Festivities VI

School ended, literally with a bang, when Jennifer Lopez's minvan and someone's Expedition collided on Chrisanta Avenue. Bad way to start the summer. By some miracle, Mr. Reid showed up right at the femtosecond of despair when I was thinking I would not be able to get a "green slip" (necessary to get a permit and hence a driver's license) and I got my green slip (which is actually white) and various paperwork items. John and I went with Raf to my house, back to schol to drop off my math book, and then to John's house, where we were going to get stuff for Festivities Six at Location Alpha. We watched the first half of The Rock and John gathered together some stereo equipment and his nice Bose speakers into the a-la-Eric-Shamay and now ritualistically traditional laundary basket. (If you don't udnerstand, just remember the standard reaction to not understanding: SMILE & NOD) Anyways, we headed back to Location Alpha and John setup the stereo and he and Raf played some form of basketball in the backyard. Shortly thereafter, they left to pickup Mr. Stephen Thomas "I totalled my BMW" Meade, Stephanie Lipman, and get lighter fluid and some CD's from Location Beta, as well as some other stuff. By Five PM, festivities were well under way, with the usual cd-wars and some card games that seemed rather violent.

Eric went to work preparing our shishkabobs on the barbeque. We ate and people played some basketball-like game. I don't exactly remember how it happened, but somehow everyone ended up outside in front. Through a little conspiracy, Eric, Eric and Jason got Steve quite wet, which got him very angry and resulting in Steve chasing Eric Shamay down El Cortijo and up Presiados. We got curious and John set out with Aditya in his ]mom's] car to find him. I think Stephanie set out as well. This resulted in a brief period of running around in the streets and tracking people down by car...

From this we got a brilliant idea of FESTIVITIES VII: a big game of ditch-em. "Ditch-em" is basically a souped-up (more "sophisticated") and improved (ie, far fewer rules) version of "hide and go seek" (which just doesn't work because of its juvenile connotations). We, however, would have to make it more exciting: 2-meter Handie Talkies (both on sporkplex 144.440 MHz and on team frequencies - maybe this could lead to radio frequency reconaissance - locate-the-other-team's-frequency).. And people would be able to use cars and the boundaries woul dbe La Paz, Marguerite, Jeronimo, and Mosquero or Spadra or something. This would prove to be quite interesting.

Anyways, that's for next time. By the end of this little encounter, Steve and Eric were rather soaked. Within an hour nearly everyone was in the pool or spa. (Activities for next time: bubble-fluid in spa jets and/or dry ice in spa). Halfway through the pool-segment of these festivities, Philip showed up and soon, Chris showed up too. Philip has a new motorcycle (Blue 1997 something-or-other [sorry, I know this is Blasphemy, but I'm car-illiterate]) and he came with (why not?) a Packard Bell Pentium 75 motherboard and a whole bunch of CDs. We proceeded to throw all of these into the pool/spa in a technological sacrifice. (Aforementioned advice applies: SMILE AND NOD) Everyone who was wet needed dry clothes, so I handed out just about all of my T-shirts and pairs of jeans. Chris had brought a large roll of CAUTION tape - you know, yellow plastic stuff, similar to the "Police Line - Do Not Cross" for us to play with. The idea was to close Aldeano to Traffic (11:30pm) but we never got around to this. The other idea was a splorg equivalent of TPing someone's house - marking it off with CAUTION tape and signs saying "QUARANTINE" or "BIOHAZARD." Unforunately we found it necessary to put this off until FESTIVITIES VII or later as well. What we settled for was marking off chalk outlines of people up and down Aldeano. Strange, but it was slightly entertaining.

We trekked back to Location Alpha and watched part of Blazing Saddles and then went on to Wayne's World. I went to sleep around 1:30 and everyone else passed out on the floor of the Bonus Room.

The Festivities VI attendence list included: Tobin Fricke, Eric Shamay, John Allison, Rafael Barrero, Steph Lipman, Chris Reed, Aditya Bansod, Stephen Meade, Philip Brown (Bucket Man), Spencer Fern, Sarah Egley, and Eric Fricke. Oh, and Spencer and Chris were smart enough to actuall read the festivies announcement and bring Cornstarch. But we never got around to utilizing it, so I have five boxes of cornstarch here. We'll just have to save it for Festivities VII.

Spork Expedition III

And so, in our continuing policy of not being without something to do, SPORKXPED III was scheduled to depart around eight in the morning on the morning after FESTIVITIES VI. Eric called and woke me up at 8:12am and by 10:00am we were trekking along in the infamous Spork Valley. (Basically, we jumped out off Oso Parkway after the new Los Flores development.) This time our party consisted merely of Eric, Simon, and me. Eric had with him his new Kelty backpack with a nifty "telescopic frame," plujs hi sneat-o 2meter/440 MHz handytalkie and his newly acquired topographic map of the area. Within three housr we had traversed the entire path of the Second Spork Expedition (sporkxped2) and we ate lunch and took a nap under a tree near tha tneat little river we found last time, south of Coto de Caza. (Eric has discovered that "Coto de Caza" translates roughly to "Strip Mining." )

At this point the expedition was wholly and completely successful and it was very pleasant lying in the spotted shade under this oak tree in native california with no pending obligations or schedules - we were equipped with provisions for one or two nights and didn't have to be anywhere anytime soon. The sense that it was summer and a good summer at that was very strong. We were in no hurry and it was very nice.

