A Walk Down Memory Lane

While in Bakersfield, we drove by the hospital where I was born and found the house where my family lived until I was two and a half. We stopped and took a picture! We also visited an ice cream and candy store where my father would take me for ice cream. I had a hot fudge sundae that was amazing! 

I don't remember living in Bakersfield, but I do remember where we moved next: Fullerton, CA. I remember my dad taking me and my brother to get slurpees at 7 Eleven in his Datsun pickup and then going to a park to play and feed the ducks. (I remember falling in the duck pond once and skinning my knee.) My father had a motorcycle and I remember him taking me for short rides when I was still small enough to sit on the gas tank and hold on to the handle bars. I also remember him discussing with my mother that he would like to teach me and my brother to ride a motorcycle. She was against the idea, but he bought a small lawnmower engine powered minibike and convinced her to try riding it, thinking that if she saw how easy, slow, and safe it was, she would let us ride it too. We were in the parking lot of the library and I remember my father showing my mother the throttle and the brake. She sat down on the minibike, then like magic, she was riding! It was very exciting right up to the moment she hit a metal parking pole filled with cement and broke her collar bone. I thought for sure that I would never get a chance to ride the minibike, but it wasn't long before I got my turn to learn to ride and soon both my brother and I had our own motorcycles to ride with my father.

While I can't explain it, visiting the first house where I lived and being reminded of some of my childhood memories seems to fit will as part of this journey I am on. It was a fun relaxing day with Eva and she will be taking me back to the Pacific Crest Trail tomorrow (Monday) morning where I left off.