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Health & Fitness

A Holiday Note

The holidays have started. Some thoughts here . . .

It was mid-day Friday, Nov. 16 and I was trying to get across downtown Los Gatos. My car wasn’t moving on Santa Cruz Avenue, nor was the car next to me, going the other direction. I was wringing the steering wheel, telling myself I should have gone down Tait or Massol so I wouldn’t have to sit in this traffic.

I glanced at the clock, reminding myself that I was trying to get over to the Coffee Roasting Company not soon after 6:30 when Teri Hope was having her annual Christmas party, always a pretty good gig. Then it hit me. It’s the holidays. Traffic is always very ugly during the holidays. “Get used to it,” I told myself. I relaxed in this minor traffic jam, leaned back and turned up the radio playing my good old rock and roll.

I blew my runny nose and coughed once, further reminding myself of the holidays. I got this flu, or cold, or whatever it is, when I encountered way too many little kids the night they closed my detours, Tait and Massol avenues, for the trick-or-theaters, or, as it is formally called, Halloween. I have been half delirious with this stuffy head ever since then. Yep, I’d forgotten how bad traffic became around Christmas time. Things are right on schedule.

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As I stood at a perfect standstill, with my motor revving, I flashed on how proud I was of Los Gatos on Halloween night. As the sun was setting on Halloween, I was standing in the middle of Tait Avenue, just out from the front door of the Museum and I looked down the street with its long, gentle grade sloping down to Saratoga Avenue.

This is the only time you could ever see this (and the adjoining roads) filled with people, people on foot, on foot and lots of them in costumes. Here were blocks and blocks of people, some locals, many out-of-towners, on the loose and all bumping into each other and virtually all had a smile on their faces and good will on their sleeves.

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It really was a whole, big bunch of people, as it usually is, with only one common goal on their agendas, “please the kids” and have fun doing it. Except for the uniformed cops at the peripheral road blocks on a few corners, the only town authority that I saw in this huge crowd, were two cops, in shorts, on mountain bikes. What a show of force, let me tell you.

How many other towns could boast such a confidence in their need for “crowd control” I had to wonder?

We are a pretty special place.

Last night, Teri’s Christmas party at Coffee Roasting came off without a hitch, except ...

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