a reminder of
life in time of disaster
here written in stone

warm toast

friday afternoon i got a call from my old friend jim, asking if i would like to be his guest that night, along with his brother and another friend at a show on polk street. with little time to plan i shot out of work, and waited for them to swoop by and pick me up. we parked and went looking for a place to get a quick bite to eat. and we stopped here.


as i gazed up at the sign i had to laugh, and felt i would be remiss if i didn't capture some imagery from the place and share it here. inside it was an updated take on the urban diner theme, clean and contemporary. typical of the style it featured counter service and booths looking out on the intersection. the food too was what you would expect, although i can only vouch for the fries. my companions orders were more substantial and they looked tasty with big portions.
outside on the sidewalk in front of the entrance i spotted this little stamp in the cement which is so indicative of san francisco. you see the names of the street on each corner in the city, and they are designed in the event that an earthquake levels all recognizable landmarks as it did nearly 106 years ago. as you wander through the horror of that aftermath, perhaps you may at least have a sense of where you are.

the fool twice burned has
at once learned his same mistake
makes him fooled again

lincoln highway revisited

they say the more things change the more they stay the same. recently one day while driving through our new neighborhood i spotted this sign around the corner from our house. it's a lincoln highway marker showing that our town once hosted part of the original 1913 alignment. traveling west from as far away as times square, nyc this would have been the last stretch before loading a ferry and crossing the bay into san francisco. funny because our old home also paralleled the lincoln as part of the later alignment. a section referred by george wyman, the first man to cross the continent by motorcycle in 1903 as follows "the pastoral aspect of the sheep country gradually gave way to a more rugged landscape, huge boulders dotting the earth and suggesting the approach to the sierras. at rocklin the lower foothills are encountered: the stone beneath the surface of the ground makes a firm roadbed and affords stretches of excellent goings" it seems wherever we go we are in proximity of what they used to call "america's main street".

coach attles reminding us we're all golden and we always got '75!

hangar one

i was sitting at my desk the other day, when i spotted this heading our way. so bizarre to see it coming out of the east. we never saw them when we lived up in sacramento. and it made me think about the glory days of the original airships. i wondered what it must have been like to be in a farm field somewhere in europe, and then to look up and see this giant silent monster bearing down on you.

this one belongs to the hangar one vodka people and has been on a 30+ city tour. the blimp is housed nearby and must have been heading back to home base the day i spotted it. i understand that they book flights back and forth between sf and la. how cool. i wonder what it would be like to float up there suspended in the sky...

out tomorrow. ring if you need anything...

you showed up to make
us laugh to forget and now
belong to angels

old and new

i have been at my new gig now just over a month, although it feels greatly accelerated. although i have been hanging around this place for the last 25 years, it still feels weird to be working here. and things i hadn't ever paid attention to before, i'm now beginning to notice. so i thought i'd share some that have popped out in recent days, and give you a sense of some of the more interesting images that have stopped me in my tracks these past weeks. (above, vintage motor oil cans sitting on top of an also vintage snap-on box)

(a leftover hubcap from joe's now gone, ten year 41' plymouth convertible project)


(nice typography layout on a floorwax bottle?)


(where the men go)


(where the women go, which is always nicer)

the process repeats
itself over and over
until we are clean

half-dome part 02

after you initially enter the yosemite park there isn't an instantaneous feeling that you have arrived. in fact as we rode those first few miles the whole scene had one of desolation as we saw huge sections of burned out acreage, like riding through a war zone where only the splintered tops of the trees remained. but this was soon replaced as we climbed higher past crane flat, the last gas stop before the valley and then rode through the 3 tunnels. and when we came through the last tunnel now suddenly we were transported. like some land that time has forgotten or protected we were treated to these amazing vistas that left me speechless. each time i have come here i see it in a new and different way. the magnificence and closeness of the towering rock made me feel at once both very insignificant and totally tied in with the Creator.


