthat. She now had four tickets to play with.

And wouldn't you know it - one of the four tickets hit! The odd thing was that she wasn't sure whether it was one of her tickets or one that the couple had given her. 

The prize was a home edition of Jeopardy, but what people seemed to really want was the bag!

As we were leaving, a couple that had been behind us in the check in line mentioned how close they had come to winning - their tickets were the ones right after ours, so the winning ticket was one of our legitimate ones and not the bonus ones from the people left early. (BTW, I had no idea leaving early was an option - I really don't know how that would work since they won't let you just randomly wander around the buildings.)

That was pretty cool, other than Mrs Notthat having to carry that bag all the way back to the parking garage, get it through security, hang on to it through the second session (we did not take any tickets for the afternoon session), and answer many questions about where she got that bag!

Cooler though, was when the second ticket was drawn - it went to the woman sitting directly in front of her!

So here is a hack showing basically how the seating works (the number of seats is not correct, but is good enough for my purposes).

You should be able to tap/click to see this bigger. The yellow seats with D and A are where we sat. The ? was the person who won the second drawing.

As I've mentioned before, as a general audience member, where you sit is completely controlled by the audience security team. Generally, if you are on the left side, you won't end up on TV in that opening swoop shot, but you will be around families and friends of the contestants, and sometimes will get to see/talk with those that lose an early game. (You can also often see them between games in the gallery area behind all the seating - it's a little wild seeing someone who just lost, standing around talking to their family.) If you are near the center or on the right side, you will likely get TV time. 

We've been seated in a lot of different areas - it really just depends on how many guests there are and the whims of the security people. (I used to think they would take how you were dressed into account, but I no longer believe that.)

Imagine our surprise when we came back for the second session and ended up in the same seats we had for the first one! (Small odd note, the guy sitting next to us said he thought I looked like Phil Jackson, super successful coach of the Bulls and Lakers. Weirdly, I've heard that before, but he's 12 years older and eight inches taller, so I have trouble seeing that. Mrs Notthat found him a bit annoying since he was pretty chatty, especially about sports.)

It's uncanny. Even Mrs Notthat can't tell the difference.

And now comes the coolest/weirdest of all; when they did the raffle drawing for the afternoon session, the first number drawn went to the woman sitting in the seat in front of Mrs Notthat! Again! 

And that's about it. The shows we watched should air the week of October 20th, during which time Mrs Notthat will be visiting the UK, so we won't get to watch them until she gets back, which is OK (I may take a peek or two just to see if we are recognizable in the opening swoop shot though). 

Ken always says just before he leaves a session that you shouldn't let people know that you were at the taping of the episode that's currently airing, and you'll seem like a genius since you'll know most of the questions. The trouble is, by then there's no way I'll remember much at all from the taping - I'll maybe recognize some of the players and one or two questions, but mostly it'll be like watching them for the first time. 

October is the taping of a bunch of Celebrity Jeopardy episodes. Sadly, we won't be able to go down to see any of that, but it's a style we have yet to see live. It's funny how many poo-poo Celebrity Jeopardy since the questions are easier and the celebrities are often people you've never heard of, but I think it would be fun to see live. (As I type this, I only see tickets available for one CJ taping though.) Here is the link if you want to see the taping schedule and possibly head down yourself.

That's it - move along…

Glamping at Pinnacles Campground

We thought it would be fun to take a quick, two-night trip to Pinnacles National Park with hopes of seeing some of the Perseids meteor shower in their dark, definitely not marine-layer infested skies.

Pinnacles National Park is a bit quirky - you can get to it from the west or the east, but there is no way other than a lot of hiking to get from those two entrances. And if you want to stay overnight there, you need to go to the east entrance where there is the Pinnacles Campground.

The campground has the normal options of tent and RV spaces (with full hookups), plus they also have several tent cabins - some with electricity (four) and most without (six).

We chose a tent cabin with electricity, which had the added bonus of being closer to the store and pool (but was further from the toilets than the non-electric cabins). 

Ours was the one second from the left in this shot.

Each cabin had two twin beds and one queen bed. They were surprisingly roomy and nice looking on the inside, with actual sliding windows on three sides and a locking front door that also had a sliding window.

