DeLo's Wild party (with Eric Stern of Vagabond Opera....)

     It all started on May 9th when Delona (aka DeLo) and I went to see Vagabond Opera's first ever full length opera.  It was mother's day (the only time I could get up to Portland) and we sat in a small theater with some of Portland's finest steampunks to watch the 'Queen of Knives'. 
   Unbeknownst to me DeLo was newly divorced and very happy about it.  So happy that she bought 20 dollars worth of raffle tickets after the show.  The grand prize was a 2 hours serenade by Eric Stern (the lead person behind VO) and he would come to your house.  Eric is an amazing opera singer with years of professional training.  He is also one of my favorite accordionist and piano players.    
    A few weeks later DeLo announced, heart-throbbing across my computer screen that she had won.  Plans were made for a garden party on the night of June 11th.  

      I left Eugene around noon figuring I would stop in Salem and see an art show on the way up.  I also figured I could help DeLo get ready for the party.  Instead I got lost.  (She admits to having one of the weirdest addresses in Portland which confounds even the most intelligent GPS).  Instead of fighting with myself I called and asked for help.  DeLo sent this fine young lady to rescue me.

    Turns out Tanya had been there most the day helping DeLo get ready.   I was grateful that I didn't have to figure out how to get there myself. 
    Of the three of us not one could remember when the party was supposed to start so by 6pm we were ready for anything.  Well almost anything. 
    DeLo has a couple of guys who rent from her and they all share the gorgeous yard.  One of them was cooking up a delicious paella.   That's him with the silver hair and the beautiful shirt...

     We sat mingling, eating and drinking more than we should have when DeLo's phone rings.  I somehow know that it is Eric and because it's now past 8pm I also know he is lost.  He was only a few minutes away and there was plenty of conversation and food to keep us busy.  About 10 minutes later Eric comes in....

    and almost immediately started playing his magnificent accordion.   I went into instant drool as I watched his huge hands reach the most difficult chords with ease.  To give you a sense of his size the guy in the plaid shirt (Helmut) showing his wife Ida a picture on his camera is 6'5" and a German football player. 
    I couldn't restrain myself so I asked Eric in the first few minutes if he would play his Marlena Dietrich song.  He said he would but not yet.  He had to get warmed up. 
    Eric played for a good hour out in the garden.  I later found out he can sing in more than 5 languages and speaks 4 fluently.  So we heard some Italian favorites, a few originals and a bit of klezmer.  When he started to play a tango, DeLo grabbed her most recent beau and they tango-ed across the kitchen floor....

    Then there was the piano.  It was beautiful and black and just waiting for Eric's hands to seduce it.

    And seduce it he did!  The first song he played (very theatrically) was my favorite 'The Transformation into Marlena'.  If you can imagine Eric, a 6'3" manly sort of man transforming himself into the 1940's German nightclub singer, Marlena Dietrich, the music accentuating the transformation with perfectly timed dramatic pauses, then you will get a sense of how amused we all were by his performance.   I wish I knew how to embed the song into the blog but I don't so hit this link and you can watch a live performance    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWoU1aJX56E 

    
   Eric played for another hour or so and I tryed to get the perfect picture of his hands reflecting in the shiny black piano...

    But drama was brewing in the background.....
   DeLo gathered us all into the living room.  Even Eric stopped playing the piano.  
   All evening Candace had been animated while she chattered stories about her kid, her dog and her job.  I had never met her before so I interpreted this behavior as a woman who likes to talk about herself.  But suddenly with everyone hushed and hustled into the living room, Candace seizing her moment slids down onto her knees and proposes marriage to the young man she'd been dating for 3 months.  He had no idea what was coming.... 

   When he said yes she rose to her feet, handed the glasses of champagne to DeLo and kissed him passionately.  Meanwhile Eric picked up the accordion and played Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire". 

"Burn, burn, burn, it's a burning ring of fire.... "

        By this point DeLo was beautifully lit and the evening reached it's climatic moment. 
One last parting shot...

  it's me and my favorite opera singer complete with priceless expressions.  Thanks for reading and I hope you had a good time vicariously at Delo's Wild party...   yona c. riel

Day 13 ...The Journey home..

    I intended on driving straight through from San Fransisco to Eugene via I-5 but when I discovered this weird little cut off on my map I took it.  I had been on the road for almost two weeks by this time and driving home proved to be more tiring than I had thought it would.  And I-5 has to one of the most boring drives ever.  Does anybody else feel this way or have I driven it way too many times.
    I discovered a sweet little town on this serendipitous detour called Shasta.  The town had some beautiful old ruins right in the middle of town so of course I had to stop and take some pictures.  According to the sign this was a bank in a once thriving gold mining town.  

     As you can see on the sign below Shasta was quite the town in it's day.  The sign says "by 1854, Shasta was home to California's longest row of brick buildings north of San Fransisco."

    I took a several shots of the ruins but this next one turned out to be one of my favorites...

     As you can see the town has spent the money to retrofit the brick buildings with huge steel rods.

