I was struck down by a vengeful cold yesterday. Rather than show pictures of me lying on the bed, floor, or couch, how about some photos from CA? You bet!
My dad emailed me some photos from our Jeep trip on the Rubicon trail. In so many words, I said that it was a beautiful place, and here's some visual evidence. This is at the top of Cadillac Hill. The white stuff in the background is snow.
This is Spider Lake, a short hike off of the trail.
This is a minor example of why you shouldn't drive a Prius on the trail. And this was nothing. It does suggest the reason we drove about 1 mph on the first day of the trip.
Since Jill and I took some time to settle down (I hope that we have done so now, but we'll see), my parents stored some of my childhood valuables at their house. This trip seemed like a good time to claim my valuables. This list included an A's hat (actually my 16 year old team hat from our 29-0 season. That was a good team -- I was a 2nd stringer.), an official NFL football from the Pete Rozelle era, and the best of my baseball card collection.
I have a few more small piles and the complete 1985 Topps set (the McGwire usa card is from that set), but this is pretty much the best I got. As for Luis Polonia, my friend Todd had a birthday party at an A's game and we got to meet him. I think he (Luis, not Todd) spent some time in the pen later in his life.
I spent all of my allowance on baseball cards from 1987 until around 1991. This roughly corresponded to the peak of the baseball card collecting era. Smartly, I did become more interested in older cards near the end, and those haven't bottomed out completely. I learned a valuable lesson from this seeming waste of money -- that 'investments' don't always increase in value. Of course, this didn't stop us from buying a townhouse in New Mexico just before the peak of the housing craze. Fool me once...
5 comments:
Funny, I collected heavily from 1979-1989 or so. I paid a lot more than 12 bucks for my mattingly rookie card, though... Who would have ever guessed that Boggs would go to the HOF and mattingly would not. I probably have 6 or seven of the cards in that pic. I just spent some time in NJ cleaning my room at my parents house. I am sending all my cards here to NM where they will not mold any more. I had to throw away a couple boxes of (thankfully worthless) cards.
Polonia was arrested for sure. He also was part of the trade sending Ricky Henderson back to the A's from the Yankees. The bad old days of the Yanks for sure...
Mattingly was a mythical player for us on the west coast. I knew he was the best because (1) his cards were the most expensive and (2) his weekly stats in the newspaper were great. I'm not sure I ever saw him play before his back gave out [reason: Yanks never in post-season. Hah!].
No kidding. That was my penance of being a yankee fan. I was a big reggie jackson fan when I was 6 in 1979, but I got no post season love from 1982 to 1995 which was my desperate fandom life while I lived on the east coast. I had to move to california to get them to get to the post season again. The trials of mattingly... Alas...
love the pics of the rubicon... looks like a fun adventure. wow! mickey mantle and a bunch of ernie banks! my claim to fame was the upper deck ken griffey junior rookie and the billy ripken error card. :) the police in our town used to hand out baseball cards... now those are real keepers.
The naughty word Ripken? Oh my.
I wonder how many of those upper deck Griffey cards were made. A zillion? And yup, I have one too :)
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