Random thoughts... - by Tocky
mxleader on 25/8/2023 at 17:28
Quote Posted by demagogue
I'll always be a Tudor guy. :HenryVIII:
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/GjBHhmt.jpgThis was my grandparents Tudor style house when I was a kid.
Azaran on 25/8/2023 at 17:38
We should probably make a dedicated architecture thread at this point
Tocky on 25/8/2023 at 20:34
Quote Posted by heywood
@Tocky,
I looked up the architect and he's actually a sculptor, Lyman Whitaker. That makes sense. If it were a real working house, we'd probably never hear of it, because anyone who builds in the middle of the Mojave desert like that probably wants to get away. I used to spend time there back in my Air Force days. There were towns along the Antelope, Victor, and Yucca Valley, with bigger settlements closer to LA and San Bernardino. Outside of those pockets of civilization, the desert was
weird. And not in a fun way. More like sketchy. I could tell a few stories. But basically, I can't imagine moving there unless I really wanted to minimize social contact.
Did you say stories? Don't tease if you don't intend to please. Anyway I'm headed out that way week after next so if there is anything you think I should see let me know. We will fly out but then after a brief stint kicking bums out of the way to take some pics of stars on the walk of fame we will head through that area from Quartz Hill to go to the Grand Canyon. Any heads up on stuff would be appreciated.
Also sup my Air Force brutha. We may go by Edwards and see the museum with the wingless plane they crashed at the beginning of every Six Million Dollar Man episode or Vasqez rocks but I think any dirt biking at Gorman is out this time.
heywood on 29/8/2023 at 18:19
Well, they're not Tocky stories.
On my first trip out there, we stayed at a little oasis community called Silver Lakes midway between Victorville and Barstow on old Rt 66. There were two man-made lakes, 9-hole and 18-hole golf courses, nice green grass, deciduous trees, and hundreds of single family homes on the lake fronts and golf courses. It was like a Florida retirement community dropped in the middle of the Mojave desert. They even had non-migratory geese! I was surprised they could suck that much water out of the intermittent and usually dry Mojave river with all the other users out there. The association running the place had guest apartments, which were nice, but the whole time we were there it felt like we were being watched. Any little breach of etiquette was taken note of and accompanied by a disapproving look. (Edit: I Googled the place and it's in Helendale, and it looks like it's been run down a fair bit. I guess all the wealthy gray hairs are gone and it's morphed into something more middle class.)
We used to fly into Ontario airport or LAX depending on rates, and abuse the hell out of our rental cars crossing the desert. I remember one time getting stuck with a Chrysler Sebring convertible which topped out at ~110, which wasn't fast enough to keep up with the other two cars I was following down a very long, straight, empty road. After about 10 minutes at top speed, they were long gone over the horizon and I thought I was lost, but thankfully they waited at the end of the road for me.
Another time we were on a long dirt road that looked like a straight line for 20-30 miles on the map. We started at a reasonable speed, maybe 45, but soon we were bombing down this dirt road at 70, which is about all the rental car suspension could take, and I had to back waaay off because the two cars in front of me are throwing up enormous rooster tails of dust and it's hard to see. Good thing the road is straight as an arrow... And then all of a sudden the dust cloud gets a lot denser and I can't see shit. I start slowing down, wondering how far ahead the next car is, and suddenly there's a hard 90-degree turn in the road. I slammed on the brakes and got it stopped in time thanks to ABS, but I noticed tire tracks running off the corner and leading to an abandoned late model car with plates about 100 feet out in the desert scrub. We enjoyed a couple beers at dinner wondering what circumstances led to it being abandoned in the middle of nowhere after what looked like a very minor off-road excursion.
That was the first of several recently abandoned cars I saw in odd remote places. I don't mean rusty old hulks left on abandoned properties (of which there are many) but 1990s cars that were obviously road worthy enough to be driven many miles out into the desert. I assume they were used in some sort of crime, perhaps getaway cars driven out of the LA basin after a heist?
