Thursday, July 7

The big day of the Systemetrics reunion. Sue with Embry’s nudging and assistance is the host for this event, which is held on the Goleta Beach and includes over 50 people. Most are now retired and no one currently works for the firm, which has merged with larger firms doing health care research and computer stuff too many times to count. It was sold again this year for over two billion dollars, along with the myriad of sister companies that had been rolled up. Lots of money in health care nowadays.

What is it about these West Coast people? They tend to be cheerful, friendly and without a lot of the ego that we on the East Coast seem to have. Maybe it is the climate. In Santa Barbara there are only four questions asked about the weather: Will there be any morning fog? If there is morning fog (usually unlikely), when will it burn off? Will the afternoon highs settle in at 75 degrees as they usually do (with very low humidity of course), and will it ever rain again? The last question is the most serious since almost all of coastal California is experiencing a prolonged drought.

This crowd is especially West Coast and love their California crunchy-Granola lifestyle. Who wouldn’t?

Almost everyone has contributed something to the pot luck. I grill hotdogs. Lance has provided a couple of cases of beer. Embry, Sue and Bruce do the set up and take-down. The event which started at four p.m., winds down around 8:30,just as the sky over the Pacific is starting to turn pink. By all accounts it is a great success.

For any readers who are counting, you are probably concluding that these reunions will never end and probably are a bit worn out by reading about whom we saw when. You can breathe a bit easier because we are about to enter the next phase of the Road Trip: the National Parks. At the same time there is something special about these gatherings and reconnections and something melancholy as well because in too many instances we realize that this could be the last time we see old friends and former work colleagues. You can’t help wondering where the time went and how short life is.

 

 

Wednesday, July 6

The day gets started with “The Good” as we get an early start, under cloudless blue skies heading down I-15, the major interstate linking L.A. with the western desert. Steep, barren mountains line both sides of a deep and narrow canyon providing spectacular views as we descend from around 5,000 feet to 1,500 feet. Suddenly the road takes a sharp turn to the right through a pass, enabling us to get our first view of the greater Los Angeles area. You can imagine how thrilling this might be, but that is all you can do, imagine, because L.A. is enshrouded in a brown cloud of smog. I thought the smog problem was pretty much under control in L.A., but not this day. The air is as bad as anything we experienced in China last year. Call this “The Bad” phase of the journey soon to be followed by “The Ugly.”

Before we know it, we are driving 85 miles an hour, trying to keep pace with traffic on a 12-lane, divided highway, tailgated by an 18-wheeler, with cars and behemoth trucks speeding along at break-neck speeds all around us, bumpers within inches of each other. Welcome to L.A.! Periodically red tail lights light up and the pace slows down to a stop-and-go, then without warning we are off to the races again before the next jam happens. All just a typical morning in the second largest city in the U.S. I am thinking that if we can actually make it to Santa Barbara without a collision, we will be lucky.

And we are lucky because we do not get run over by an 18-wheeler; and as we circle around the city going north and then west, the cars and trucks thin out and the smog diminishes allowing us to see a blue sky for the first time and breathe fresh air. As we head west along the coast to Santa Barbara, the houses jammed together in vast subdivisions with tiny yards on curved streets gradually disappear, and suddenly we are in the country again with steep hills and beige grass, dotted by giant green, live oaks and olive trees.

We are staying with Sue and Bruce, old and dear friends from way back when Embry and Sue worked together in the 1980s at Systemetics, a startup health care and social science research firm headquartered in Santa Barbara with an office in D.C. where Embry worked. In the 1990s Sue followed Embry to Mathematica , a similar firm, with offices in Princeton, D.C. and several other towns ; and we have remained close to them for over 30 years, with something like eight or nine vacation trips together to various exotic places. Sue is an expert photographer, and Bruce was a judge until his retirement a few years ago. He is a master gardener and still plays tennis several times a week at a near championship level. I always look forward to getting a free tennis lesson from him when we get together but not this time due to my bad knee.

Sue and Bruce actually live in the neighboring town of Goleta, where we arrive around four p.m. about the same time as Lance arrives, another Systemetric researcher from the 1980s, whom we have remained close to, now living in Seattle. A few years back he and his wife, Diana, joined us for a sailing cruise among the San Juan islands, north of Seattle. The third connection from the 1980s who joins us for dinner is Jim, one of the founders of the firm, and his wife, Eve, who have retired to the Bay area where they live on a house boat in Sausalito, and have a small apartment in Greenwich Village. They are all interesting people, still very much engaged in all kind of pursuits and living active, vital lives, despite health issues, some serious, that are part of growing old as happens to us homo sapiens on the planet Earth.

