Our Final Chapter

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  Chico, California
Monday, September 20, 2010

Chico: the last stop on "Ross & Susan's Great Adventure"…

We arrived Thursday afternoon and were looking forward to seeing our son, Jake. While Ross worked setting up the RV, I stopped in to see Jake where he works as a receptionist for a Keller Williams Realty office.  His job title is DOFI, an acronym for Director of First Impressions.  (A little corny, but I liked it.) He greeted me with a big hug and then gave me a tour of the offices where I met a number of the realtors and other employees.  After work he joined us at the RV park where we enjoyed a nice Chinese take-out dinner. There was no time for a restaurant meal that evening since Jake goes to the local Buddhist Dharma Center on Thursday evenings.  He invited me to join him.

The Dharma Center is actually an unassuming ranch-style home that sits alone on a cul-de-sac a few miles outside Chico.  Although the front yard is somewhat unkempt, it is hidden by a row of tall bushes that block the view from the street.  In the backyard an oasis has been created with green lawn and numerous plants, all shaded by the canopies of giant oak trees.  It creates a serene setting, like a retreat from our everyday lives.  The inside of the house is modern with stylish wood accents, soft lighting, Buddhist books and artwork, and quiet voices. The combination of the house décor and the grounds make the Dharma Center seem like a special place, even as it sits surrounded by fields of dried wild grasses.

I wish I had arrived earlier to talk with the middle age man who was leading the group tonight in order to gain some understanding of Buddhist meditation and how a novice should approach it.  It was certainly a calming experience, but I know that regular practitioners gain so much more from the sessions.  Cushions were placed on the floor in a square arrangement with the ten participants looking inward.  After two meditation sessions of about 20 minutes each, one while seated and one while walking slowly around the seating area, the leader shared stories from a book by a local Buddhist author.  One of the true stories was about a homeless man that the author met one day in downtown Chico.  The homeless man was going through trash cans for remnants of discarded sandwiches, and storing each precious find in a paper bag.  While sifting through the trash, he came upon an aluminum can.  He proceeded to walk a few feet away and place the can in a nearby recyclable bin.  He then walked back to the trash and continued to look for food.  After hearing the story we talked a little about the homeless man and his actions.  It was a thought-provoking end to an interesting evening.

Friday, Ross and I rode our bikes in Bidwell Park, a large, mostly undeveloped park in downtown Chico.  An example of the unique development in the park is the community swimming pool.  Instead of the usual rectangular cement pool, the city of Chico has simply dammed up the creek that runs through the park.  Once a week, the small dam is opened, the water empties, and a cleaning crew cleans the creek bed which has been lined with concrete.  The dam is then closed, the creek water rises, and the swimming hole is ready for another week of children and adults playing and swimming in the cool water.

After a nice bike ride, we met Jake back at the RV where we sat outside for happy hour.  Our plan was an easy dinner at Tres Hombres, a local restaurant that is a gathering place for Cal-State Chico students.  When we arrived about 7:00pm, the place was packed inside, and over-flowing out onto the sidewalk. There were young people wedged into every bit of available space laughing, talking and drinking.  It didn’t look like it was going to be an easy dinner after all.  I talked the hostess into bringing a couple of chairs outside since Ross and Jake both walk with canes, and standing for a long time can be difficult.  After an hour wait, I found three girls who where getting ready to leave the taco bar.  Any seat was highly coveted by this point, and these seats were available without having to wait another hour for our name to be called by the hostess.  We grabbed them, even though that portion of the counter appeared to be the place where the waitresses usually pick up their orders.  It was not designed to be a seating area for customers.  We didn’t care.  It was now after 9:00pm and even eating in the alley out back was starting to sound good.  The food and drinks were great, due in part to the lively, noisy crowd of students.  And our vantage point at the taco bar was fun for watching the fast-paced food preparation by the cooks.

Jake had to work part of Saturday morning at the realty office, so we met up with him at 1:00pm at a nearby Vietnamese restaurant for pho. Lunch was quick since Jake had previously signed up as a volunteer at a charity booth in downtown for the next couple of hours.  Afterwards, he and I went shopping for clothes and shoes for him.  We don’t get to see him often, so I always enjoy getting him a few things.  Dinner at Olive Garden that night was good, but ended badly for Ross.  As we were leaving through the front door, Ross had to step over the slightly raised threshold.  He leaned forward to grab the handle bar of the door to steady himself.  But the moment his fingertips brushed the bar, the hostess reached behind him and swung the door open wide as a courtesy.  Ross couldn’t stop his forward motion and with the door now out-of-reach he fell hard onto his left hip.  Everyone tries to avoid falling, but Ross’ artificial hips require him to be even more diligent in preventing jarring falls.  He was bruised and his hip was extremely uncomfortable, but we won’t know the extent of any damage until he sees his doctors back in Orange County.

On our final day, Ross stayed off his feet as much as possible, so Jake arrived at the RV around lunch time with hamburgers from In-n-Out Burgers.  Afterward, he and I went on a long bike ride around Chico and beyond town on dirt and gravel roads.  We search unsuccessfully for the beavers that were known to be making a damn on a nearby creek.  And wild bushes along the way teased us with the prospect of fresh berries to eat, but it was too late in the summer to find any.  But we did find a pomegranate tree along a bike trail in town with ripe fruit, so we shared a couple of them and ended up with stained pink finger tips and sticky hands.  It was great mother and son fun.  Afterward, we drove to the condo Jake shares with 3 or 4 roommates so I could see the place and meet his little calico cat, Kitty-Kitty Bang-Bang.  More shopping followed, and then a final steak dinner prepared in the RV, since a surprise rainstorm ruined our BBQ plans.

Our 4-day visit with Jake was wonderful and he’s doing well mentally, physically, financially and socially in spite of needing a wheelchair most of the time to get around.  The future may still include additional surgery to repair his legs which were injured in a motorcycle accident almost two years ago.  But in the meantime, he has built a modest but satisfying life for himself. And his interest in Buddhism has helped him find peace since the accident.  It was great to share a few days with him.

It’s Monday, September 20th, and we're leaving Chico for our next destination…home.  It’s been exactly four months since we left Yorba Linda and now that we’re close to home we’re looking forward to getting back and enjoying our other kids and our grandchildren.  But we know that before too long the RV life, and the adventure it offers, will again beckon us and we’ll head out for another road trip.  We hope you’ll join us!  Bye for now.

Ross & Susan

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A Bike Ride Outside Town   Comments!	A break in our bike ride	A Nice Afternoon	Picking pomagrantes hanging over the fence
Pomegranates   Comments!	Ross, Jake and guess who?   Comments!	Rainbow marks the end of our Great Adventure   Comments!

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