     I love surprises like this.  Makes me want to drive ONLY on roads I have never been on before.  But I was headed home so after a few hours of winding through the mountains I landed in Arcata for the night.  I was really hoping for a sweet deal on a good but cheap motel room but I was too tired to look much further than the first one I saw. 

   After getting settled in the room I walked a few doors up and had a delicious quesadilla and a beer.   The next morning I headed north up Interstate 1 and soon found a beautiful beach to stop at.  Since I was ending my journey soon I took this shot to symbolize it.  Footsteps in the sand leading to a rock mountain says it all...

    Even though I needed to get home I knew I wasn't going to see the ocean for awhile so I hung out a little longer and snatched a few more shots.   I thought the tire made for an interesting focal point...

     And below is the site of a beach sculpture I once made years ago.  The sculpture has long since been washed out to sea and now there is graffiti to take it's place...

    I continued up Highway One.  Fortunate for me it was a beautiful day making for a nice welcome back to Oregon.   I resorted to a 'drive-by shooting' for the bridge you see below...

    Even though I slept well in Arcata I was still tired and anxious too.  I got home about 6 that night and quickly jumped into the bathtub,  leaving the unpacking of my loaded to the top vehicle for when I woke up... 
    Thanks for following me on my birthday road trip. You all were such great company.   And as always your comments are welcomed and appreciated...  xo  yona c. riel

Day twelve... San Fransisco with Joan and Teresa...

     On Monday, Pam and I drove south down to San Gregorio and Pescadero, two places she used to take me when I was having a bad day.  The first picture is of the cave we used to sit in on windy days so we could have a little camp fire down on the beach.  Every year the water makes it bigger and bigger so now you could have 8 people in there and still have room for a fire.

    Here's a shot I took enhanced with the toy camera on my Iphone.  It makes an already surreal landscape even more so..

     There were also several elaborate dwellings made from driftwood on the beach so I wandered over and took a picture of one...

    Then I found some amusing beach graffiti made with charcoal sketched onto the sandy colored rock.  I see art everywhere and I suppose this person does too...

    After San Gregorio we wanted to find the beach that looks like a moonscape.  It is just up the road 5 miles in Pescadero.   I have never seen anything like this place in all my travels...

     Here's another picture with a little wider view.  We both love this place and were so happy we got to visit it again.

     
    At 5pm we headed back north on HWY One and in Half Moon Bay, the home of Odwalla Corporate offices we found a homegrown funky little fish house to have some clam chowder in.  Pam had to get on the plane later that night so we went into the city and I got a cup of tea at my favorite place, Peet's coffee on market street.  After all these years the same woman was managing it.  She told me she had a kidney disease and needed to have the benefits and that Peet's was a good match for her.  She had just recently celebrated her 16th anniversary with them.   (Understandable to me, I worked more than 20 yrs for Odwalla).
     A little later that night I dropped Pam off at her sister's house in the mission then I went over to Potrero Hill, my home for seven years during the early 1990's.  I stayed with my old friend Joan and her new girlfriend Teresa.  We chatted until 11 that night and the next day Joan and I decided to take a long walk through the city.
    San Fransisco has long been a city close to my heart not only for it's complexities and micro-cultures but for the amazing amount of random art strewn upon walls, walkways and store windows.
    This first one is a store window that uses brown paper bags from Trader Joes, Whole Foods and Safeway to make an interesting backdrop for the life size cutout..

    We then walked Clarion Alley which has graffiti most of the way up... this first one had a mannequin's hands and face embedded into a substrate that I never did figure out what material had been used.....

     Then there was a mural with the message that we are all aliens.   The same mural was here the last time I walked this alley but I took another picture because the colors still make it stand out for me...

    The next mural has been around for many years now.  It is on Harrison street around where it intersects with 18th.  I just love how they incorporate the domes on the wall right into the mural...

     Then we walked up to Dolores Street Cafe, had some lunch and steeped our eyes in some delicious 'dyke eyecandy'.  Afterwards we headed up to the Castro to see if I could find the book that Page Hodel just published called "Monday Hearts for Madeline."
   Page, someone I met many years ago, started making these hearts for a woman she fell in love with that lived across the street from her in 2005 and 2006.  Less than a year after they met, Madelene died of ovarian cancer and this past Valentine's day Page published a book that has gorgeous photos of 100 different hearts she had made for Madelene over the years.  The photography is superb as are the hearts, made from an amazing variety of mostly everyday things, including food, plants, flowers, paint brushes and metal shavings.   I don't have permission to post any of these pictures but the book is available at Book Inc. on Market street next to Peet's.  She had an opening on May 26th for her show at Dolores St. Cafe.  The show featured several hearts from the book enlarged.   I haven't tried it but you may be able to get the book on Amazon. 

     At some point during my visit, Teresa and I, who have never met before except on Facebook, realized we both knew a woman named Mary Wings.  I hadn't seen Mary in 12 years so Teresa picked up Joan and I and we went for a visit to see the lovely Mary in her Boho style house in Precita park.    Here she is standing in front of her house...

         Doesn't look like much until you get inside and see how she has made a basement into a cool little place to live..