We enjoy a delicious dinner outside at a beach-side sea food restaurant, talking about old times, new times and this fragile and dangerous moment in American politics. We retire early to rest up for the big day tomorrow—the Systemetrics reunion.

 

Monday, July 4 and Tuesday, July 5

Mile 3,390. Off to Santa Barbara—another 800 miles — where the next reunion will take place on Thursday, July 7, with two interim motel stops along the way. We drop Cousin Lynn off at the Albuquerque airport and then get back on I-40. The story line for these two days is the vastness, emptiness and extraordinary beauty of the American West. You drive mile after mile after mile seeing very few signs of any living creature. Hundreds of miles separate tiny settlements; and where there is an occasional gas station at an exit ramp, often a blue sign will be posted noting the distance to the “next exit with services.” Usually it is well over 50 miles, sometimes as much as 75 miles.

Several people told me that we would be really bored during this part of the trip since the scenery was described as being pretty much the same. Wrong on both counts. We were not bored, and the scenery varies a lot, though in subtle ways, determined largely by altitude. We descended from 7,000 feet at Santa Fe to around 5,000 feet in Albuquerque where it was much more arid with less sage brush. As we climbed up again, it became greener with larger, olive-colored bushes and then browner as we descended. This pattern repeated it self again and again. The mountains and the desert change colors from gray to olive to brown to purple depending on the angle of the sun. The vast sky is constantly in flux with tiny white puffs, towering thunderheads and high cobweb wisps. Temperatures range from the mid 70s in the higher elevations to 115 degrees in the valleys.   In other words change is always happening, and at times I felt I was experiencing infinity. There is no way to do justice to what it feels like when crossing this magical land. It can only be experienced and should be on everyone’s bucket list.

The evening of the Fourth of July we stayed in Flagstaff at a small motel which Embry booked through Hotline and spent the evening exploring the town. To get to Flagstaff, we climbed again to 7,000 feet where we found ourselves for the first time surrounded by towering pines (some dying) and occasional streams and ponds. The town itself has a vibrant, historic town center, reminding me of Ashville, NC. There are lots of coffee houses, cafes, boutiques, art galleries and stores selling mountain gear. Hip looking people are milling around, eating ice cream and casually watching guitarists playing ballads and folk music. A poster advertises a blue grass festival in August, and some middle-age guy in a cowboy hat is asking people to sign a petition supporting a local ordinance that would prevent the chief executive of the local hospital from earning more money than the President of the United States.

On July 5, we descend to lower grades and 115 degree temperatures as we enter California and the Mojave Desert. It is so dry here that it feels like we might just as well be on the surface of the moon, though there is beauty here too—just more barren and stark.

By late afternoon we are passing through Barstow where I-40 suddenly merges into I-15. We have been traveling on I-40, starting in Asheville almost three weeks ago, and have traveled on this road for over 3,500 miles. Suddenly we realize that this part of the journey is over. Goodbye, I-40, you have been a good friend. We will miss you!

We stop for the evening at another motel Embry booked on Hotline at a dusty, cluttered, shabby intersection in a town called Victorville, where every fast food establishment, gas station and motel known to humans is represented in all their ugly charm. We decide to eat in (Popeye’s Fried Chicken) after being warned by the guy at the liquor store (Episcopalians don’t miss happy hour.) that venturing outside after dark is very dangerous and we would be risking our life.

We retire to news accounts of Hillary’s email problems, reminding us that we are now back in the real world.

 

Sunday, July 3

I guess you could call this the official reunion day. After a huge brunch at our cousin Rick and Karen’s condo, everyone went their separate ways, walking down the hill to the historic center of Santa Fe with all the museums and galleries, milling around with locals and tourists, who are here for the July Fourth weekend. Having been to Santa Fe several times, I used the time to get the blog up to date. Around five o’clock folks meandered back up the hill, exhausted but in good spirits. The sons, Erik and Rich, both now in their forties, were responsible for grilling hamburgers on the back porch overlooking the city. By seven o’clock there was more food on the table than anyone could eat, with Karen filling in with salads and casseroles. After dinner all eighteen of us walked across the street to the suite where Erik and Michelle are staying with their three youngsters. Erik is a professional documentary film editor living in L.A. and he showed a 15 minute video he had made honoring Dash, his grandmother. The video used the PBS Story Corps format with Dash talking about her life of 98 years illustrated with photos and film clips. It was extraordinary (as you would expect from a seasoned professional), about an extraordinary woman who continues to be an inspiration to all of us gathered for the reunion and my guess is to a lot of others as well.

