SPRING 2003 Two Trips to California [UPDATE: November, 2009—As I gradually go back over my old travelogues, I’ll be leaving the original text intact but adding additional comments in boldfaced enclosed in brackets to expand on what was originally said. I’ll also add some additional scanned photos to enhance the original travelogues.] Trip #1 . The Blooming Desert at Easter The main excuse for this trip had been to see my former student Brad Nelson playing minor league baseball. I had watched many of Brad’s games in his first full season as a professional, when he had a sensational year—leading all of baseball in runs batted in and being named the Milwaukee Brewers’ Minor League Player of the Year. Most of Brad’s first season was spent about 350 miles from Algona, with the Beloit Snappers of the Midwest League. While it was a fairly lengthy trip to Beloit, I still basically just got in the car and headed over to Wisconsin on a whim. This year, though would be different, because now Brad had been promoted to the California League and was playing for the High Desert Mavericks—just down the road from Los Angeles and Las Vegas, but a 1600- mile journey from my home. That kind of a trip requires planning, and I had been planning this Easter getaway since about Christmas. I had also planned to make a second trip out west at Memorial Day. I got some good deals on both airfare and motels, and everything seemed to fit together like clockwork. [This would be the first of many trips where seeing Brad was the excuse for a vacation.] Well, as they say, the best laid plans go oft astray. The weekend before I left Brad missed a game because of what the radio announcer called “a tender wrist”. That surprised me a bit, because Brad has never been an injury-prone person. In high school his worst injury was a twisted ankle in basketball, and he had made it through a season and a half of pro baseball without any injuries, even while being hit by several pitches and being stuck in the middle of a couple of those “bench-clearing brawls” you hear about. I knew a little wrist tenderness would not keep Brad out of a game, and I got just a little worried about how that might affect my plans. I worried a bit more the following Monday when Brad’s father, Doug Nelson, showed up at school. Mr. Nelson talked around what had actually happened, but he strongly implied that it was a lot more serious than “tenderness”. Brad would probably be out at least a week, which would mean he would not be playing when I was out in California. [As it turned out, even Mr. Nelson’s estimates were optimistic.] He basically tried to talk me out of making the trip, and because of the war, I actually could have changed my airline ticket with comparatively few hassles or penalties. [I’d forgotten about the very Brad Nelson bobblehead temporary generous exchange policies the airlines had in place at the (from the High Desert Mavericks website) time.] I’ve never been one to miss out on travel, though, and I knew I’d have a good time one way or another. I e-mailed Brad to let him know that I’d be there, whether he was playing or not, but that he shouldn’t let my coming in any way influence whether he played. THURSDAY, APRIL 17 (Maundy Thursday) . Algona & Mason City, Iowa; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Ontario & Fontana, California We had our annual “morning of reflection” at school today. I hate things like that. I’m not a touchy-feely kind of person in any way. I hate discussing personal things in groups, and I don’t like to be put in the position of asking others to discuss what’s personal to them. To make things worse, while most of the groups had two teachers in charge of them, this year I got stuck supervising my homeroom all by myself. I read the prepared questions, but there were nowhere near enough of them to fill the time allotted. I tried to stretch things out, but pretty much everything went nowhere. The kids were not bad, but we had nothing more than the most superficial of discussions. I felt unprepared and almost totally incompetent throughout the whole retreat. I think I was looking at the clock even more than the kids, waiting for the day to finally end. [These events are invariably planned by our religion teachers. They are themselves good at generating group discussion and doing “team-building” activities. Unfortunately they assume others have the same skills they do. Having talked with many others on our faculty, I know I am not alone in dreading the annual retreat. Very few of us feel comfortable in such settings.] Fortunately it was really just half a day, so it ended fairly soon. I spent the early afternoon running errands all over town— doing laundry, getting a prescription filled at K-Mart, getting the oil changed in my car, depositing my paycheck at the ATM [something I haven’t done for years, since now we’re paid by direct deposit], and returning pop cans at the grocery store ($4.60 worth, to be exact). I was reminded of Brad as I pulled out of Hy-Vee after returning the cans. Waiting in front of me at the stoplight was a black Oldsmobile Bravada, identical to the one Brad bought with part of his signing bonus back in 2001. I knew Brad’s car was out in California now (his dad had driven it there from Phoenix after spring training was over), but seeing this vehicle here seemed a good omen for the trip. I had lunch at the McDonalds in Algona. It’s McRib month now in Iowa, and I had the temporary special. I still don’t understand why they can’t make an item as popular as the McRib part of the general menu year-round. I was particularly amused last winter when The Simpsons made fun of that very point in an episode where Homer traveled around the country, following a rib sandwich’s temporary appearances in city after city. McDonalds was having a game called “Winning Time”, where peel-off stickers on the fry packages could allegedly win fabulous prizes. I had first encountered the game when the quiz bowl team stopped at a McDonalds after a tournament in Boone. The kids all joked about the stickers, which were bilingual but seemed to feature Spanish much more prominently than English. They joked that every sticker seemed to say “LO SIENTO”, and it made me wonder if this game, like its “Monopoly” predecessor had been rigged so that no real person won the big prize. [In a big 2001 scandal, the chief of security for the advertising company that designed McD’s Monopoly promotion removed the most valuable game pieces and had his friends redeem them and share the prizes, which totaled more than $24 million.] In McDonalds’ Monopoly, though, I would usually win at least a few food prizes. In winning time the kids were right—all the stickers were losers. This one, too, said “LO SIENTO”, so I guess I wouldn’t be starting this trip with wonderful good fortune. [Researching this, I found out “Winning Time” was designed specifically to appeal to the Hispanic market. The game pieces were bilingual, but Spanish was the featured language. It was shown second, but purposely shown in all capitals. The program had a comparatively low budget, and after the Monopoly fiasco, much of that budget was devoted to security. That’s why there were only about ten percent of the prizes offered by Monopoly promos.] I left Algona at about 2:30pm and headed down highway 18. I must say that springtime is definitely not my favorite time of year. I think there are few places uglier than Iowa in April. I drove past mile after mile of bare fields as I made my way eastward. I stopped for coffee at Hardees in Garner, but even so made it to the Mason City airport around 3:30. Northwest Airlines now lets you complete all your check-in procedures on the internet. [It’s kind of strange to think that something that is so routine today was new and different not that long ago.] I had already printed out boarding passes for my flights to Minneapolis and California. Apparently no one had bothered to inform the counter people at the Mason City airport about the miracles of modern technology, though. I stopped at the counter to double-check that everything was okay, and the man insisted on printing out another copy of the boarding pass for the Minneapolis flight, with essentially the same information. He was pleasant, but it all seemed a bit redundant. On first glance nothing seems to have changed much at Mason City airport. It’s been about ten years since I last flew out of here, and most things looked pretty familiar. They still seem to have the same vending machines and the same empty coffee shop and the same 1970s TV that they’ve had for decades. United no longer flies here, and Northwest has reduced its schedule, but otherwise most things seem just about the same. There is one big difference, though: security. It used to be that there was literally no formal security at Mason City airport (or at many of the smaller “airlink” airports, for that matter).