On the spectrum of sociability, Kim and I probably rank at the higher end. There are certainly more social animals than us, but we like people and prefer to be around them rather than not. I have never understood people who prefer to travel alone. I’m not a fan of too big of a group when traveling, but it always seems like more fun to have a gang. For thirty years now, I’ve had a motorcycle gang, the American Flyers Motorcycle Club, a tattoo for which emblazons my upper left arm. It was my club. I founded it and pretty much ran it for its active years, which were for 27 or so years. I would be hard-pressed to say it is still active, but we do occasionally gather for a short ride or with just a few still-active members. We also still all socialize every once in a while even without the underlying motorcycles. In March, Kim and I will travel to Florida, a state we both prefer to avoid these days, specifically to convene a gathering of the old motorcycle gang.
I currently have a local motorcycle gang of two guys who I try to ride with for a day ride each week (usually Wednesdays). We have covered almost all the good roads in the county by now and have a half a dozen favorites depending on the time constraints anyone has that week. We usually ride out about two hours, stop for lunch and then ride home for two hours. It’s just right at this stage in my riding career and the lunch break gives us a chance to get caught up on local events and share some war stories. Our preferred routes are Ortega Highway / Lake Elsinore, Mount Palomar / Lake Henshaw, Julian / Sunrise Highway, Borrego Springs, Idyllwild, and Cougar Pass. There are variations on all those themes, but the common element is a series of eateries where we know we can stop for a meal.
Kim has her gang as well. It is a cabaret gang and it revolved around the NYC cabaret community, which she has been a part of for many years. Some of those people she explicitly met through her activity in the cabaret community, and some of them are holdover friends from her more active musical theater days on the road. Some of those friends she spent many months riding the buses around the country from tour stop to tour stop playing bit parts in many of the old Broadway standards like State Fair, Oklahoma, The Sound of Music and more. Now, out here in San Diego she has a whole new gang that are part of the choral ensemble she used to sing with and now directs.
We also have groups of friends here on the hilltop, starting with the largest, which is the Hidden Meadows Garden Club. As Kim has been co-president for three years, we are very much a fixture of the club at this time and often have the group over here for gardening lectures or tours and workshops (arts & crafts). Within that group there are now four couples that we gather with now and again, and then there is an even smaller subset of two other couples with whom we share more frequent dinners and outings, including several international travel experiences. That smaller group is my bagel gang. We also have what I would call a neighborhood group of friends with include the prior four couples plus those that are geographically most proximate to us. that includes the three houses on our little street, four other couples on High Vista Drive and miscellaneous couples from the few other hilltop streets.
Whenever we decide to have a gathering (we probably do so more often than anyone else in this group), we have to go through the issue of where we are drawing the line for that particular event. If its a summer BBQ, we invite the whole array of hilltop friends. If its something like a holiday party, we might want to restrict it somewhat and we will draw the line at a slightly smaller subset. This week we are feeling somewhat at loose ends. We have an array of events planned for next weekend, but were wide open for this weekend, so we decided on red spur of the moment to hold a game night. Some people hate playing games, but most of the people in our crowd of aging retirees very much like games. In fact, I would suggest that they are probably even more engaged in regular game playing than we are. So we thought there would be good take-up on a Friday night game night event that is planned to start just after dinner with snacks and desserts on offer during the festivities. the first job was to throw the idea and timing out for approval. We decided that eight is the optimal game night number. As we know from the movie Game Night, excluding certain neighbors from such an event can cause all sorts of local issues, so you have to choose your invitees carefully. We got 100% take-up among the three couples we invited. The one joking comment was that one couple said they were in so long as Twister was not involved….
The menu of snacks and desserts was easy enough since we pretty much know who is all about eating healthy and who likes to indulge in what ways. We plan to have plenty of both varieties to satisfy all preferences. The harder task is timing and choice of games. There is very little room for democratic process in such an event, so we decided that we would pick the games and the scheduling since we suspect at least one member will need to leave early (as is his habit). The opening game will be something called Fishbowl, which is a meeting of charades with three stages (description, charades, one-word association). Everyone will write a person, place and thing on pieces of paper which will then be used for each of two teams to run through in an allotted time. The second game will be In-A-Minute, which will be a series of four physical challenges done each by a member of each team (they pick who does what). The first challenge is to see how many Cheerios you can get on a skewer in a minute. Then there’s a Shoot-the-Moon game (steel ball on twin rails), which for the uninitiated will be very challenging to get past the first hole. We have a box maze with a small steel ball to eves its way around a course to see how far you can feet in a minute. And finally, we have blindfold game where you have a minute to scoop up as many package bows as you can with a spatula (this one is sure to keep everyone laughing). We then have a rummy card game called Five Crowns. And finally, we have from a long-ago visit to Corning Glass Works, a collectors version of Clue (you know, Colonel Mustard in the parlor with the lead pipe…). We will split into two teams and off we go. We have gotten a prize for the winning team…a set of very cute miniature barrel cacti of various sorts. We figure the winners need to be thanked for being a “barrel of fun” for the evening.