Burlingame's Pez Museum

We had time to kill this past Tuesday as we waited for our evening flight to Colorado.  So the boys and I headed over to the nearby city of Burlingame to check out a roadsideamerica.com listed attraction:  The PEZ Museum.

Yep, the peppermint candy dispensers....there's a museum of them along with some other cool vintage devices and other historical toys/games.

It's a teeny tiny establishment, very cozy and you get a short tour of the place by the man who takes your $5/person fee.  I had actually had gone with some doubt in my mind but desperate to kill time.  In fact, I ended up enjoying it quite a lot as some of the older toys and devices reminded of simpler times.

 PEZ - a contraction of the German word for Peppermint

The candy is made in Austria

 A collection of vintage "ray guns", the one on top

you loaded with a small piece of live coal to produce smoke rings!

 The first TV Remote by Zenith.

It reminded me of an early role for me, as the family's

TV Channel Changer

 Not as successful for Steve Wozniak as the Apple Computer

The TV remote proved too complicated for the average user.

 A collection of vintage TV remotes, I actually

owned the phaser remote in the top right 

 Mario Brother's themed PEZ dispensers

 Created by a fan of PEZ dispensers...

 These guns shot a PEZ candy...

There were also on display, some toys which proved so dangerous that they were soon recalled.

 Lawn Darts!
I remember playing with a set inside a NYC apartment

when I was visiting some relatives I think.

 Containing a working geiger counter, it was recalled

because the jars contained actually radioactive material.

 The original PEZ dispensers before the

use of cartoon and other heads became prevalent

 I didn't know Ebay had its start as a website created

to help ebay's creater's wife sell parts of her PEZ dispenser collection

 Another recalled game

Even the computer used to track fee transactions

for the museum was vintage!

If you're even near Burlingame, CA and have about an hour to kill, I recommend you visit the PEZ museum, it's quite interesting in its own way.

Back from a trip to California and a recap for last week.

Four day trip, short visit to re-acquaint the boys with their paternal grandparents as the last visit had been three years ago.

San Francisco remains a crowded and congested city full of "interesting" characters.  We drove through it from the SFO airport across the Golden Gate Bridge and into Marin County.  My folks live in Novato you see, and they don't travel much anymore so they don't want to fly to Colorado; even on my dime.

The visit, I must say, went better than expected.  My folks actually engaged the boys in conversation and told some short stories of me as a kid.  Here's a a now and then pic:

March 24, 2018

March 27(?), 2015

Of course, a bit of negative karma before the trip.  Miles was struck at an intersection by a left-turning idiot the day before the flight; and the car is going to be most likely totaled.  Miles is fine, just a little sore he says.

Waiting on the "official" decision from the insurance company but the auto collision people suspect it's going to be "totaled".  Sigh, Miles just got the 2014 Ford Focus back in January of this year too.  Again, heavy sigh.  

On the positive side, he was unhurt.  On the negative side....must go car shopping again, pay off the existing loan with whatever monies the insurance company comes up with, cover the gap since we foolishly didn't get gap insurance and on and on and on.  Arrrrggghhh.

In the meantime, Miles is now signed for a rental car.  Costs are covered by the insurance company so there's that.  Yep, apparently an 18 year old can rent a car under these special conditions.

Recap continues:  First Sunset of Spring.

 Fiona, my '99 Bural

 Denver Skyline, capital of the Stoner State

 Mount Evans

March 22 Sunset....a little better

 Stoner State capital spotlit by a sun beam

The boys and I are very glad to be back in Colorado.  Side note, don't use Frontier Airlines, their customer service sucks, their seats suck on board their planes and the flight attendant dropped a bad on Miles and didn't even apologize; just meandered away to continuing looking at all of us with baleful eyes full of suspicion.

Here's some pics of the sunset as the plane made its way east from SFO:

New spotlight for Scarlett

While in Arizona, I foolishly caused damage to the small spotlight I used on the right side of the sidecar; to draw attention to that side of the rig while moving.

I broke the spotlight that used an H3 Bulb and I recently replaced it with an 18 watt LED spotlight from Amazon.

Link to spotlights on Amazon

The cost was under $20 so very low risk proposition and the light fit just right where the other spotlight had been mounted before.

The spotlight's construction is an all metal housing and some very bright LED bulbs.  So far I like it a lot, but it does cause some issues with photographs when the angle is just right; it can be quite blinding.

It's got a blueish/greenish tint, the light, but so far so good.

Neither one of the two lights lasted more than a few months....

Day 3 of Boondocking at the Hugo SWA

It was a very windy and cold night last night, as a winter storm's western edge brushed across the area I was camped at near Hugo, Colorado.

Positioning the URRV pointing south worked perfectly to mitigate the effect of strong winds from the north, winds that would blow strongly through the entire day until early evening when they softened.

This was the campsite as I woke, it was 30°F (-1.1°C) and what I will call a dusting of snow was on the ground and vegetation.  The skies were gray and overcast, with the sun not really making an appearance till closer to Noon.

It being a Monday, I spent it working online at various tasks and issues.  The cold outside was not inviting and I worked through lunch all the way till 4PM.  The skies had cleared starting at Noon and by 4PM there were just scattered clouds in the sky.

Soon after 6PM, I motored out on Scarlett to look for sunset picture locations even though the clouds presaged a rather mild sunset.

We rode over to the /South and Middle campsites of the Hugo SWA but didn't really find good locations for sunset pictures.

 To give you an idea of the big sky views in the Colorado

Eastern Plains

So Scarlett and I ended up at the same spot as last evening for the mild sunset conditions that ensued as temperatures dropped once again.

Returning to the RV campsite, I spotted Uma's reflection in the now still waters of the small lake:

The above two shots were of course taken with the aid of my tripod, low light conditions and a desire to have a low ISO demanded it.  Still, they came out ok.

The solar panels did "ok" given the weather conditions but I still had to run the onboard generator for an hour after dark to top off the house battery for the night.

The Honda generator was tried first, but it had once again run low on oil and I didn't feel like putting in more, as darkness gathered and the cold temperature started soaking through my riding gear.

I'll be displacing tomorrow to a different SWA along I-70 for one more day of boondocking I think.  I like the Hugo SWA area, it's worth putting on the "return to someday" list.

Update: March 21.  Cell coverage at Flagler SWA was near non-existant for Verizon service anyways.  Went home early.