grandpa

Back in July, when December seemed really far away and training was going well, I happily found myself signed up for CIM.

Welp, the months have come and gone, and now it’s nearing mid-October and I’m struggling to break 14 miles without troubling pain up and down my right leg. This is nothing new; I’ve had minor hip pain that’s come and gone since I started running seriously back in 2003. The issue now is not only that the hip pain has seemingly come to stay, but it’s also migrated to my right knee, Achille’s, and heel. I spent most of Covid dealing with planter fasciitis, which has luckily mostly subsided. These days, I mostly want someone to just grab my right ankle and release it, just a smidge, from my screwy hip.

Nevertheless, some training has transpired. Last week I was able to go on a relatively short jaunt through the western portion of the Pinnacles. I had a small chunk of time before going to see grandpa for dinner, and decided to make the short drive from Gonzales to Soledad and into the park. If you can spare a Tuesday afternoon, that’s the time to visit the western portion of the Pinnacles. Very few cars in the parking lot and people on the trail. The road from 101 into the park is beautiful. I have vague memories of piling into my old friend Caitlin’s car and riding to their cabin back near the Pinnacles, and although the road is built up quite a bit more than it was back in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, it’s still as windy and up-and-downy as I remember. 

The run was short and scenic; I did the Balconies Cave and Cliffs loop plus a short out and back along the Juniper Canyon trail, for a total of about 3 warm, dusty, and picturesque miles. The wind that cools down the valley is absent in the hills. Huffed and puffed quite a bit up the hills, and felt a bit slower than I thought I should have felt, but that could have been the result of just getting out of a 3 and a half hour drive. Definitely wasn’t the McDonalds on the way down. Dinner at grandpa’s in Gonzales after the run was a great way to finish the day. Uncle barbecued steak, grandpa and I chatted on the swing outside, and aunt made delicious risotto, broccoli casserole, and Oakie cakes.

• 

• 

• 

The next day, I set out for a 6ish mile run along the Monterey Bay Coastal Trail that morphed into 13 miles (I’m crediting the Oakie cakes). Some leg pain towards the end, especially the last couple miles, but nothing outlandish, although a 3 mile run just a couple of days later didn’t feel so hot.

This past weekend, husband, dog and I took a road trip to Joshua Tree that ended in a last-minute side trip to see ol’ Grandpa in Gonzales.

• 

• 

• 

• 

When booking this trip I was apparently feeling frugal, and went for savings over ambience. This was not an issue until I saw the sign in the water tank/bathroom stating that all toilet paper should be placed in a petite white plastic trash can next to the toilet, and not flushed. I have limits, or I had limits, until I ate a pizza that didn’t want to abide by these limits.

But of course it was all fine, and the nighttime sky and a few Negronis made it easy to forget about the secrets hidden in that little plastic trash can. We did a quick drive-by of Joshua Tree National Park, but Lula’s companionship on this trip meant that we sacrificed a bit of time exploring the park.

• 

• 

• 

Saturday we left Joshua Tree and spent our last night on this trip at a hotel in Monterey (with a toilet that flushes toilet paper, I might add). A huge shout-out to Bob FM, which gave us two gifts en route from Joshua Tree to Monterey: a recommendation for brisket breakfast burritos from Down Home Grill in Victorville, and an introduction to Whitesnake’s 1984 hit “Slide It In.” Such cryptic lyrics. Monterey was brisk and hopping. We lucked out that night with a table at Dust Bowl Brewing, a bounty of tacos, and a very tired dog.

The trip culminated in an afternoon at grandpa’s house in Gonzales before heading home Sunday. We lived next door to my grandma and grandpa until I was about 10. He just turned 96, and I’ve been trying to visit him as often as I can over the past couple of years. Grandpa’s got stories. He was in WWII, and most of them are about that, although he shared a gem about his time as the local school bus driver and how a kid’s 4-H lamb got on the bus and refused to get off. I sometimes record his stories while he talks, and I used to try and play them for students when I was still in the classroom. Grandpa, however, has a very vibrant vocabulary, and I could never quite get away with sharing those recordings in class.

This time he shared an oldie but a goodie, which began with “Now, I know I shouldn’t tell you this, but…” and culminated with “Can you can believe it, the whole train had crabs!” He signed up with the Navy in 1942, when he was 17 years old. As he tells the story, his dad drove him to the recruiting office and dropped him off. He and everyone else ran around naked and took all kinds of tests before being shipped off to Farragut, Idaho by train for bootcamp just a couple of days later. He said that after seven days on the train, somehow, every single person ended up with crabs. They got off the train in Idaho, were given a razor and told to get naked again and shave everything (he was sure to emphasize that part), and then given some kind of blue ointment. He chuckled about that for most of the visit. He still lives alone and has family visiting him every day, but a sweet neighbor does much of his housekeeping and grocery shopping. He made sure to inform me that there was no hanky-panky going on between him and her, and that’s how he stays crab-free today.