During the course of the evening I managed to have brief conversations with several of the cousins regarding politics and religion, sometimes taboo topics, especially at family reunions when there are differences of opinion. I guess you could say that I could not help myself. I was relieved that no avid Trump supporters were among us, but I was aware that some of the cousins have world views which are in fact different from my own. One cousin is an evangelical Christian, whose faith is profoundly important to him and another is a devoted conservative, who under no circumstances would ever vote for Hillary (which this year will probably mean not voting at all).

What came through for me was this: no one has an exclusive claim on the truth, and just because you don’t happen to view the world in the same way does not mean those who disagree with you are inferior in any respect. The cousins with differing political and religious views are people who have solid values. They are loving and kind and want to do the right thing. They are good people. They are family. They are friends.

Living in a bubble in Washington where practically everyone we know is a secular liberal (even many who attend church regularly), it is too easy to embrace an us versus them attitude. Because of our education and our various “achievements,” it is all too easy for us urbanites to think that we are better, more enlightened, and intellectually superior. One of the things that I am reminded of as we cross this great nation of ours is that this is not the case. Good people can and do have different takes on life.

And as Embry pointed out, friendship and family “trump” politics every time.

 

Friday, July 1 and Saturday, July 2

We set off from Ghost Ranch with Jasper exchanging contact information with his buddies after breakfast. The drive to the airport is uneventful as Embry deposits him on the plane to Oakland where he will meet his parents and sister for a week in San Francisco where they are vacationing. We will rendezvous with them in 10 days in Yosemite.

Our next stop: The McMichael Reunion in Santa Fe.

Now to fully understand the significance of this event, you need to know something about the McMichael family. Embry’s Uncle Jack was her mother’s only brother and the youngest of four children . They were the children of a country doctor, practicing family medicine in Quitman, Georgia in the 1930s and 40s. This town is about 30 miles from Baker County where we worked in the Civil Rights Movement in 1966. So the logical conclusion would be that since we humans are products of our culture, the McMichael family from the Deep South in the era of Jim Crow would be hard-nosed reactionaries and probably outright racists. Not so with this family. All four children turned out to be quite progressive. Uncle Jack, however, was an outright radical. He received a MDiv from Union in New York City, became a Methodist minister and was actually studying at Union the 1960s working on a PhD at the same time I was a divinity student there. His and his wife, Dash, were involved in many left wing causes in the 1950s, putting them at odds with the McCarthyism of the day, ultimately leading to a career-threatening appearance before the House of Un-American Activities Committee. So you could say they are not your typical Southern family.

Embry’s mother’s siblings produced a bunch of first cousins for Embry, with whom she remains remarkably close. The children of Uncle Jack, however, are the ones we are closest to—especially Rick and Karen—who are hosting the reunion for the Uncle Jack /Aunt Dash line. We are so lucky to be here. There are 18 of us participating in the reunion including Aunt Dash, who is 98 years old and living in a retirement community in the Bay Area. She is now partially blind but otherwise is in extraordinarily good health for someone her age, still getting lots of exercise, and just as smart and as sharp as any of us. Rick’s brother and sister and their spouses are here along with three members of the next generation and four of Aunt Dash’s great grandchildren. We have come from all over–the Washington area, Seattle, the Bay area, Sonoma County, Los Angeles, and south Florida.

It is a fine weekend of relaxed conversation and reminiscing, mostly sitting on the deck of Rick and Karen’s condo overlooking the city with magnificent views of the valley and mountains in the distance. I spend Saturday morning at the urgent care center, getting a cortisone shot for my ailing knee and antibiotics for my infected ear. I was very impressed with the quality of care and somewhat amazed when one of the doctors told me he had spent several years living in Annapolis where he was an avid sailor, racer, and yacht broker and also worked for a while as a yacht charter captain in the British Virgin Islands working for a company that sold out to Sun Sail(where I got our current sailboat, “Second Wind”.) Small world, as they say.

The highlight of Saturday was an evening at the Santa Fe Opera. The whole gang, except for the great grandchildren and their parents, took in a meal and lecture (Rick and Karen are members so we got in the exclusive event.) followed by a stunning performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, returning to our hotel (across from Rick and Karen’s condo) at one a.m., exhausted.

Long day but rich and full and great to be again with lifelong friends and relatives. This adventure is turning out to be a nostalgia trip with the reconnection theme becoming a main story line