On the Road Again

Point Hueneme

The world is a book and those who do not travel see only one page.                     ~ St. Augustine

So I love traveling and as most of you know I’m on the road again, can never help but sing a little Willie Nelson every time I set out.  So I lit out of the Mojave Desert early Saturday and headed for Simi Valley, an auspicious start as there was no traffic on the 405, for those of you who don’t live in Southern California, trust me, that’s a rare and beautiful thing.  My goal for the morning was the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.  A few days earlier, while figuring out what I wanted to do down on the way to the coast an ad came up showing that the library had a Genghis Khan exhibit and there it was, destination decided.

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

I arrived at the library at opening time, 10AM and there were already about a 100 people in line.  I was pretty surprised and apparently they were just early arrivers, by time I left an hour or so later there was no one in line.

The grounds at the library are impressive and no more so than when viewed from the museum’s hangar, yes, hangar where they exhibit Air Force One, Marine One and a number of vehicles.

The Reagan museum was about what I expected, a very positive look at the president’s life and time in office.  Lot’s of flag waving rah-rah patriotism and the like, but it was interesting.  There was one small weird thing that occurred while I was there, a small rip in space and time, sort of a Philadelphia Experiment moment, a frog alien came riding in on a horse and that unfortunately resulted in the poor horse rematerializing into the floor.

Genghis Khan

I was really excited for the Genghis Khan exhibit.  He was an amazing human, conquered half the bloody world, like Napoleon, made huge contributions to law and culture.  His empire created local democracies, the rule of law and heavily believed in freedom of religion creating societies where Buddhists, Muslims and Christians lived together.  His second successor, his son Kublai Khan, united China and  formed the Yang Dynasty.  I very much loved the ceremonial masks in the exhibit.

Lunch with a Friend

Part of any of my travel adventures involves catching up with old friends whenever possible and the reason I initially headed south and west on this trip was to connect with my friend Luis.  Someone I have a lot in common with, loved working with and is someone who is always a lock for a great conversation, one of his questions even inspired an old post, What is the price of being you?  It was great to see him and spend a little time.

Really he likes me, should have counted so he could smile on cue.

The first disaster, wait that should be in quotes, “disaster”

There are always small misadventures on any adventure and all you can hope for is that they will be small and I’ve already had my first.  The car in front of me swerved and I was suddenly running over something I hadn’t seen, hear a loud pop and then felt and heard something dragging under my car.  I pulled off and found a small five gallon bucket wedged to the frame in front of my rear tire.  I pulled it out and tossed it off the highway, frustrated but didn’t see any damage and began driving, only to notice an odd noise.  When I finally found a quiet place to pull off I found that the bucket had broke off a clip on the plastic front end and flap in front of my front tire.  As I sped up the wind pushed the piece back and it was rubbing against the tire.  The tire was destroying the plastic and what I had to do was disassemble the lower piece and cut off part of it to keep it off my tire.  Tomorrow I’ll get to a shop and see if I can get the remaining piece clipped or wired back to the frame.  So yeah, sucks a bit but could have been much worse.

The Pacific Ocean

I love going literally coast to coast, so I made a point of making a stop at the Pacific on this end of the journey at Pt. Hueneme.  I walked out on the pier, watched some surfers and stuck my toes in the Pacific.  Eastward ho!  But north first to see some friends in Sacramento.  As always, I hope you have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane