On Friday after dinner we went out for coffee. Going out for coffee was always one of our favorite things to do in Boulder, so we keep trying (and failing) to recreate that experience in Ridgecrest. The cafe that seems to come closest (though not very close at all) to our favorite cafe back home is Casa Java, which is in the half-empty shopping center at the corner of Downs and Drummond. It's miles from where we live so we have to drive there. It closes at 7:30 pm, so we have to rush over right after dinner. But it's kind of funky, and it's baby friendly, so we like it pretty well.
We took our treats (a mocha for Rocket Boy, iced tea for me, and a scone for the babies) to a table outside (because being baby friendly only goes so far), but were disturbed by several teenage boys smoking near us. Sometimes I wonder whether Ridgecrest is solely responsible for keeping the tobacco industry going.
Afterwards, we walked across the parking lot to Hollywood Video, which is closing, and bought a few classic DVDs. Are all the video stores in the world closing? Ridgecrest lost its Blockbuster a while back and now here goes our other video store. Theoretically we shouldn't care, because we are now Netflixians, but it was nice having a video store as a backup.
And we're such bad Netflixians. We've been members for about 2 months now and have watched 3 videos. The third one, "Inglourious Basterds," we kept out for a full month because we couldn't bring ourselves to watch it. "Let's just send it back," I kept saying, but Rocket Boy couldn't handle that idea. So it sat around and sat around and sat around and FINALLY we watched it, over the course of 3 nights. God, was that awful. Not recommended (unless you like to watch dead people being scalped). Bleah.
Saturday morning (after hurriedly mailing back "Inglourious Basterds") we mowed our front lawn. This is a huge undertaking because (a) the lawn is essentially dead, (b) it's infested with weird tall weeds, and (c) we have a push mower. What we do is (a) push the push mower all over the lawn, fruitlessly (b) get out the weed whacker and whack all the weeds, and (c) do it all over again because the lawn is still covered with weird tall weeds. Eventually the weed whacker broke, so we had to stop. That evening our next-door neighbor complimented Rocket Boy on the lawn, so we must have achieved something, but not much.
After doing the lawn we went to Trona, because they were having a "Fly-In" at the Trona Airport. We saw it advertised in the newspaper, and also one of Rocket Boy's coworkers invited us (he keeps a plane there). It was taking place all weekend, Friday through Monday, but they were serving lunch on Saturday, so that's when we went. We drove the 22 miles to Trona, plus a few more to get to the airport. The airport is pretty small.
When we arrived we saw a few planes parked out where you could look at them, but no planes seemed to be flying in, as one might expect at a Fly-In. We went into the Pilots' Lounge to see what was going on.
It turned out that not much was. No other planes were expected to be flying in that day. So we followed everyone else over to one of the hangars where they were serving lunch. For $5 you could get a hot dog (either boiled or grilled), a bun, and some chili, which you could have over the hot dog or separately, in a plastic bowl. Rocket Boy and I split a grilled hot dog with chili and the babies split a boiled hot dog without.
After lunch we walked across the runway to examine this giant weather vane thingie. It has lights on it so it can be seen at night by planes flying in.
After examining the weather vane for a while, we watched a little plane take off and go flying away. The babies thought that was very interesting. And then it seemed that we had exhausted the offerings of the Fly-In, so we drove over to the restaurant in "downtown" Trona and had a second lunch. While we were eating, we chatted with an older couple who were also having lunch. As is usual for Trona, the older couple turned out to have lived there for at least 50 years and remembered when everything was fabulous there, as well as all the dates of when everything closed down (the movie theater, the old swimming pool, etc.).
Really, how could Trona ever have been fabulous? I don't care how much money it might have had, it still would have been horribly hot and smelly, with a dirt football field at the high school because grass doesn't grow in the soil there. Of course grass doesn't grow at our house either, so maybe I shouldn't talk.
But it occurred to me that we've come a long way since the first time we visited Trona. It still seems pathetic, but it's a comfortable pathetic. The people are always friendly and I have yet to be accosted by a meth addict. Ridgecrest has such an angry vibe, people are so militant about everything all the time. Tronites are a lot more laid back.
We were overdue for naps, so we headed home without visiting the Trona museum, but that's OK. We'll be back.
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