The beer was cold, the sandwich was good
And what more do you need to know about a waterside joint in the delta?
We got an urge to take a ride, and ended up on Bethel Island, looking for a place to eat. The first place we looked was closed, and they claimed there was no other place around. They lied. A quick Google search took us to the Rusty Porthole, and we had a delightful time.
Best friends in the whole world
Have I forgotten to mention that the Evil Twin is in town? Things have been a little crazy around here.
The Rusty Porthole is mostly a bar, which is not where you’d expect to find me. But it’s definitely the kind of bar I’d hang out in if that was my style. There were even two women who had come from a Red Hat Society meeting, still in their hats and purple dresses.
Not where you usually find me
The sign pretty much sums the place up:
Sounds like a plan to me, and I don’t drink or fish.
Seats were obtained and sandwiches ordered. Gail, ever the social butterfly, managed to score a taste of some kind of cinnamon whiskey the guy next to her was drinking. She won’t be changing her regular quaff.
Amazing how much trouble can look this good.
On to the food. Gail and Susan had the fish sandwich, and pronounced it excellent:
Tasty, crispy sandwich and nice fat fries.
Karl was born in England (arrived in the US on the Queen Mary), so he had the fish and chips. Which turned out not to be the broad, wedge-cut slabs of spuds you would expect, but thin sliced house-made still hot potato chips. The fish was in the classic tradition, though.
Fish and chips, Rusty Porthole style
Being an old fashioned guy, I had a grilled ham and cheese sandwich. Nothing special in concept or presentation, just basic food:
Having the cole slaw instead of the fries. See how healthy I’m eating?
Service was provided by the bartender, who did spectacular job of keeping the joint running. Prices are low, the beer is cold, the food is good and the service is swift. You can’t ask for much more than that.
It’s good to be XXCentric
XXCentric is the name of the performance we saw last night of the Smuin Ballet.
Three acts–the first very modern and non-narrative, the second much warmer Latin music, the third act is all Gershwin. The intermissions seemed to drag on too long, but the ballets were wonderful.
A favorite dancer of mine, Shannon Hurlburt, came out of retirement to dance in the Gershwin numbers, and the crowd went wild when he came onstage.
I write about these guys all the time, because I enjoy them so much. Smuin Ballet is at the Lesher Center tonight and Sunday, find the time and get there.
39 the hard way
Happy Birthday Joan
The most pleasant round of a day of bridge is always table 5 (sometimes 6) where Joan Watson is playing with Zina Stokol. Two of the happiest, friendliest women on Earth, you can’t help but enjoy yourself.
Today is Joan’s 39th birthday, backwards. Which is to say that she was born just 13 months after my father was, in 1921, and turned 93 today. Going on 94. I’m impressed.
Joan is from Illinois, but arrived here when she was just 23, following the soldier she loved and married. At that time Walnut Creek had only 1 stop light, at the corner of Mount Diablo and Mail Street. The pavement ended a few blocks from downtown and the streets were gravel and tar.
In her 40’s, Joan went back to school at SF State and then UC Berkeley to become a marriage and family psychologist, practicing in eastern end of Lafayette
If a good attitude is indeed the secret to a long life, then Joan should live forever. I certainly hope she does. Regardless of what happens with the cards, she is always upbeat, ethical, pleasant and a pleasure to play against.
Happy Birthday Joan.
At the old ball game
The full panorama of the game.
We bought some tickets to the Oakland A’s last year at the Ruth Bancroft Garden gala, and today was the day. For some odd reason, there were 5 tickets. We took Dick and Joyce Hart, noted A’s fans, to explain the game to me. Gail was raised on minor league ball in Fresno and Visalia and understands these things. I sold the fifth ticket to a scalper just outside the gates, and sinfully enjoyed the schadenfreude of noting that he didn’t succeed in reselling it–the seat stayed empty throughout the game.
The game was a sellout, and I found that there must be some kind of parking lot etiquette that I’m unaware of. People get there hours ahead of game time to tailgate, and they take up quite a few parking spaces to set up their barbecues. Come game time, and the parking lot is filling up. Do they vacate these additional spaces? No. Is it proper to ask them to let you park? How many parking spaces are wasted by these beer swilling yobbos and their great squalling hordes of green and yellow clad rug rats?
We had a great time. The biggest booster of the team was sitting right behind us:
The best cheering duo in the stadium.
O.co stadium is pretty old and not as interesting as the few other parks I’ve been to. The jumbotron screens just aren’t very jumbo, and the one over right field is in full sun at the start of the game, making it washed out and dull. The scoreboards are old-fashioned dot matrix screens, with so many of the dots burned out or broken they are hard to read. If you don’t know anything about baseball, you notice things like this.
Baseball is a family game–the stadium was loaded with kids like the ones pictured above. I loved it.
Sometimes, you get lucky with pictures.
Josh Donaldson ties the game with a double in the bottom of the ninth.
The white streak in front of the bat is the ball taking off for deep center.
The A’s scored two runs to tie the game in the bottom of the ninth, then scored again to win the tenth. The crowd cheered, Gail cheered, I cheered. The couple sitting next to us with the score sheets and the fielders mitt cheered. This guy was really, really happy:
A man who puts the fan in fanatic.
It was fireworks night at the stadium, so almost nobody left after the game–except us. We were out of there and on our way to dinner, having chosen upscale chi-chi Japanese over hot dogs and CrackerJacks. Call me a Philistine, but a Philistine with tender taste buds.
Jack Fulcher
On the way to Ashland for a weekend of theater
As it must to all men, the end of life came to Jack on the 20th of April. He has crossed the rainbow bridge, and is no more. He has passed on. Bereft of life, he rests in peace. Jack has rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. He has expired and gone to meet his maker, he has ceased to be. Jack is an ex-economist.
No, I won’t be serious. Jack was never serious, and would be laughing about something and making obscure wisecracks right this minute if he could.
The Flower of Danville with Gail and Jack
The only way to get Jack to stop joking was to be mean to the Flower of Danville, Lisa. The scariest words I ever heard were the evening after a bridge player had disparaged her at the club. Jack and Lisa were at our house, and I sarcastically asked if he was going to go beat the guy up. Jacks answer: “He wasn’t home.” Jack the ABD (all but dissertation) PhD in economics could turn into a caveman at a moments notice when Lisa was concerned, and there was a real possibility of two 60-ish guys fighting in the street over her honor.
Beyond Lisa, Jack’s greatest love was Chica, his dog. Yes, he liked Mike and Billy and all the other animals in the menagerie, but Chica held his heart.
Going to the theater with Jack was always a treat because of the discussion afterward, especially if it was a play by his favorite playwright, Tom Stoppard. Jack’s opinions and insights were as interesting as the play; sometimes more. Maybe that’s because he was a child actor, working in the background of movies in the early to mid 50’s.
I’ve never met a man who loved his job more than the late Mr. Fulcher, or was sadder about retiring. Still, Jack was playing cards a few days a week, still reading and keeping up with the PUC, vacationing in Hawaii, and walking dogs, all while protecting and caring for the Flower of Danville.
There was nothing religious about him, although he had been raised Methodist. He chose to donate his body to UCSF.
There will be a celebration of life on Saturday, May 24 from 4 to 7 p.m. at 3175 Teigland Road, Lafayette.
The Evolution of Medicine
The first person I ever knew who had open heart surgery was Mr. Marshall, one of the fathers in my Boy Scout Troop. He had a huge L-shaped scar on his chest from the operation.
Then, 20 years ago, my friend the late Dr. Larry Washington had a bypass. He ended up with an 8 inch incision on his chest and one 20 inches down his leg, where they harvested the vein for the graft. He told me that recovering from the cut on his leg was harder than from the one in his chest.
13 years ago, when I had a bypass, the leg incision had been reduced to 3 smaller ones, each 1 1/2 inches.
Ten years ago, when Mike had a heart attack in Wisconsin, he had angioplasty: they threaded a catheter through a 1 inch incision in his groin up to his heart, inserted a stent or two and he was healthy. The incision was painful, and he was bruised along 30% of his side.
Tuesday, I had an angioplasty. They inserted the catheter into my left wrist. Here:
Yep, that little tiny nick is all it took.
I’ve hurt myself worse shaving.
The progression in medicine is astonishing. The body insult has gone from huge wounds to infinitesimal pinpricks. Recovery time is almost nothing. It’s impossible to imagine what they will think of next, how little intrusion it will take to fix the things that go wrong with the human body. Thanks, medical innovators. Life is good.
The worst food in Walnut Creek
I knew that the pain in my chest walking back to the playing site after dinner wasn’t mere rebellion over the Tennessee cuisine; I just didn’t want to face facts. Thirteen years ago I had a double bypass and the old troubles were clearly back, but I wasn’t going to tell Mike why we had to walk slower.
Monday Mike and I were on the six am flight from Knoxville to San Francisco via Dallas. During the layover, I called Kaiser in Walnut Creek to make an appointment for later in the day. They wanted me to leave the airport and head for the nearest emergency room, but I thought that was a bit extreme.
Returning home, I dropped my luggage at the house and headed towards my doctor. She sent me to the ER, and from there I was admitted to the hospital, scheduled for an angiogram.