Other curiosities of that part of the desert stem from the 1950s boom, when the USG was unloading public land for a song. Investors bought 1x1 mile parcels for practically nothing. With the intent to subdivide the land and sell it to small farmers or home builders, they built roads, lots of them. From the air, you can see grids of pointless roads with nothing on them all over the southwestern Mojave. The irregular ones around terrain are ATV trails. In a few places, you can see residential tracts laid out with roads and street signs, but no houses. Apparently a lot of people who took the cheap land tried to farm it, because the area is full of abandoned greenhouses. And some abandoned homes, although you never can tell. One time, we stopped to check out a supposed ghost town, which wasn't. We did poke around one abandoned property, and while walking towards another, we saw someone with a rifle in the window and quickly realized it wasn't abandoned and we should probably not hang around. We were talking about it back at our hotel in Lancaster (more on the hotel in a moment), and somebody said you don't want to mess with the farmers up there. Well, I don't know how they get by, but they were definitely not farming.
The area experienced another development boom in the 1980s as the LA basin suburban sprawl spilled through the San Gabriel mountains and onto the desert. Most of the Antelope valley and Victor valley were developed then, and the development was surprisingly concentrated. Even on the outskirts, there are grid squares packed densely with homes just like they do in the LA basin, but with vast empty desert all around. Those communities developed in the 80s were friendly and had all the usual suburban trappings. But outside of the suburban areas, everybody had a fence and a yard full of broken shit, and I saw a lot of gates with warning signs. I also remember nearly every place looking like there was nobody home. I'm guessing that's because there were a lot of migrants, and we were white guys wearing ties looking like G-men.
Another thing I saw a lot of was kitch, which we never really stopped to check out. One time, we did follow a sign to the "American Museum of Burlesque" (or something like that) down a road to somebody's home, but then we chickened out. A coworker went there a couple years after and said it was a lonely old woman with a collection of lingerie, mannequins, and wax figures.
The flight test museum at Edwards is pretty cool if you're into aviation. It's nowhere near the Smithsonian or the USAF museum in Dayton, but it has some unique aircraft that I don't think you can see anyplace else. The question is whether it's worth the detour, when there's such an abundance of things to see around LA.
You mentioned Quartz Hill, which is a suburb of Lancaster/Palmdale. Are you staying with someone there? If not, I think there are better places to stay depending on your route. But if you are there, keep an eye out for planes taking off from Air Force Plant 42. Sometimes a little crowd of plane spotters would gather at an intersection on the Sierra highway just off the west end of the main runway, hoping to see something cool. One time when I was at Plant 42, I got to see a U-2 take off and land, an SR-71 do the same, a B-1B take off, and a flight of 4 F-117s take off in formation together. I also got to see the SR-71 on the apron, dripping kerosene from its wings because they don't fully seal until heated by supersonic flight. Heard the sonic boom too. I guess I was lucky because only 3 were returned to service in the late 90s, and only for a couple years and no operational missions. But the U-2 was actually the coolest to watch. The lift it produces is unbelievable.
Anyway, back to your trip. What route are you currently planning on taking? There's a lot of options depending on what part of the Grand Canyon you're trying to reach and what you want to see along the way. And where you're flying home from. For example, if you're going to Grand Canyon Village or Havasu canyon on the south rim, the most direct route is via I-40 through Needles and Kingman, but if you have a little more time you can take old Rt 66 instead, for some or all of the route from Barstow to Needles. If you are headed to the north rim of the canyon, you'll want to take the 15 out of Barstow through Vegas. And if you're headed to Grand Canyon West for the skywalk, then it would make sense to take the 15 and see Hoover Dam and Lake Mead along the way.
Either way will bring you through Barstow. The fastest way to Barstow from Hollywood will be to take the 10 east out of LA to pick up the 15, or go north from Hollywood on 101 to the Ventura freeway and take that east to 210 and then to 15. It will depend on traffic, so make sure you have a GPS with live traffic or use a phone. Or if you can spare a couple extra hours and want to take a more scenic route through the San Gabriel's, try the Angeles Crest highway. If you want to visit a real ghost town, there's an abandoned silver mining town called Calico about 10 miles out of Barstow. It all depends on what you like to do and how much time you have.