We trekked onward about the distanced we had already travelled once more, and eventually we began to encounter "civilization" once more - first we came upon a nursery and then onto a concrete plant and then to an asphalt and concrete recycling plant. We passed a "Rancho Mission Viejo Security" patrol pickup and they didn't seem to mind us at all. We went through the concrete/asphalt recycling plant and then stopped to take a break. Soon, some guy from the industrial plant came to talk to us. He seemed to be a non-authoritive figure, so standard be-nice negotiations began: generally if you're friendly to someone they will be nice to you as well, and as long as you seem to look like you know what you're doing and look like you don't feel like you're doing something wrong, you usually won't get in trouble.

"Hey, where you hiking to?"
"Well, we don't really know yet; we'd like to get to the Candystore.[*]"
"Where did you start?"
"Oh, up in Mission Viejo,"
"Hey, did you get permission from the ranch or you just bootlegg'n it?"
"Oh, we're just boot legging it, I guess."
"Hmm, well, I don't really care, but just be careful, those RMV security patrols will pick you up and take you in."
"Well, thanks, blah blah"
"Well, be careful."
"See you, thanks."

Anyways, at this point we had come up to the San Juan Creek, which proved to be pretty much an impassible obstacle for us unless we wanted to get rather wet. We hiked south hoping to come to a bridge rather soon. Eventually we came to a bridge. We were in a ravine by the river and I started to climb up out of the ravine to get to the road and hance the bridge. Well, just our luck, I stick my head up out of the ravine, adn there's a Rancho Mission Viejo Security Patrol facing us, making a left turn onto Ortega Highway. Well, normally this wouldn't concern me, because they have ignored us in the past - but he didn't make the turn - he paused for ~ 30 seconds too long. This was weird. He made the left, but I was still a bit apprehensive, but decided that he had ignored us.

Well, I was wrong. A few seconds later, after we had all climbed out of the ravine, he had made a U-Turn and come down the road to where we were. There he was, standing there looking at us and waving a baton.

Okay, standard we-have-been-caught-by-someone-who-can-arrest-us-and-is-holding-a-baton-and-carrying-a-handgun negotiations begin. I walked up to the guy and said, "Hi!"

He was outfitted just like an Orange County Sherriff, except that his badge had "Rancho Mission Viejo" on it and he was wearing a de facto cowboy hat - it seems to be part of their uniform, as they all have the same one.

The conversation basically started with, "I am going to arrest you now," and finally led to a much more desirable, "Well, it's good that you're doing this hiking now, because in ten years this won't be here anymore - they're putting the freeway and several roads through here... yeah, if I were you, I'd get off the ranch property and hitchhike home.. This proved to be a bit of a better position than being arrested.

There was one part of the discussion that was a bit strange, though. It went like this:

Ranger: "So, do you have any weapons on you?"
Tobin: "No..."
Ranger: "YES!!?"
Tobin: (looks at Eric) "No..."
Ranger: "Yes??!"
Tobin: "No..."
Ranger: (pats handgun) "Handguns?"
Tobin and Eric: "No!"
Ranger: (suspiciously) "Well, okay..."

Anyway, this was just strange. After this little encounter (you see, all Splorg group activities seem to have to have an encounter with the "long arm of the law" in order to be successful) we walked the remaining 100 yards to the Ortega Highway. That's right - we were only 100 yards short of completing our passange through RMV when they decided to talk to us.

At this point we had an interesting decision to make - (A) keep going South back into RMV into an ideal camping location and further hiking area. Pro: Lots of fun, great place to camp. Con: If we were caught again, it wouldn't be so easy to extract ourselves from the RMV policy so eloquently stated on the "NO TRESPASSING" signs: "ALL Violators Will Be Prosecuted." (B) Turn right, and hike out of San Juan Capistrano. Pro: we'd get out; Con: Boring, one-night adventure. (C) Turn left, hike the remaining six miles to the Candystore[*] and Upper San Juan campground. Pro: Lots of fun, interesting trip. Con: Long way to hike, up the highway.

Well, we chose Option C. Due to the Big Time theory, we didn't really have to be anywhere anytime, so this was just fine. Looking back, Option A probably would have worked quite well.

Anyway, we turned Left and began hiking up (East) on the side of the Ortega Highway. This turned out to be a nerve-racking experience, being but inches from cars moving much too quickly in the opposite direction, barrelling down the highway. We probably went a mile before we decided that we really didn't want to be turned into real Orange County Sherriff-approved Chalk Outlines (last night was enough with chalk outlines for us).

At this point Eric broke out the happy and handy 2meter/440MHz icom Handy Talkie (that's a handheld two-way radio for those who don't like the vernacular) and called out on the Radio. He contacted Ray and, after an abortive attempt to make a phone call home, Ray said that he could come pick us up. So he did, and he took us back to Location Alpha in his very nice Ford Explorer with interesting and independently adjustable suspension.

And so that is what became of Sporkxped III. We are deeming the event a success - after all, we hiked from Oso Parkway to the Ortega Highway and we had all kinds of fun in the process. Plus, the encounter with the Long Arm of the Law was kind of exciting as well. (I think it's funny that I am beginning to be associated with interesting encounters with law enforcement... This is, I believe, the third time. But so far we've always been able to talk ourselves out of it.)

The next time we go on something like this, it will have to be somewhere else. We have basically exhausted the possibilities of Rancho Mission Viejo north of Ortega.