| End of the Year Holidays |
| The only problem that the “floats” experienced was dealing with the tide. In any parade, there are times when things come to a halt. Stopping a boat in a moving tide can be a challenge to any skipper.
Christmas with our son and his family was a little confused because they couldn’t come until a couple of days after. This offered us the opportunity to acquire our grandson’s first bike via the Internet. We were a little late in getting organized and Amazon.com couldn’t guarantee delivery before Christmas Day. The reward for our tardiness was that we didn’t care about the date of delivery as long as it got here before the kid did. The bike was to be drop-shipped from the mid-West. · In the week before Christmas we started getting frantic notices from the supplier: they had over-sold and couldn’t supply the bike we had ordered and they would have to supply an upgraded bike at the same price (to bad!) · As we got closer to Christmas the next notice was that they were having a terrible snowstorm and the shipment of “better bikes” was being delay and they could not longer expect to deliver by the cheaper freight that we had paid for but they would plan on sending the bike by express delivery at their expense (O.K.) · Their next missive was to admit that they weren’t going to make the Christmas date and they would refund our money (No way!) Christmas was on Thursday and our son and family we due until Monday. Basically, the bike had to be delivered either Friday or Saturday and we would be fine. We had decided that we were committed and if the bike was later, we would have to explain to a four-year old what was happening. The day after Christmas, Friday, UPS showed up with the bike. Actually, UPS delivered two bikes. We looked over the paperwork and the two different packages and couldn’t find any difference between the two. After checking for any disparity, we arbitrarily refused delivery on one of the two. We tried to notify the shipper of the duplication for over a week and couldn’t get through to them – I would imagine that they had quite a mess. The couple of days that we spent with our son and family were a real delight. The energy of a four-year-old was astonishing; but with a sense of humor in place, his antics took their proper place. The first day we took them to a sand beach with a few scattered rocks. The tide was low and the areas around the rock had been scoured out creating tide pools – A four-year’s idea of paradise. Our grandson has absolutely no distress about getting wet, as long as the water is cold, dirty, or both. So jumping into the tide pools (just for the fun of it) or to see what might be lurking in them was great fun. That evening we exchanged gifts. Our grandson has lots of people for whom he is their only kid relation. So, Christmas and birthday’s can be a little overwhelming. So, his parents have wisely imposed a limit to the number of gifts he can receive on such occasions. During the bulk of the gift giving, our grandson received only one gift. After the dust had settled, I remember one more gift and brought it up from the basement – his bicycle! We had planned to wait until the morning for this gift because we knew that he would want to ride it a soon as he opened it. But, it was already dark. Seeing him with only one gift softened our hearts and we gave it to him early and he would have to wait until morning to ride it. He was delighted and was patient about waiting to try it out. |
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| The holiday season or as our son refers to it, “the season of wretched excess”, began for us at Thanksgiving. We had hoped to have a crowd to help celebrate Thanksgiving, but being new to the neighborhood we found most of the people that we thought might be interesting to have previous commitments. Then we hit on the idea of celebrating the day after the official holiday – sort of a “let’s have leftovers day”.
Don’t get me wrong, we did have a very nice Thanksgiving dinner with Nancy’s sister and husband and one single woman (a friend of Nancy’s), but it wasn’t the crowd that Nancy had hoped for. The “day after, lets get together and have leftovers” party was great. Our flat will easily accommodate a sit-down dinner for nine people – more than that would have to be served buffet style. People brought whatever leftovers they wished to share and we had sort of a potluck. One of the highlights was to compare the different turkey dressings – every family has their own. With Thanksgiving out of the way, the next major concern was Christmas. Thanksgiving was late this year and so the time between the holidays was shorter than normal. With the nice weather we were experiencing and the short wait, the Christmas Holiday just sort steam-rolled over us. Nancy’s sister and brother-in-law (C&T), you may remember, were on their southern winter migrations and were happy to be out of the Seattle weather. But, Christmas is about family. C&T had planned to leave their motorhome in storage here and drive back to Seattle for the holiday. They were kind enough to offer us the possibility of going to Seattle with them. Nancy and I were raised in Seattle and moved to California upon graduation from college. Because both Nancy’s family and mine lived in the Seattle area, we have made that trip many times and at all times of the year. In our trips north we have hit some pretty inclement weather and several years ago decided that the trip just simply worth the risks. We have tried flying, but that only eliminates some of the problems – so now we just stay in sunny California during the holidays. We thanked C&T for their invitation, but declined. As the date for their leaving got closer, the weather reports for Washington and Oregon started to get more threatening – snow, ice, wind and rain. We then offered C&T the opportunity to stay. They were watching the weather closely and decided that if they left a day early, and put in a couple of long days, they could get to Seattle between storms – they did. But the day after they got there, Seattle got clobbered with a massive snowstorm. |
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| Seattle does not do snow well. First of all, Seattle can go several years without any significant snow and even in the snow years the snow doesn’t last very long. The second problem with Seattle and snow is that Seattle is built on hills, lots of hills. So, if you take a population that doesn’t see that much snow and give them enough hills to challenge even good snow drivers, you have a formula for disaster. The only good news is that as a kid we loved the sledding after the big snows. It was always a source of amazement to me how many steel runner sleds were pulled out of storage when it snowed. I don’t ever remember seeing a new sled.
Once C&T got to Seattle, there wasn’t much they could do. Only the main roads were cleared and trying to get into the neighborhoods required putting on chains. They didn’t even try to get to their house in the suburbs east of the city. Their neighbors sent them a photograph of their house buried in snow. More snow was added while they were there. They headed south before all the snow cleared and that turned out to be fortunate because the thaw came with flooding. The main highway south was completely closed due to flooding. We were just as glad that we didn’t choose to go with them. Meanwhile, we prepared for Christmas with lights. We bought a string of the new LED Christmas lights and hung them from the balcony rail. Because many of the houses in Morro Bay are vacation rentals, there aren’t a lot of Christmas displays. Our modest contribution was nice but not conspicuous. The City of Morro Bay sponsors a “Lighted Boat Parade” as part of its Christmas celebrations. They had thirty boats all decked out in lights and decorations travel along the waterside of the Embarcadero. Many of the boats broadcasted music and all had passengers who waved vigorously to the crowds on the beach. It did differ from most parades in that there we no marching bands or other pedestrian traffic. |
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| Morro Bay's Christmas Lighted Boat Parade Next time I'll remember to bring a tripod. |
| We rounded out the holiday season with a nice New Years Eve dinner. We had a Dungeness crab feed for nine people. None of the people at the party were know to be big party people and we decided to celebrate the New Year with the people of the East Coast. This would allow the party celebrants to cheer in the New Year and still retire at a reasonable hour. This was the plan, but none of the major television channels broadcasted the New York festivities. This didn’t bother us very much because not body was ready for the evening to end by nine o’clock anyway. We didn’t make it until the local midnight but we did celebrate with the people in the Rocky Mountain Time Zone. The party was considered a great success by all that attended.
All in all, the holiday season was great |
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| Our Grandson's new bike and by-the-way, we did get to the beach to play in the tidepools |