Why is my writing so...so different?

For reasons unbeknownst to me, I woke up on a Sunday morning, had breakfast, and read both papers by about 10am. Normally I'm still unconscious about that time, but today I managed to wake up by 7. The truth is that if I get to bed at a reasonable time as I did last night, I can get enough sleep and wake up not only refreshed, but early enough to get a few things done and/or get out to do something fun.

That first paragraph had nothing to do with the title of this post, huh? Actually, I'm getting there but will probably need a transfer. Let me ask the driver...

It is without any doubt that both of you have noticed that I write a bit...differently than most people. For instance, where most folks write a date as "May 15th," I write that same date as "May 15rd." I use the wrong ordinals because I simply don't like them in dates. Today's date of "May 15" is read as "May 15th" in real life, so there's no need to add one of those "th"s in there when you write it. Writing the uncorrect ordinals is my way of protesting.

"Uncorrect." That brings to mind another miserable habit I have: making up my own words or corrupting existing ones. Now, everyone on this planet and yours knows that I'm a dedicated officer on the Spelling and Grammar Police force. "To Correct and to Serve" is our motto. So why would an officer go out of his/her/its way to completely enbafflize our revered language? Simple. It makes for semi-amusing reading, and the WTF?!?!? looks are priceless.

Everything written here should explain why a seemingly intelligent person such as myself writes so bizarrely. Actually, for even less fun and more inconvenience, I should write posts like this once in awhile. Completely useless, utterly frustrating, but it gets me out and about, entertains you (maybe), and entertains me (definitely).

Thank you for reading. Got out of the house for a bit, did a little writing—nonsensical as it was—and had a little fun. Maybe sometime I'll actually answer the question in the title.

Time to kick this blog up a notch—or 12...

As of this post, I've published only 98 posts total over the six-and-a-half years that I've been writing Welcome to Eric's Planet. That works out to a mere 16 posts per year. Beyond pathetic in my opinion. But what's even patheticker (I added a "k" for ease of mispronunciation) is that there is so much out there to write about. With so many things polluting my brain, why haven't those things made it as far as a blog post?

There's no valid explanation, really. It's just plain old laziness on my part. I could say that since my computer up and died last fall, I have no way of writing. That's a bald-faced lie. I do have a tablet, or I can go to our local public library and use one of their computers as I'm doing now. In fact, unbeknownst to both of my readers (I had three, but one unfriended me and blocked me, too), I wrote many of the posts from last fall's 30-Day Writing Challenge on my tablet. And you couldn't even tell the difference, huh?

With all that gibberishment out of the way, let me say that with just over half of 2016 left, I'm going to make some kind of effort to get this thing going. My 57rd birthday is in less than three months and perhaps an early birthday present to myself will be to write some good stories. When all is said and dumb, it's all about effort, and I need to make that effort or die trying.

So consider yourselves warned. Eric's Planet is still out there in the blogosphere and it's just waiting for clearance to land. But there's a giant plane called "Life" in front of it.

Yosemite: another unplanned adventure

In my life, one thing is always true—uncertainty is certain. Think in terms of heading out for pizza and ending up having one heck of a meal at the sushi bar. This is how I spent a recent weekend, and now you get to read all about it. A trip to Yosemite, that is, not pizza or sushi.

Every year at the end of April or thereabouts, I spend the better part of a day out at the Ojai Valley Gun Club with a few friends, and we enjoy some shootin', some eatin', and just a good time with the boys. (Actually, girls are more than welcome to attend, but we can't find any who'll go with us.)

When I got back on Saturday afternoon, no one was home. I assumed that Lori had taken off to Yosemite for something called the Moonbow. That's a natural phenomenon where the bright full moon generates a rainbow of colors in the mist over one of the waterfalls in Yosemite. She had mentioned going, so when I saw that Diana's car was gone, I assumed she had in fact gone to Yosemite. (Lori's car had a problem with the radiator, making it less than roadworthy, so taking a 600-mile or more trip would have been somewhat risky.) Having gotten up at 6:30am for the Ojai event, I was pretty tired so I sat down and promptly fell asleep.

Around 4:30, I was awakened by the front door opening. Diana was away for the weekend, so it had to be Lori coming in. With the Moonbow just six or seven hours away, I didn't understand why she hadn't yet gotten on the road, being that it takes six hours just to drive to Yosemite, let alone getting to the spot in the park where the Moonbow was visible. She said that she was still debating as to whether to go, and the next thing I knew, we were putting together stuff for both of us to spend the night if need be.

Honestly, I hadn't planned on taking such a trip, but it looked like once again, I was going to Yosemite. My last trip to Yosemite in 2013 was sort of spur-of-the-moment. Read about that here.