There was dinner that night, of a sort. Overcooked veggies, tasteless meatballs, god-awful pasta and a totally un identifiable sauce. The little bag of grapes was good.
Not the dinner of champions.
Bad as dinner was, at least it was food. There was to be no more food or drink until after the procedure, sometime Tuesday. Sleep would be randomly interrupted for blood tests and blood pressure checks, then the waiting would resume.
Everything so far, I typed with one finger on my phone in the hospital. Now I’m home, using a proper keyboard, and things will go better.
Finally, about one in the afternoon, I was taken to whatever they call the place where they do the angiogram. I met a cool young guy who is an interventional cardiologist, which means he snakes wires in people’s bodies and makes them healthy. He told me all the things that could go wrong and all the reasons I didn’t want it, then I signed the consent forms and we got to work.
Not that I can tell you anything–I was out cold and I don’t remember a thing. I woke up and the only difference was an incision on my left wrist where they insert the probe–much easier than the older method in the groin. They tell me that the grafts from my bypass 13 years ago were fine, but there was another artery that was blocked, so they opened it up and inserted a stent to keep it open.
After that, it was just kicking back, finally getting some food, and trying to get out of the joint. I got a big surprise when Danny Friedman came to visit, full of bonhomie and good cheer. Life is good with friends like Dan.
One more long boring night in an uncomfortable bed, but at least it was the start of a new season of Deadliest Catch. I had to walk laps around the hospital this morning with a keeper to prove that it wouldn’t overtax my heart, but that was no problem at all. It’s kind of fun not to get winded in the first 100 feet. I got out around noon, but not until we had to have a major discussion about me driving myself home–they wanted Gail to come get me, and I said I drove myself there and I’m a damn sight healthier now than I was then. Sanity won out over hospital bureaucracy, but it wasn’t easy.
So my trip to Gatlinburg lasted a couple of days longer than I thought it would, but at least I got home before going to the hospital–I don’t think I would have wanted to do this in Tennessee. I’ve got the heart of a 16 year old again, I hope. Kaiser will now give me lots of things I should be doing, and maybe I’ll even do a few of them, and try to avoid doing this yet again.
Gatlinburg wrap up
And we’re done.
Mike and I are in the Knoxville airport Hilton until our awful o’clock flight home tomorrow. We played the first half of the Swiss, then lit out for the bright lights and big city. The rest of the boys finished the event for us, placing 18th or so. The glory will never end.
Yesterday, we made it to the finals of the KO’s and met up with old friend B. Wayne Stuart III, whose team promptly dismantled us. Still, while second place may be overrated, it beats third.
Second wasn’t so bad in the morning KO, either. We played the top seeds, the Lynch team. Mike and I had the dubious honor of playing against Jeff Meckstroth and Eric Rodwell, two pleasant opponents who made a mistake once, but not against us.
Friday it rained. The good news is that the registration gift here is an umbrella. The bad new is that it was made in China:
High quality manufacturing is always worth the investment
I managed to walk almost the entire block from where we park to the playing site before the wind turned my precious souvenir into scrap pot metal.
Saturday morning the guys took their annual trek to Cherokee, NC for pancakes. I’ve had those hotcakes twice, and that’s enough for one lifetime. Besides, the pancake house doesn’t even serve butter, but “butter flavored spread”, and their “maple syrup” has never seen a maple tree.
So another Gatlinburg Regional is in the books. We played a ton of bridge, picked up about 83 masterpoints, came in 2nd in 3 events and ate the usual boatload of fat and sugar. A good time was had by all.
I will not bring this home
I understand that Gatlinburg is the high temple of low taste, but I still cannot believe this shirt.
I don’t think Gail would care for it either
I played 47 hands well today
Unfortunately, we played 48 boards.
You know it isn’t a good thing when you partner asks why you didn’t take the setting trick. The opponents were in 4 Hearts, and we had 4 aces. Managed to take 3 of them, but I was lost in the ozone and didn’t grab the Ace of Diamonds when I could have.
The good news is that we won the match anyway.
And it was the third match of the day, and we won them all. Starting this morning when Mike and I came in for the second half and were down 39 imps, but we managed to pull it out.
Then in the second match of the day, we played a couple of pettifogging bridge table lawyers who made the event unpleasant except for the part where we beat them like a dirty rug.
And in the last match, when we just played well (on all but 1 board), and steadily surged ahead and took the match.
Cap that off with my annual dinner with Wendy Sullivan, where we plotted world domination and the eventual takeover of the ACBL, and this was a pretty good day.
Totally Unauthorized 