A continuing tale of some of life's little secrets unfolding before our eyes. This short adventure probably started when the heroine of this story was drinking a "Tequiza" and thinking 100 mph. After that amount of alcohol (half a small bottle) mixed with the thinking speed, one could safely say that some great ideas were born. This adventure story is written by Jim Labrador based on facts as best as can be remembered and here is how it went.

It all started during our Class Reunion night down at the Portlock house after we made a phone call to Kris Murphy at her Oregon home. I guess the emotions were running high at the time or was it because we were acting on this view that getting in touch with our past does help us piece our lives together especially since we are starting to get closer to those golden years.

So Vicki Collins says, "let's drive up to Kris' when we get back to the Bay Area. We'll leave on a Friday and get back Monday." It sounded like a good idea and so that idea became a plan. We decided to rent a car, a 1999 Silver convertible Mustang, and picked it up at the San Francisco airport car rental facility which is definitely not a customer friendly place especially if one is from the area and would like to rent a car versus someone who flies in a takes a shuttle bus. Anyway, Vicki and I took approximately an hour to find the proper entrance, rent the vehicle and proceed on to Oregon. A normal 15 minute procedure to those who are students of the Time and Motion processes.

We drove up I-80 up through Vacaville heading to I-5 interchange, which should take us right up to Eugene. It was suggested that we stop at Peter Dang's place up in the Vacaville area (obviously we didn't!). As we drove out of the City of San Francisco over the Bay Bridge the clock read 8:10 am and we exited, Exit 191, in Eugene, Oregon at 4:00 pm with one stop for gas just at the California border. The gas stop was just an ordinary service station even though Vicki wanted to stop at a real truck stop.

At about 5:00pm, we gave Kris a call and decided to meet at about 6:30pm and have some dinner and make the Friday night an early one since both Vicki and I were fairly tired from the trip. Anyway, the plans were to have dinner at Kris' place, watch the infamous video filmed by Lt. Bernie Campbell and just catch up on Saturday night. The beauty about this whole weekend was that we invited ourselves up to Eugene and loved every minute of it. Interestingly, Kris has a collection of Hawaiian songs not only in her car but also at home.

Kris got to the motel at about 6:30, we all talked for awhile and then decided to go for a light dinner at one of the local restaurants (Thai) and then we walked across the street and catch some live music over a few drinks. While in the hotel we also gave Ralph Hering a call hoping he could make it over to Kris' on Saturday night. Unfortunately he couldn't make it but at least we had a chance to catch up with him.

On Saturday, Kris and Vicki decided to spend their day doing some shopping and just look around Eugene while I played some golf at nearby Cresswell and continued a Class of '64 Golf Tournament with myself to which I won. At about 3:00 pm we hooked up at Kris' place, which is just a couple of miles south of the center of Eugene. Kris has a cozy three bedroom, 2 bath house, a fair size yard, a gazebo, which is her office, two beautiful dogs, and I can't remember how many cats. Definitely an animal-friendly household.

After an excellent dinner of: Boneless stuffed teriyaki chicken, chicken long rice and gobo, we then retired to the family room and turned on the video. Kris had a few "converted-to-vhs" 8 mm films which had some really interesting footage on it from the "good 'ol days" and then we put on Bernie documentary of the 35th reunion. We called it quits at about 2:00 am and decided to meet up the next morning at about 10:00 am (I think?) Sunday was spent touring Eugene, looked at some real estate complexes, followed by a late lunch. I learned something new about looking at new homes in Oregon. When you walk through them, one is required to wear a little elastic booties over their shoes. Of course I was wearing slippers and found it quite awkward to put these things around my foot and slippers.

Just wanted to point out that we had the car's roof up most of Sunday because there was some typical Oregon weather passing through in the form of liquid without the sunshine. It obviously didn't bother Vicki, who had this tendency to dose off every so often as she was stuffed in the back seat of the car.

Sunday night at about 7:00 pm we said our good-byes and started our way back to the San Francisco Bay Area, top down driving through the night.

It was great weekend. It was like we were away on summer vacation and come back to school and see all the changes had happened to our classmates. And then we basically continued where we left off, just like family. Maybe I should name this postscript, "The 35 Summers of '64".

To the organizers of the 35th Reunion, it was truly an excellent week for both the locals as well as the "out-of-towners". Now I can't wait for #40 which sounds like a really big number.

Any comments, complaints, words of wisdom, words of encouragement, thoughts, etc. can be sent to:

Jimlabrador@hotmail.com.

By the way, you can leave out the complaints part.