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brooksmosesThis (the rec.arts.sf.fandom newsgroup) is rasff. There are a sufficient number of newsgroup denizens (and former denizens, and denizens of neighboring newsgroups, and friends of the abovementioned) who live in the S.F. Bay Area to form critical mass for monthly meetings. In other words, knowing fandom, there are at least two. The monthly meetings, which actually tend to get between a half-dozen and a dozen people, are held at a small teahouse ("A Cuppa Tea") just a half-block north of the Oakland-Berkeley border.
The border, as I will digress, is clearly marked from the north side by a "Welcome to Oakland" sign. It is also clearly marked, from the south side, by a "Nuclear-Free Zone" sign.
So. This is my meeting report for this month's meeting, which happened tonight, or so I am given to believe.
See, I was running a bit late, and it's an hour's drive from Stanford to the meeting location, particularly with end-of-day traffic. As a result of this, I got there about 9:00 -- which, granted that the meetings usually seem to go until 9:30 or 10:00, should have been in time to at least say hello to people before they all wandered off.
In the process of backing into the parking place, I stalled the engine. This served as a convenient reminder that my starter motor on my car (an '88 Ford Bronco) has issues; specifically, when the engine is hot (after, say, an hour drive from Stanford to Berkeley), all it will do is groan slightly and fail to start the engine. So, I did the rest of the parallel-parking job by hand-pushing ('88 Ford Bronco GVWR: in the 2.5-ton range, IIRC), and walked up to the teahouse.
There were quite a number of people at the teahouse. None of them, however, were rasseffarians.
So, I ate a apple-walnut stickybun -- they make excellent apple-walnut stickybuns -- and pondered at things.
See, one of the attributes of a Ford Bronco engine -- a useful one, in a wintery climate, which we do not have here -- is that it is a large heavy piece of cast iron (with other bits in, of course), and it does not cool down at all quickly. I figured I had about an hour to wait before it was likely to be startable.
Given the hour to wait, and a stickybun to work off, I figured that a good thing to do was go for a leisurely walk; I made it most of the way up to the Berkeley campus (a 2.2-mile walk, counting both directions), and wandered back.
At that point, the car started, grudgingly, and so I drove to the corner gas station, bought $10 of gas (gas is expensive in Berkeley, it seems), drove across the bridge back most of the way home, stopped at a gas station here, bought the remaining $35 of gas required to fill the tank for this month, and drove the rest of the way home.
So that was the Bay-Area RASFF meeting for this month. The food was good, and I had a nice walk.
- Brooks
The border, as I will digress, is clearly marked from the north side by a "Welcome to Oakland" sign. It is also clearly marked, from the south side, by a "Nuclear-Free Zone" sign.
So. This is my meeting report for this month's meeting, which happened tonight, or so I am given to believe.
See, I was running a bit late, and it's an hour's drive from Stanford to the meeting location, particularly with end-of-day traffic. As a result of this, I got there about 9:00 -- which, granted that the meetings usually seem to go until 9:30 or 10:00, should have been in time to at least say hello to people before they all wandered off.
In the process of backing into the parking place, I stalled the engine. This served as a convenient reminder that my starter motor on my car (an '88 Ford Bronco) has issues; specifically, when the engine is hot (after, say, an hour drive from Stanford to Berkeley), all it will do is groan slightly and fail to start the engine. So, I did the rest of the parallel-parking job by hand-pushing ('88 Ford Bronco GVWR: in the 2.5-ton range, IIRC), and walked up to the teahouse.
There were quite a number of people at the teahouse. None of them, however, were rasseffarians.
So, I ate a apple-walnut stickybun -- they make excellent apple-walnut stickybuns -- and pondered at things.
See, one of the attributes of a Ford Bronco engine -- a useful one, in a wintery climate, which we do not have here -- is that it is a large heavy piece of cast iron (with other bits in, of course), and it does not cool down at all quickly. I figured I had about an hour to wait before it was likely to be startable.
Given the hour to wait, and a stickybun to work off, I figured that a good thing to do was go for a leisurely walk; I made it most of the way up to the Berkeley campus (a 2.2-mile walk, counting both directions), and wandered back.
At that point, the car started, grudgingly, and so I drove to the corner gas station, bought $10 of gas (gas is expensive in Berkeley, it seems), drove across the bridge back most of the way home, stopped at a gas station here, bought the remaining $35 of gas required to fill the tank for this month, and drove the rest of the way home.
So that was the Bay-Area RASFF meeting for this month. The food was good, and I had a nice walk.
- Brooks