     Below is a picture of her wildly wonderful garden of which she insists still grows bulbs from my garden in Potrero Hill....

    Then I took a picture of a brown paper bag, graffiti-ed and encased behind glass of which Mary claims to have pilfered from a telephone pole in Paris.   Mary and I agreed this wasn't just some scrawled graffiti on a brown paper sack, this person knew what they were doing...

     One last picture.  This is Teresa chilling out in Mary's garden...

  Tomorrow I am going to try to drive from San Fransisco to Eugene.  After this many days on the road I am tired but I don't really want to go home quite yet.  So we will see what happens...  Again, I thank you for reading and comments are always welcomed..   yona c. riel

day eleven... devil's slide and p-town w/pam...

     My old friend Pam was in town for the International Ms Leather contest, held in San Fransisco at the Holiday Inn.  I picked her up in my truck and after saying hi to a few people that I remembered from way back and we headed down HWY 1, our old haunt.  First stop was a really awesome ruin...

     We played around on the ruin taking ridiculous pictures of each other...  I am sure you'll remember this pose of mine from a Tiger's birthday party at Pizza Research Institute...

    It has taken 2 and a half years for my fingers to be able to flip the bird with both hands... (that's why at least in part I am smiling).
    Here's a shot of looking down the cliff onto Devil's Slide beach.  It gives you an idea where we are...

 

     There was some beautiful graffiti inside the ruin so once I got up there I took a picture..

     By the time we left several other 'tourists' had stopped to climb on the ruin.  It had a 'no trespassing' sign but when I am with Pam I do silly things.  Just saying. 
     The traffic was amazingly slow as we drove south down to P-town and Half Moon Bay.  After all it was a beautiful Sunday afternoon and everybody with their mothers, brothers, BFFs and surfing buddies were at the beach enjoying it.  We got down to P-Town, another old haunt, and gaggled our disappointment to each other about how much it had changed.  Still we found some interesting photo opportunities.  It was high tide so the beach we used to go to was not there, at least for the next 12 hours or so.

        But looking out into the marina there were a few abandoned boats making for an unusual shot...

   Also parked nearby there was a cool old truck affording yet another chance for fooling around and taking pictures...

     We drove back up to Day's Inn in Half Moon Bay, (which was 30 dollars cheaper than the Comfort Inn next door) and had salmon on parmesan crackers, smoking loon chardonney, and a whole night to catch up on stories.
   

Day ten - Santa Maria to Colma via highway one...

     The hotel I stayed in last night was the loudest most obnoxious place ever!   It was in Santa Maria at "America's Best Value"... NOT!  If they changed it to America's Worst Value I might believe them but I will never stay there again.  (Sorry I needed to get that off my chest.)

     After going to the Starbucks to update my blog I got on highway 101 North.  It was one huge vineyard, sometimes even on both sides of the freeway.  Occasionally there would be a horse ranch or maybe even a cow farm for a mile, maybe two, but it quickly returned to tidy little rows of grapes, all tied like Jesus to little wire crosses.   At Pismo Beach I did make it back to the ocean where three dogs were tearing it up.  Ah the life of a dog....

     I walked further up the beach and found an interesting rock outcropping...

     Then I got into the truck and continued north where I saw the Mission San Miguel and the Veritable Vegetable truck.  (I used to driver that semi years ago so it was a nostalgic moment for me.)  The Mission was made of what looked like handmade adobe bricks and was established in 1797.

    The building reminded me of Oaxaca with all the peeling layers and textures and the huge clay bricks...

    Across the street there was an old adobe that had been turned into a museum and was supposed to be open..

 

     Around this supposed to be open museum was a garden of huge and blooming cacti and succulents...

    Here's another picture I took in the garden before taking off...

     I think California must be really broke because not one rest area was open.  And the hours posted on this building Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday were obviously invalid it being Friday and closed.  So I wandered back up to the freeway and resorted to a little drive-by shooting (aka guerilla tourism) when I saw this truck...

     Yes I am multitasking again.... (that's a good thing right?)...taking pictures while I driving..... (I know it's dangerous and please don't tell my therapist).  The only other curious site I had was that of the oil wells drilling like slow moving dinosaurs.  I've got to wonder about those miles of vineyards and how that oil is not leeching into the soil...

    I made it to my friends Jennifer and Bertina's house by 5pm.  Perfect timing for some dinner (vegetarian curry made special by Bertina) and a beer.  Then we headed out to see "Kick Ass", an R rated movie about an 8 yr old girl who is also a superhero.  It's rated R for the violence and the swearing.  Even for me (who claims the "F" word as my middle name) it was disconcerting to hear an 8 yr old say the "C" word and then blow a gangster away with a Tommy Machine Gun but I guess that is what happens in the comic book on which the movie was based.  This happens early in the movie, capitalizing on some serious shock value.  Still, I want to be Hit Girl for Halloween.
    Today I am going to head into San Fransisco and pick up my old friend Pam who is attending the International Ms Leather Competition.  We are going to head south via Highway One and stay in a hotel in Half Moon Bay or Princeton for the night.  Yona c. Riel