If those mattresses don't look comfy, you are wrong. They were very uncomfy. But a lot better than sleeping on the ground.

Each cabin came with two chairs that you could use to sit on the "deck," as well as a bench.

The cabins with electricity also came with a large standing circular fan, a small lamp, and a bit surprisingly, an electric heater.

We had a good laugh about having a heater when we got there, as it was probably 100º in the cabin. We stopped laughing later though…

The front of the cabin with its "deck" sort of thing.

The cabin was actually pretty comfortable, and we were able to spread our stuff out nicely. It would creak a bit when the wind picked up, but that only happened during the day. There was a picnic table in back, along with a fire ring that we were not allowed to use, and a box to put your food into if you don't want to put it into your car (we left ours in the car - food was not allowed in the cabins, and there were many voracious critters that would barely let that canvas slow them down if they thought there was a bag of chips on the other side). 

The fire ring we were not allowed to use due to the extreme fire danger. Sadly, we had not known that and had brought some firewood for roasting s'mores. Granted, the idea of having a fire while it's 90º out was challenging to imagine. Well, except for s'mores!

The box to store your food if you don't want to keep it in your car. There are likely no bears to worry about, but there are MANY aggressive raccoons.

Our superpower was this portable toilet. It would have been very challenging to get up and hike several hundred yards to the nearest toilet during the night, especially while listening to coyotes howling, raccoons looking for chips, and bobcats looking for raccoons. And being old, we would have had to do that two or three times a night. 

We've had this for many years, and never has it earned it's keep more than on this trip!

"Chips? Did you say something about chips?" There were a lot of deer around that were not very shy.

Diane on the "deck" in the cool(ish) evening air.

There is wifi, but you only get 30 minutes of it per day per device for free. We did get a reasonable cell signal though, so we were able to search for things like "do deer like chips" and "why is it so dang hot."

We decided that we'd go to bed at a decent hour and wake up early to look at the meteor shower. When we got up at around 5 AM, it was to find that the nearly full moon was bright enough to read by, and it was completely washing out any meteorites that might be wandering into the atmosphere. But we did get a very nice view of Venus and Jupiter hanging out together.

Venus and Jupiter. Venus is FAR closer to Earth, but Jupiter, for science reasons, appears bigger and brighter.

The other thing that happened that night was that we found out why there was an electric heater in the cabin. 

During the day, the temperatures got into the mid- to upper-90s. If you were in the sun, you could hear your skin sizzling. When the wind came up a bit, it was like a somebody was pointing a blowtorch at you. We threatened to try a hike, but man, it was really hot.

In the evening, after the sun had set and things started to cool down a bit, it was quite pleasant. Before long though, you were grabbing your jacket (and being very thankful you even thought to bring one). 

For the cabins, you have to bring your own bedding and pillows. We figured we wouldn't possibly need any kind of a real blanket (looking at the forecast for the park showed that it would get down to the mid-60s at night, which is not that cold), so we only had a light cover, and we left all the windows open.

It ended up getting down to the mid-50s at night, which turns out to be pretty cold, especially when it was probably in the mid-70s when you climbed into bed. So we got up, closed the windows, put on some clothes, used our huge, thick beach towel as a bonus blanket, and plugged in that heater to get through that night. 

This isn't really a desert area, but the temperature swings sure acted like it was. (A family moved into the cabin next to ours on the second night, and Diane warned them that it was going to get cold and to have the heater ready. We could hear them later having a good laugh about that crazy lady and the heater. The next morning, the mother thanked us for the warning - they had indeed used the heater after all!)

A herd (flock? brilliance?) of quail looking for who knows what to eat.

Diane got this close up shot of a quail, showing its curving topknot. "A covey of quail is what we are called you doofus." 

One very fun thing this park has is a pool. After getting up early and watching the temps climb ridiculously high, we decided to try to chill by the pool. Everyone that was staying in the cabins around us and the nearby tent site had all left. The campground was pretty empty when we wandered over to the pool.