heywood on 29/8/2023 at 20:42
One more little story I just remembered, from the Antelope Valley Inn. We used to stay there because they took good care of people booking at the government rate. When we checked in this time, they gave us two orange raffle tickets each, redeemable for free drinks at the bar. While we were having our free drinks, they rolled out some free appetizers. So we lingered at the bar a little longer. And then a woman came around selling tickets for a real raffle, using the same orange tickets we were redeeming for free beers. :sly:
They also had a promotion at the hotel restaurant that night to pull in the locals. It was $5 steak night. They were serving cafeteria style. You paid someone, received a ticket, and got in line for the fixings. When you got to the counter, you handed the cook a ticket and he put an 8 oz. steak on your plate. Guess what tickets they were using? Orange raffle tickets, of course. Naturally, as soon as the actual raffle was over, a bunch of people cleared out of the bar, leaving a bunch of tickets around that we gathered up. :ebil:
So that night I ate 3 steaks, a bunch of chicken wings, and had 4 or 5 beers, all on the house without a complaint from the bartender (who we did tip). My tech sergeant had 4 steaks, dessert, closed out the bar at midnight, and soaked in the hot tub until 2AM. And we still got per diem for the dinner meal we never paid for.
I'm not necessarily proud of that last point, but I was making about $26k/year with a masters in electrical engineering while my college friends in the civilian world were making double that with bachelor's degrees, and I had just maxed out my two personal credit cards to buy an engagement ring. And I had gotten in the hole when my motorcycle broke down 200 miles from home, on my way to meet my wife for her birthday and get engaged. So I was happy to find deals.
Tocky on 14/9/2023 at 02:09
Hey I'm not going to tell on you. Sounds like you lucked into a deal. I missed all your advice as I was packing that night and left the next day. It turned out we just did the south rim anyway. Sort of a hit and miss trip on what I wanted what with having to adjust to my friend who is not exactly like me, which is to say, manic. I'm up at five and making coffee and he lumbers down at ten so I don't think we ever left before eleven on the best of days. But we did plenty and I will show pictures and save the thousand words. First we did Hollywood.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/wXfjXqk.jpgI'm not saying what was in the case, just that it gave off a yellow light.
Okay, it was a yellow light.
More later. Likely much more. We saw a lot of shit I've always wanted to see.
Tocky on 14/9/2023 at 02:45
Obviously that was not Samuel L. Jackson but he was a cool dude. Up close you could see where his prosthetic latex had been applied but I was not about to critique his makeup. He did damn good. One more layer of his skin tone would have made it perfect. That was worth a twenty but I only had seven bucks in my pocket. I had a couple thousand in a packet strapped to my calf but it turned out little use for it. Hardly anyone took cash. It was cards or ap everywhere. Craziest shit I've ever seen. Anyway he was cool. Never even looked at what I gave him. He said he had to come up with something special what with all the freaks doing crap for money and I told him he had nailed it. I don't know that I would have been much more happy to meet the real one. He was fun to talk to.
First we went by the Magic Castle. I do a few tricks with spider wire and stuff but to go beyond the bar area you have to be a real magician. Of course the gift shop was open to all and I got a T and some card tricks. I did pee where some great magicians have peed though. That too was open
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/UmtF9tN.jpgThis bookcase opened to the bar area. Well of course it did. You see a bookcase in a magic castle and it's going to right? I would have thought the owl but no, it was a button on one of the books.
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https://i.imgur.com/JmjJb63.jpgTocky on 15/9/2023 at 03:39
This is the Bat Cave. It's the one the Syd Barras Bat Mobile roared out of in the sixties series. It is also featured in Army of Darkness and in the original Body Snatchers. Remember the scene where his girlfriend succumbs to sleep? I do. There are other movies that used it too. When I walked through it I felt a holy reverence... and then got to the other side where a young lady and her two photographers were taking naked pictures for her Onlyfans page. Fuck if that isn't life right there. Tends to bring you right back down to earth it does. No. I did not take any of her myself. I waited in the cave until they finished. She had a lovely 19 year old body though. I hope her soul was enough to pay the rent.
Me and my babe at the front.
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https://i.imgur.com/kMTZuOl.jpgA farther view-
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https://i.imgur.com/UODk4Ue.jpgAt the back there was a Druid circle where the young lady was posing in a chair. I had to have one there. I took a stone. Just asking for a curse. A small curse as it was a small stone.
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https://i.imgur.com/vVgfzRV.jpgFrom the rear heh. You know what? I think they may have used the rear to roar out of. Heh again.
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https://i.imgur.com/nbncsQ7.jpgWould have explored the surrounding area but...
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https://i.imgur.com/DuLWXuh.jpgDid see a coyote.
