California Cruisin’

My wife and I entitled our year of fun as “California Cruzin’”. Last year we visited four different states. We wanted to show off our little British car to my 90-year old mother, who lives in Utah. (Yes, she did go for a ride in it and loved it!) This year, we decided we wanted to focus on some of the interesting things found in our own land of California, the third largest state in our great United States.

If someone lives in the north east, they can easily visit four states in an afternoon. No so in California. From San Diego to Eureka, it is at least a two-day trip, even with real intent. When I first bought and rebuilt my MG, it was for the purpose of visiting many of the wonders of California. So this year we decided to focus on all we could do within our own state. It led to an eventful, fun and challenging year. OK, we were four cities short of the total alphabet, and there is a Quincy, California, it’s just a long way away from where we live. And no U, X or Z either. But I was amazed at what we did find without ever leaving our borders.

We had some funny stories too. For example, when we got to the cobblestone streets of Old Town Sacramento, you will notice a foot patrolman from the local police department. When we pulled up, my wife jumped out of the car to take the picture and the police officer meandered over to check the car out. He asked me what it was. I told him it was “a 1974 MGB” and what he heard was it was “A Super Bee” and from that time on he proceeded to tell me he knew all about “Super Bees” because his friend had one. Until we left, he was convinced it was a Super Bee, not an MGB. I couldn’t convince him otherwise. Oh well, he certainly wasn’t British.

I submitted a picture of the covered bridge at Knight’s Ferry without the car. The reason: we traveled for almost a half day to see what was touted as the longest covered bridge in the US. When we got there, we found they had turned the bridge and the surrounding land into a large regional park. At this point in time there was absolutely no access to the bridge where I could get the car close enough to get the car and the bridge into the same picture. The park caretaker was not much help either. But the bridge was still pretty cool. For the point picture, we had to settle for a rickety old covered bridge that was not designed for vehicular traffic, only foot traffic. But it was a covered bridge and accessible with the car.

The picture with the fire truck was cool. This is a brand new fire truck just purchased by our local fire department. It was actually not even in service yet as they were still outfitting it. When I asked if l could have a picture with a fire truck, the firemen pulled the truck out just so we could have the photo shoot. If you look very carefully, you will see the lettering on the side of the truck which says “Proudly serving pancakes since 1873.” One of the company firefighters owns a sign business on the side and added the pancakes portion temporarily in honor of the multiple pancake breakfasts the fire fighters do as fund raisers for the community. (The pancakes portion will eventually come off.) Great community servants!

One of the cool experiences on that trip was an alpine lake we stopped at about three miles down the road from Dodge Ridge Ski Resort. As we were pulling in, I noted a Range Rover that looked like it wanted the parking space I had just taken. He ended up pulling into a space just a couple of spaces down and the man jumped out of his car and came rushing over. I thought he might be upset thinking that I took his parking spot and I was bracing for a tongue lashing. I noticed he was wearing a cap with the “RR” logo of Rolls Royce marquee on it. Come to fmd out, this man owned a cabin in the area and was a British car buff. He had bought an MGB GT car new, drove it for several years then sold it. He later bought the same car back, restored it and then sold it again. Then he bought a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud and restored it, sold it and bought the same MGB GT back the third time to once again restore it. He liked the MGB the best. We ended up having a great visit with him.

The graffiti Bridge was an interesting sight to visit. I added this as our contribution to weird roadside sites. We went with some friends of ours who were telling us about this bridge located on Ward’s Ferry Road near Groveland. I am not into graffiti and generally abhor it. They explained that this bridge was a site many foreign tourists, especially from Asia, visit when they come to the USA. Initially, it was a chance for them to express admiration and thanks to the US for the many things the US represented to them. Our friends had visited it before and told us it was worth the trip. So we decided to go. It was ten miles down a very, very steep twisting, turning road to get down to the bottom of the ravine to the bridge. As is oftentimes the case when graffiti starts, each person wants to add their own graffiti to the collection and much of it becomes, well, real graffiti, and often not the most wholesome. Sadly, that had happened to graffiti bridge. Our friends were shocked to see what had become of it. It is too bad that there are those people who don’t have the respect for the beauties of our great land. I must say, after this 10 mile trip down and the ten mile trip up the same type of road on the other side in an MGB, our foreign friends had to have some strong constitution to do that in a bus, probably in the summer, down and up such a steep grade that air conditioning was quite likely not working at its best, if at all. Kudos to them.

And last but not least, we got the “Moss” name from the John Moss Federal Building in Sacramento, California. The Moss name lives on in California. Thanks again for sponsoring a great activity to get us out onto the roads and enjoy the journey.

By Neil Nebeker