The pool is wonderful. Until later in the afternoon though, it has no shade other than the few patio umbrellas scattered around. Fortunately, since there was almost nobody else there, we snagged umbrellas and deck chairs. (Bring your own chair and shade if it's busy at all, or just stay in the pool!)

Me in the pool, wearing a large floppy hat that did not hold its shape well when it got wet. I stayed in that pool for a long time.

It took a bit, but even Diane went into the pool.

After a bit, new people started checking in and the pool gradually got busier. Also, the wind started blowing, which wasn't all that fun (unless blowtorches are your thing).

Back at the tent cabin, this squirrel had heard the deer talking about chips, so he was a bit annoyed to not see any around.

For dinner, we had brought some leftover stir fry that I heated up on our camp stove. We also decided to try making s'mores on the camp stove, but the chocolate bars were completely melted, so these turned out to be pretty non-traditional (but still tasty) s'mores.

This bunny wanted to try the s'mores.

"NONE SHALL PASS!" Look closely at that brown thing on the trail near the bottom of the picture.

On Tuesday morning, we packed up and headed to the Bear Gulch Caves area, hoping to get a small hike in before it got too hot out. We came up to this slot canyon sort of thing, and there was a couple standing there looking a bit puzzled. We then saw why.

It was not interested in chips at all.

He was not being aggressive, but wasn't going to move, no matter how nicely we asked. We actually thought maybe he was dead, but he kept flicking his tongue out. We stood there for a minute or two, noticed that it was only getting hotter, and decided the rattlesnake was telling us we had hiked far enough, so we headed back to the car.

And that's about it! The moon pretty much doomed our meteor shower hopes (well that and us not really wanting to be up at 3 AM), but we got to see Venus and Jupiter frolicking a bit together and lots of wildlife. (Weirdly, we never saw a raccoon, but we got to hear lots of yelling at them by the people around us at dusk.) 

We now know that next time we should try to bring a thick mattress pad and heavier blankets. We had an electric kettle that we used to heat water up in the morning, and that was great (not sure if it violated the "no cooking in the cabins" rule though). We also thought to bring a couple power strips which helped a lot as we both had lots of things to charge.

The campground store was pretty good - in retrospect, as long as you don't have gourmet ambitions (I could live on frozen burritos), you could get by without cooking at all between their sandwiches and frozen things you can heat up in their microwave.

The daytime heat is pretty oppressive, and the pool is the only real way to escape it. Our timing was pretty good with their not being many people here, but I suspect in the summer, that pool get totally overrun with kids.

The tent cabins are not even vaguely soundproof - you could hear normal conversations being held several sites away. (And people unlocking their car to drive to the toilet.) Amazingly though, things really did quiet down around 9:30 to 10:00. 

All in all it was a fun, quick get away that's not too far, but far enough to feel like you've gone somewhere. The trails in the park are very cool, well, when it's not so hot out. I'm sure spring or fall are much more pleasant times to be there and take in what the park has to offer.

But don't leave your chips unguarded.

That's it - move along…

Best mom ever*

 *Note that there are MANY best moms ever - it's a massive tie.

My mom, Firma Lucas neé Boxler, was an extraordinary woman. She was always bustling with energy and pretty much always had to be doing something. I suspect she made more than one quilt in her sleep.

She was born in 1936, in Garden City, Kansas, on the exact same day as Robert Redford! 

Twins separated at birth? The internets don't seem to think so.

She was raised on a farm with three brothers, which likely had a lot to do with how resourceful, tough, and determined she could be. 

Mom with her parents and three brothers in 1970 or so. She was the second-born child.

Second-born children can be a bit goofy.

One interesting thing about growing up on a farm was that it gave her a life-long love of chicken wings. The farm hands would all get the best parts of the chicken for dinner, and she would get the wings. (And feet, but I'm not going there.) 

For the rest of her life, her favorite part of a chicken were the wings. Heaven help a restaurant if they had chicken wings on the menu but actually served "boneless" chicken wings - she was generally easy going, but this would potentially require police involvement.

In 1955 or so, she met my dad, Gary Lucas, also from Garden City, and in 1956, they got married. (You can read about dad here.)

