RIDING IN, RIDING ON

 

In our early years we ride IN buggies and strollers/“Taylor Tots”.  In our youth we ride IN wagons, but we ride ON trikes, bikes, scooters, Flexies, skateboards, and the like.

When older we ride IN carriages, wagons, cars, airplanes, and spaceships, but we ride ON a ship, motorcycle, or horse.  We also ride ON a bus, train, trolley, or streetcar.  Sometimes we say we ‘take’ them.  We ‘take’ the elevator or escalator or a moving sidewalk, but we’re actually riding ON them.  And we ride the waves ON a surfboard, personal watercraft, inner-tube or other floatables.

IN, ON, ON, IN . . . it can get a bit confusing, so I'm going to leave it at that and go on to display some of those things I’ve ridden IN and ON over the years . . .

I rode IN my buggy.

I rode IN my “Taylor Tot”.

I rode ON my trike.

I rode ON my bike.

I rode ON my Flexie

And ON my scooter with its pull-up seat which was neat.  I’d push my way up to the corner, pull up the seat, sit down, and coast back down the block!  Only difference – where this scooter is red, mine was blue, & where it’s yellow, mine was red.

But I rode IN my brother’s wagon - when I wasn’t pulling my little sister IN it.

Off to the beach with me carrying the inner-tube I rode ON over the waves.  My little Sis was 2, so I would have been 7.

I rode over the waves ON our SeaDoo when I was 63.  I actually got the thing up to 30mph.  Woohoo!

After riding ON an inner-tube and a SeaDoo over waves of water, how about riding ON a Hovercraft over waves of air?  Once upon a time in the 1960s this was an attraction in Disneyland’s Tomorrowland.  It was like bumper cars on air.  The Hovercraft would be sitting on the ground.  You’d get ON, strap yourself down, take hold of the handles on each side, and when everyone was ready, air was blown into the area until you were floating.  You steered the thing by leaning in the direction you wanted to go and, like bumper cars, you bumped into other riders creating much laughter and yelps because leaning to steer didn’t really work all that well.  When the ride was over, a giant ‘arm’ would move slowly around scooping all the Hovercraft into one area, the air would be turned off, and we’d bump back down to the ground.  I guess the ride was removed to make way for something new, but that’s too bad because it was a lot of fun! J

My Granddad Bradley rode ON a horse in Yosemite c. 1905-1910.   I rode ON a horse once to try to impress a cute guy who was guiding rides at Meeks Bay’s summer stables at Lake Tahoe.  I came close to falling off my horse during an easy ride which didn’t, of course, make the impression on the cute guy I was going for!  Ultimately I decided I didn’t like the guy – cute or not - enough to try that again!

My sister is an excellent horse rider, however.  I’ve always been envious of her ability to be so when I was barely able to keep my seat on one – even at a sedate walk!  Years later, however, I felt a little better about it when she tried to ride a banana.  I caught this picture just before she fell off for the third or fourth time! J

Looking to my future I’d love to see myself riding IN this little number or one like it.  There are a couple of them in the 55-plus community where I live.  One is bright yellow & black, the other is shades of green.  I think this little blue and white number would be a perfect fit.  This, of course, would be at a time when I’m no longer driving on the open highways, but only shopping locally . . . I think?

If I’m still singing with the Pine Cone Singers up the hill in Groveland, this little number would make a mockery of all those horrid switchback curves on Priest Grade!  There are actually two Priest Grades – ‘Old’ and ‘New’.  My great grandfather climbed the hill on Old Priest in 1874 on his way to Yosemite when it was still just a one-lane dirt track.  Old Priest climbs the 1500 foot change in elevation in two, admittedly steep and narrow miles. (takes 4 minutes to drive).  New Priest (built in 1915) takes almost six miles to do the same thing.  It’s not as steep and the roadbed has a bit of shoulder on the sides which Old Priest does not, but it also has countless switchback curves and takes anywhere from 9 – 12 minutes to drive depending on whether or not you get behind someone who wants to go up the grade at 20 miles an hour!  Currently, the extremely wet winter weather we’ve had this year has undermined part of Old Priest Grade, and everyone has to use New Priest, so that spiffy little number above would zip around all those awful curves very nicely.  Hopefully, however, engineers will figure out how to repair Old Priest soon and I won’t have to groan each time I go by the current “Road Closed” signs. (sigh)

A view of New Priest Grade from Old Priest.  This photo shows both the steepness of Old Priest, and a portion of the (ugh) curves of the New Grade.

Here’s a map to show the difference between New Priest (in orange) and Old Priest (in black).  It’s easy to see why local residents groan when they see “Road Closed” signs on Old Priest!

Priest Grade, by the way, was so called because of Priest's Hotel owned by the Priest family which sat at the top of the Old Grade.  And look!  There’s a coach with folks riding IN it in July, 1874.  At least one of the riders looks like he might be part of a band to celebrate the grand opening of the Big Oak Flat coach road all the way into Yosemite Valley.  This was not my great grandfather’s coach, however.   He made the trip in late May of that year when the coach road only went as far as Tammarck Flat where visitors, at that time, had to leave their coaches and mount horses and mules to make the descent into the Valley on a steep narrow trail.

You can bet the folks in the coach in this picture did not ride IN it all the way up the grade!  They would have been taking turns - probably one at a time.  The horses would not have been able to pull all of them up that steep dirt grade in the coach, so those who weren’t riding had to walk.  I’m supposing the driver allowed the bass drum to remain IN the coach.  According to my great grandfather’s journal, it took them two hours to climb the grade trading off riding and walking.  Every time I drive from the bottom to the top of that grade in 4 minutes, I think about that. J

Priest’s Hotel began as a simple miners’ supply store.  In 1853 a couple by the name of Kirkwood opened it as a hotel.  When Mr. Kirkwood passed away unexpectedly, his widow married William Priest and the hotel became known as Priest’s Hotel.  Under the Priest family the hotel was expanded to 22 buildings – hotel and cabins, but a 1926 brush fire wiped it all out.

Today, 170 years later, Priest Station, owned by the Anker family – 5^th and 6^th generation descendants of the original Kirkwood/Priest family founders, has a café with a large deck for dining overlooking the hill and valley below, along with several motel cabin units.

:->

La Nightingail