We piled everything into Diana's car and got set to go. We could have just as well taken my car, but since our neighbors think the space in front of our house is an overflow lot for their multitude of vehicles, we decided to let my car be a placeholder. (The neighbor thing is a story in itself. Another blog entry, perhaps?)

Like our last trip, we headed up I-5 over the Grapevine and landed in the Central Valley. Being dinnertime, we looked for somewhere to eat and were surprised to find The Habit in a shopping center in Wheeler Ridge. Saying this may offend the In-N-Out fans out there, but I think The Habit has a better burger. Just my 'pinion.

Back on the road, we continued our northward journey. By the time we got to Yosemite, it was past midnight and the Moonbow was long since over. But here we were, at Yosemite National Park at almost the middle of the night, so it was time to find somewhere to stay. We'd made our way to Camp Curry Half Dome Village. The folks at Aramark were kind enough to take over all of the concessions and lodging at Yosemite, so they've gone around changing the names of some very famous places, including the landmark Ahwahnee Hotel, which dates to 1927. (It's now known as the Majestic Yosemite Hotel). Completely stupid in my opinion.

Note that in the last paragraph I struck out "Camp Curry" and replaced it with "Half Dome Village." Same idea. Here's a picture of the soon-to-be-modified sign with a temporary sign tied over it:

Anyway, we stopped in at the check-in desk lodging availability counter to see if any of the tent cabins were available. We were surprised to learn that Cabin 691 was free of guests and that we could have it. The next trick was to find a place to park close to where our cabin was, as well as finding it in the middle of the night. We found ours, and it was just 100 feet from the restrooms. You can't complain about that.

For some reason, I didn't take a picture of good ol' 691. But I did find a picture online of the tent cabins:

 

As accommodations go, these really aren't too bad. The bunk inside is reasonably comfy, there's a heater in most of the tents, a chair, some shelves, and a light with a pull chain. Our light didn't work, but Lori had brought a battery-powered light that she hung from the ceiling. We were well lit.

By the time we got to bed it was just after 2am, which is about when we usually get to bed at home. For reasons unknown to me, I woke up sometime between 6 and 7. After we both were up, washed up, dressed and ready to go, we headed over to the restaurant for breakfast.

Not the World's Greatest Breakfast™ or anything, but not too bad either. We walked all over Half Dome Village taking in the blooming dogwood trees with their white, pink, yellow, and magenta flowers.

A quick stop in the gift shop and packing up our stuff to check out concluded our morning, and we decided to head on out. Of course leaving Yosemite isn't just a matter of ZOOOM!!! out of the park. We took our time to take in as much as we could.

Shamefully, I didn't take many pictures at Yosemite. But I made up for it at our next stop.

By about 11:30, we were checked out, cleaned out, and on our way back down Highway 41. The last time we came up here, I noticed a sign for something called the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad. Being the railfan that I am, I was surprised that I'd never heard of it. At that time it was closed, but I'd always planned to get back up there and ride it. Since we were in the vicinity once again—and it was open—here was a chance to check it out.

A Reader's Digest description of this railroad: it's about four miles of track with a 500-foot difference in elevation that was once used to help transport logs from where the trees were cut to where they were loaded into a flume for their trip to the sawmill. Locomotives used on these trains are built by Shay. Steam-powered like the familiar ones seen all over, but a different mechanical configuration enabled all of the wheels to drive the train. Because of that, Shay locomotives were used wherever lots of power and torque were needed. Climbing steep grades with heavy loads made these ideal to do the job. Here's a video of one passing by the depot:



To protect your sanity and keep your eyes open, I won't get too technical about the equipment used on this line, but I'll throw in a few things just to make sure you're still reading. If you really want to get into the technical stuff, visit the YMSP Railroad page on Wikipedia. But I did take some good photos here.

One thing that I noticed right away was how they used real logs for the sides of some of the passenger cars, and cut about a quarter of them away to form seats.



Plenty of room for passengers, and with two or three of these cars on the train, there'll be a lot of people going into the woods. When we boarded, we chose to sit outside, which meant sitting on these logs.

Heading into the woods, there was a lot to see. Plenty of trees and flowers, but no sign of wildlife (at least we didn't see anything).

We made a 15-minute stop about halfway through the ride so that the crew could add water to the locomotive.

Get offa there, you!!! Oh...wait...that's the engineer. Never mind...

Once we resumed, it didn't take long to return to the depot. When we got off the train, we picked up a brochure for this railroad and headed south again on Highway 41. Like last time, we stopped at Bravo Farms in Traver to get stuff we don't need, then back on 99 for home.

Diana got home not long after we did, and we exchanged tales from our respective weekend activities.

When unexpected activities arise, they can be stressful, but this one turned out to be a lot of fun.