Mom and dad bravely cutting the cake.

In 1957, I was born, the first of their four kids.

Mom's first words to me; "don't even think of touching my chicken wings!" My first words to her; "Robert Redford would let me have his chicken wings!"

In short order, my brother and sisters were born.

From 1970. The part of the picture showing my brother and my pants has been cropped off to spare you the 70s. You're welcome.

Fun thing (well, maybe not for mom) was that Liz and Lance, the middle kids, were born in the same calendar year (Liz in January and Lance in December), which might explain why a (relatively) large amount of time (16 months) went by before the youngest, Bonnie was born.

When you picture growing up in a small town in Southwestern Kansas like Garden City, you likely think of acres of flat land, lots of cows, much wind, and tornados.

And you would be correct. We had all of that. But mom and dad still managed to make it a fun and interesting place to grow up. 

For one thing, there were a number of lakes and reservoirs where we spent a lot of time camping and fishing.

OK, maybe the weather could be a bit challenging at times, but we were still out camping and fishing!

That's more like it.

And sometimes, we would catch a LOT of fish!

Camping involved a Starcraft tent trailer - all six of us could sleep in this thing!

Mom probably cooking chicken wings on the grill. 

Mom and dad both became Scout leaders. Slightly oddly, there were a few times that Lance and I would go along on Girl Scout camping trips ("just stay out of the way and don't get eaten by a bear" we would be told - we would then spend hours looking for bears to torment). It was worth it to get to sample the wares during Girl Scout cookie drives though. 

Once us kids were old enough to be trusted to be on our own for a few minutes, including walking back and forth to school (wow - I just checked and that was 1.3 miles each way, but not uphill both ways since, well, this was Kansas), mom needed something more to occupy her time. So her and dad bought the Wrens Camera and Gift Store, and she ran that. (Dad and a buddy had bought the Garden City Ice Company several years earlier.)

And to make things just a bit more interesting, she started singing four-part-harmony in a quartet called The Prairie Pipers, part of Sweet Adelines - an a cappella (Italian for "all our instruments are broken") barbershop singing organization for women. This actually had an influence on my musical tastes, since it made me appreciate and love listening to songs with harmonies. Granted, we're talking The Beatles, The Hollies, and Herman's Hermits, and not the hardcore a cappella stuff like "Hello My Baby," but still, harmonies!

After a while, our camping adventures grew to include trips to Colorado, and eventually we found a place called Fun Valley in South Fork, Colorado. We loved this place. There was so much to do, between the fishing (naturally), tubing, miniature golf - all it was missing was a roller coaster. 

Nestled in the Fun Valley trees.

This got mom and dad thinking that maybe it would be fun to set up a campground like this, and the perfect place to do that would be on the other side of Wolf Creek Pass in Pagosa Springs. 

So in the summer of 1972, they packed us all up and headed to Pagosa Springs. No more Scouts. No more Sweet Adelines. No more tornadoes. No more flat land. Just mountains, trout streams, maybe a bit of snow in the winter, and, well, a lot less air to breathe since we were at about 8,000 feet.

Sadly, that was the summer of a big gas crisis - long lines and shortages (and gas over $1 per gallon leading to many pumps showing half the cost) led to a lot fewer people taking long driving trips. It scared off the banks, and in the end, the idea of starting a new campground did not pan out. After a few years running the Wayside Grocery and Texaco, they realized that that kind of business, similar to the campground if it had happened, required your attention seven days a week, making it hard to get time to go fishing. So dad started working at the bank and mom started working at Gambles, then hit her stride managing the greenhouse at Ponderosa Hardware.

Mom always had a green thumb, and loved fooling with plants and gardens. 

I remember mom being so thrilled to have found these chairs at a garage sale, and turned them into planters.

Grandkids (and great-grandkids) loved this pond she had in the backyard. No fishing allowed.

Pagosa was a bit of a challenging area to try to grow things since you could have very nice weather in March followed by a shocking amount of snow in May. Mom loved explaining to people that moved here from say, California, how no matter the temptation to get your tomatoes started in April, you had better wait another month or you will get to start them again a month or two later.