we followed the signs to our new home for the next 2 nights - curry village. curry is a special place to me. it's always been the home away from home when i've come here. first when i was young and my own dad brought me here, and then as a teenager with my high-school youth group. our tent cabin was a welcome base after being on the bike all day. we unpacked and changed, and then took a walk around the village. it was sunday night and the place was still buzzing with weekend activity. we shared a pizza and sat outside in the amphitheater as half-dome towered in the background. i pointed to it and asked jake if he felt ready to climb it. "i guess so" he replied.


after dinner we walked around the valley spotting deer and coming within a few feet of one doe. i saw the signs for the ahwahnee hotel and wanted to show jake how the other half lived so we walked to it. by now it was getting darker and as we started to head back we caught site of the shuttle stop and decided to take advantage of this great transport system. we boarded with a group in high spirits (from spirits no doubt) who were out for a birthday dinner for one of their group. as we boarded the bus i mentioned that it was in fact jake's birthday the following day. as we rode away from the ahwahnee, the group broke into an impromptu rendition of "happy birthday" for jake as we rode on in darkness.


the following morning we awoke early. we grabbed quick showers and a coffee for me from the lodge, and then were off. curry is about a mile from the trail head, and from there we began the long climb. up first to vernal falls where 3 tourists had met their end only a couple weeks earlier. they had gone over the view railing and were swept away. there was still a missing persons poster nearby with their photos although 2 of the bodies had apparently been pulled out of the river the day before according to the shuttle driver. we said a quick prayer there for them and their families and pushed on. from here at the top of vernal marks the spot where the day tourists separate from those with more serious intentions. nevada falls was our next destination...


(to be continued)

today comes only
once as all the tomorrows
turn to yesterdays

so...contest today.

don't worry, she knows you'll call. just not today...

neal...keepin' it real.

look up to the sun
and orient yourself now
to the rising road

lincoln highway part 001

i've gone on before about old roads. i love 'em. my advice to all the young people is to go find them and get lost. i've waxed on before about old hwy 40, but i think now it's worth mentioning the lincoln. for roads scholars it must begin here. route 66 gets all the buzz. it helps when they write a song and make a tv show about you. and i'm sure it's pretty too. some call it the mother road. but i honestly think this is a misnomer. the real mother road is the lincoln highway.
conceived in 1912 by industrialists keen on affording the public better roads and formally open for travel in 1913, it was the first continuous coast to coast road across the united states. it was not so much a purpose built road, but rather a route linking together existing roads and improving conditions on the worst sections along the way. in this sense it was a patchwork of so many of the local roads sewn together to cover the country. and in the spirit of the time, maintained and promoted through local municipalities rather than a single agency.
at this time serious road travel was not for the faint of heart. the auto and motorcycle were still in relative infancy and often unpredictable. and the road infrastructure hadn't yet caught up with the ambition of driving for extended periods. so often you read advice from veteran travelers in guidebooks advising would be adventurers to "gas up at every opportunity" and carry extra fuel for the long gaps between services. the surfaces could vary between newly paved sections to gravel depending on where you were, and it was never advisable to travel after dark. the lincoln, though primitive would be the impetus for so many of the road projects that followed, including 66.
in the 1920's the states began numbering highways and the original lincoln route was re-designated us 40 from san francisco to utah. it basically runs along us 30 from there to the east coast. as roads will it has undergone significant and constant realignments in the years that followed. but for the more serious road geeks like myself, it is the original route that is most interesting. here you travel back in time and sometimes see the ghosts of the old highway as you travel.
for the most dedicated of enthusiasts there is the lincoln highway association, a group dedicated to promoting and preserving this national relic. each year their members hold a conference in one of 12 states along the original route. and this year they're meeting in my home state just up the road in lake tahoe. included in this year's list of activities is a drive from the original western terminus in lincoln park, san francisco to lake tahoe along the original alignment. sounds like a lot of fun. and maybe i might just find myself tagging along behind the caravan of runabouts and straw boaters going all the way --- on the lincoln highway.

care, ok?

now i don't know where it's been, and i'm willing to forget the past. i'm just glad it's finally back.

we wondered where we'd
wandered while weeping warfare
wet our wrongful ways

like gypsies we roamed
this life searching until we
found our haven here