Trains, sports memories and 'whitesploitation'

It's the final Sunday of the first half of the last year of the first half of the second decade of the first century of the third millennium. What better time to empty the columnist's notebook with the topics du jour?

Let's roll . . .

• • •

Of all the things I like about living where I live – the weather, the diversity, the proximity to the Bay Area and Sacramento, the opportunity to live near Tony Wade – there's perhaps nothing as great as this: The proximity to the train tracks.

Sure, it's a stereotype. But don't you love the sound of the train – whether it's an Amtrak passenger train or a freight train – as it goes past? When Mrs. Brad and I moved into our house in the early 1990s, a passing train rocked the house the first night. The doors rattled. The TV was drowned out.

It was awesome.

There are times when it's not: When it makes it impossible for me to hear the announcers while I watch "Wipeout" or "The Bachelorette." When the engineer hits the horn for several seconds in the middle of the night. When I'm stuck in Folsom Prison and time keeps draggin' on.

But the rest of the time, the 99 percent of the times the train goes through central Solano County? Fantastic.

• • •

Top five: My favorite sports seasons:

5. Warriors 2006-07. The "We Believe" team was the opposite if this year's club – a veteran, surly, cocky team with a chip on its shoulder. They made the playoffs for the first time in 13 years and stunned the top-seeded Mavericks in the first round.

4. Giants 2014. The third championship in five seasons for the Giants had the greatest postseason performance I've ever seen: Madison Bumgarner's unbelievable World Series pitching.

3. 49ers 1989-90. The second of their back-to-back titles and fourth of the decade was special because of that – and I got to cover Super Bowl XXIV in New Orleans.

2. Giants 2010. No Giants fan will forget the year they finally broke through. As late as September, it seemed unlikely they'd make the postseason. Then they won. Unbelievable.

1. Warriors 2014-15. A year where a team that struggled for decades emerged as the best, most entertaining team in the sport. The Warriors were the best team in each month of the season. They were the best offensive team. They were the best defensive team. They were unselfish. They capped it with a title.

• • •

If "Shaft," "Superfly" and "Black Caesar" are prime examples of "blaxploitation" films, are TV shows like "Downton Abbey" examples of "whitesploitation?"

Just wondering.

• • •

Whatever happened to motel beds that vibrated?

When I was a kid, every cheap roadside motel where my family stayed on our vacations had a "massage" bed. You put in a quarter (or two, if the first one didn't work) and the bed started vibrating and making a grinding noise. Not a massage by any means.

Like every family that wasted a quarter in those beds, we had the same experience every time. The kids would talk our parents into putting in money, then get bored and go swimming or to play with the ice machine. Our parents were left in the room with the noisy, bouncing bed that drowned out the TV while they tried to watch the local news.

I guess I know why those beds are gone. They were stupid.

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Join me in making America great again

I've never been particularly good at standing up to peer pressure, which is why I followed all my friends off the bridge during the famous 1985 Lemming Incident. That was, of course, a couple of years after I joined everybody that one night and Wang Chunged.

So when it became obvious that I was in danger of being the last person in America who wasn't a Republican candidate for president, I couldn't stand it anymore. I had to jump in.

My name is Brad Stanhope and I'm running for president.

I guess the last straw was when Donald Trump announced his candidacy. I'm not sure what he's done the past 30 years, but he was the owner of the United States Football League's New Jersey Generals. And a guy who signed Herschel Walker and Doug Flutie to big contracts, then saw his league go out of  business, can't be our next president. Who's next, J. William Oldenburg? (He owned the Los Angeles Express.)

To be fair, I have some strong opinions on what needs to happen in this country over the next eight years. (And let's face it, I am likely a two-term president, like Grover Cleveland, the second greatest character named "Grover" in American history.)

As I officially announce my candidacy (do you have to file anything?), let me lay out a few key platform issues for my campaign:

Flying cars. We've been promised them for generations and they're still not here. We can watch movies on our hand-held telephones, but we can't fly a car? I don't buy it. During the Stanhope administration, we'll pour billions into flying cars to fulfill the promise of America.

A border fence. Trump suggested this at his announcement, saying he wanted to build one along the Mexican border and force Mexico to pay for it. Ridiculous, right? It should obviously go on our northern border. Canadians are so nice, they'll offer to pay for it so they don't appear rude. Who is a bigger threat: Mexico or Canada? Let's put it this way, who sent Justin Bieber? Who sent Pamela Anderson? Doug Henning? Who passes off ham as "bacon"? Under President Stanhope, we'll have a border protecting our sovereignty from the enemies in Canada.

Phone service changes. When you call a "help" line, you will get help under the Stanhope monarchy. Got a problem with your television service? Phone line? Medical bill? Every phone system that offers "help" will be required to have several actual humans on duty to answer questions, and all you have to do is press "zero." Agree? Vote Stanhope.

Cuts to government programs you don't like, more money for those you like. I could be more specific, but there's no need. Suffice to say, you will agree with me. Under the Stanhope dictatorship, things will be a lot better.

Speed limit requirements. This isn't about keeping people from speeding. It's more about issuing more tickets for those who drive 58 mph in the fast lane when the speed limit is 70 mph. Under a Stanhope police state, officers will issue tickets for anyone who drives more than 10 mph outside the posted limit. Unless, you know, I'm really in a hurry.

Not flushing public (or private) toilets. Two words: Death penalty.

Vote for me and see how the nation gets turned around.

If it doesn't work?

Two more words: Invade Canada (although we'll have to scale the fence first).

I look forward to being your overlord.

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Up Cache Creek without a paddle

Maybe we should have paid more attention to the fact that the liability release we had to sign mentioned the word "death" seven times. (Rafting tip: Pay attention to the details.)