Eventually both dad and her retired and once again took up camping, although this time it was in a nice fifth-wheel setup and they didn't have to share it with four whiny, smelly kids. They would go to Arizona and even Mexico with that thing.

The camper was often used as a bonus bedroom when we would visit.

Another thing that mom got into in a big way was making quilts. This included small, fun ones for the grand and great-grandkids as well as many full-sized ones. Her creativity knew no bounds.

One thing that mom started doing was taking shirts and making pillows out of them. She made these for her brother Jerry's family when he passed away. I have one she made from one of my dad's favorite shirts - it triggers memories every time I see it.

Mom and dad went so far as to buy a "long-arm" sewing machine specifically designed for quilts. It was as big as a compact car and dad mastered it, and the quilt making process really picked up speed!

Maybe my favorite thing mom created - when we were in Hawaii, she saw something like this and decided to make one. It's stunning!

Another thing they got seriously into were the lenten fish fries for the church - specifically, making the coleslaw. A LOT of coleslaw.

When you have to build a foot-high frame around your dining room table, you are making a lot of coleslaw!

Note that mom and dad shredded all of this by hand - and they did it once a week during lent. Their small dog Cookie loved this time of year since he got to clean up any that spilled onto the floor, and Cookie loved cabbage and carrots!

One last thing worth mentioning was that mom and dad got seriously into garage sales. If there was such a thing as professional garage sale shopping, they would have been all over that. The paper would come out on Thursday and they would study the listings and map out the most efficient way to hit them all. They found some bargains, and some "bargains." But mostly they got out and spent a morning talking to people all around the area.

A funny thing - when our daughter got married on Kaui, mom and dad went over with us for the wedding. They had never been to Hawaii before, and were excited to see the beaches and eat poi. (I'm making up the poi bit - nobody is excited to eat poi.)

We were driving along the coast, admiring the amazing views on our first day there, when they spotted a garage sale. So their first real Hawaiian experience was digging through a box of knickknacks in someone's driveway.

In 2015, dad passed away and mom was on her own. She did extremely well for a number of years - the COVID period was not fun for her, but she managed to not catch it while living at home. (She did catch it last year at Pine Ridge - she was determined to help another woman who had it and, well, you can guess the rest.)

In 2023 she had gotten to the point where living alone was not wise, so she moved into Pine Ridge - an assisted living facility in Pagosa Springs. (I referred to it as Club Pine Ridge. I actually had a letter returned since nobody there knew where Club Pine Ridge was.) 

She did reasonably well there - she missed being at home, but she mostly liked being around people, although it took a bit to get used to being around others all the time.

Mom in the picnic area at Pine Ridge, holding onto a hat of dubious origin.

In June, after a short period of serious illness, she passed away in her sleep. She was just short of turning 89.

She lived a wildly full and impressive life. It was astonishing to walk with her through a store and have so many walk up to her, talking about some tree she had talked them into planting, or her walking up to someone to explain how to grow the best tomatoes. Or make the best pasta. Or coleslaw.

Our family in 2011.

One thing I always loved was how much fun she had with her grandkids, great-grandkids, and great-great-grandkids (the word "step" never crossed her mind - they were all hers and she was determined to spoil them all). If there was a family gathering, once the food was cooked, she would be out back with the kids, laughing and joining in whatever game they were playing.

I'm pretty sure mom instigated this.

A watermelon seed spitting contest. 

For the last couple of years, I would write mom weekly or so letters. My last time visiting, just before she died, one of the women that works at Pine Ridge saw me with her, and lit up. "You're Allen! I feel like I know all about you!" It turned out she would spend time with mom, reading her my letters and looking at the pictures. It was so cool that someone would take that time to do that with her!

At the end of each letter, I would draw a dumb cartoon seagull, based on the ones that often appear in my current favorite comic strip, Wallace the Brave. Often I would try to draw them doing something relevant to the letter's contents.

I didn't say they were good. And I suspect seagulls can't actually spit watermelon seeds.

Mom gave so many of us a staggering number of fabulous memories! 

She's going to be so missed.

That's it - move along…

PS: Here is a link to a slideshow I put together for her service.