It was a week ago, on a camping trip with folks from Mrs. Brad's office, a friendly, enthusiastic bunch that was ready to have fun floating down Cache Creek in rafts.

At least I thought it would involve "floating." Mostly it involved seconds of terror preceded by minutes of dread.

I'll spare you the details, kind of. Put it this way: At the first set of serious rapids, Mrs. Brad was thrown out of the raft, got her foot temporarily caught in ropes attached to the raft and lost her beloved Giants cap. (Rafting tip: Don't wear treasured caps.) She was banged up, but managed to get back in the raft, barely, before we hit some more rapids.

The second major set of rapids, known as "the widowmaker," ejected me. I ricocheted for 150 yards, bouncing off rocks and gasping for air as I was dragged under. I, too, lost my Giants cap. (Rafting tip: See previous tip about caps.) And when I finally got to a spot with slower water, Mrs. Brad was nowhere to be found. She was stranded atop a rock upriver and had to be freed. Yikes.

We spent the next couple of hours cursing the rapids, trying to keep the raft straight, waiting for the finish and getting sunburned, since our sunblock washed off. (Rafting tip: Bring sunscreen and reapply during a break.) Finally, we neared the end . . . and were suddenly driven into the bank of the river by the current. We shot toward a tree and ducked to avoid being swept out by branches. The tree (I presume) then grabbed our raft and flipped us into the river, much like its predecessor in "The Wizard of Oz." We both came up gasping, with Mrs. Brad losing both her sunglasses and her oar. (Rafting tip: Don't wear sunglasses that you're not prepared to lose.)

We got back in and made it to the finish, with blistering sunburns, no caps and no sunglasses. Oh, and after we collected ourselves, we discovered that my insulin pump, a piece of medical equipment that costs thousands of dollars, was broken. (Rafting tip: Remove expensive items that can be water-damaged.)

Total cost: Two caps, sunglasses, insulin pump, sunburns, multiple bruises, a scratched face. (Rafting tip: Wear a hockey goalie mask.)

As we walked into camp, we looked like George Washington's army after Valley Forge. People were limping, holding ice packs on their hips, with bandages wrapped around their heads. (OK, maybe not the last one.) But as we shared experiences, we laughed.

A few people made it through undamaged, but others bounced off several rocks with their tailbones. Some people pulled their rafts out and caught rides back.

Talking about the woes made the frustration of the past few hours more laughable than lamentable. The fact that my insulin pump broke was a bit of a medical problem, but we survived it.

The people were great. But was the raft trip a disaster? No.

Like many miserable experiences, it is less daunting in the rear-view mirror. It became a source of funny stories. Because we survived, which created a sense of community (which, I presume, was the goal).

Will we do it again?

(Final rafting tip: Don't let the enjoyable memory make you forget the undesirable experience.)

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Strange days for Warriors fans

Sports fans are strange. They love success, but resent those who celebrate it with them.

Take the Golden State Warriors, who play the second game Sunday in a previously unthinkable NBA Finals. After years as a Bay Area sports version of that cool band with a few hardcore fans, they're now The Black Eyed Peas. Everybody likes them. That brings some secret resentment from those who followed the team through the lean years. And lean decades.

Those Warriors fans are not alone. Sports fans' passion for their team somehow grows when the team is bad. Fans of great teams share  joy, but bad teams' fans share a deeper connection: Pain.

Don't think so? Consider the Oakland Raiders, whose fans become more committed to the team with each passing bad year. They know that it will eventually turn around and then they'll be on top of the world. It has to, right? Right?

When a long-suffering team finally wins, fans come out of the woodwork. To the hard-core fans, those other fans are front-runners. Bandwagon-jumpers. They weren't there when things were bad, so they are resented.

We've seen it in the Bay Area. The San Francisco Giants are the most popular team in the region after winning three World Series. They routinely sold out their ballpark since 2000, so it's not just the past five years that have brought popularity, but it certainly exploded. Go on Facebook and you see posts about the Giants. Go to the grocery store and you see people wearing the T-shirts. Look around your neighborhood and you see Giants license plate holders. Everybody's a fan.

Of course. They're winning.

Now we have the Warriors. They're different from the Giants because for the past 25 years, Warriors fans were the most passionate, supportive fans in the NBA. Win (rarely), lose (almost always) or Ty(rone Hill, a one-time draft pick), fans turned out to watch and cheer. Even when they were terrible, they had a passionate core.

While maybe 500,000 different people attended Giants games each year, it felt like 30,000 people attended Warriors games – 17,000 at a time. The TV ratings were minuscule.

This year it changed. The Warriors have the NBA's most valuable player. They have some of the league's most exciting players. They have a charismatic coach. The vibe is ridiculous. Suddenly, everyone's a Warriors fan.

Which makes the core fans uncomfortable. Guys like my friends Danny, Que and Jayson. Or Vickie, who attended Thursday's game. And all the other people who attended games in 1996 and 2000 and 2006 and watched losing seasons.

They know that people who talk about how they loved Rick Barry and the Run TMC days don't remember the past 10 years – when Jason Richardson was the team's only star and when Mike Dunleavy was a heralded draft pick. They don't remember when Kalenna Azubuike came up from the D-League or when Muggsy and Bimbo were the point guards. They don't remember Anthony Randolph's potential or Andres Biedrens' horrible free throws.

But now they're all in, which is good news: Because it means the Warriors are winning. And if they cap off one of the greatest seasons in NBA history with a championship, those fans will get the licence plate holders, foam fingers, championship T-shirts and post about the team on Facebook.

Which is all good for Warriors fans. Because it means a championship.

This is the dream, but it feels like there are a lot of uninvited guests. Hard-core Warriors fans may have to get used to the company.

The band that used to be a secret is now winning Grammy Awards.

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.