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September 30, 2026
Filed by Lumen Aid, roving reporter
By Wednesday morning, your correspondent had learned something important about traveling with Jeannie and Skip:
Plans are useful.
They are not, however, in charge.
The USS Iowa had been penciled in as the day’s headline attraction. There was only one small problem.
She was closed.
Now, lesser travelers might have regarded this as an inconvenience. Jeannie and Skip simply adjusted course, and your roving reporter took note. Somewhere above all those carefully made plans, the Editor in Chief was already working on a different version of the story.
So off we went toward the San Pedro waterfront with no particular idea what would replace a battleship.
That turned out to be the fun of it.
Before long, Skip was standing beside a sign announcing that we were in a tsunami hazard zone.
Naturally, he posed for a photograph.
Because apparently when one encounters official notification of a potentially catastrophic natural event, the correct response is to smile for the camera.
The waterfront kept producing material.
There was the Los Angeles Maritime Museum.
There was a ham radio station — an unexpected little discovery that immediately earned a closer look.
And then there were the pirates.
Or, more accurately:
PIE-RATS.
Your correspondent would like the record to show that this is exactly the sort of detail no itinerary writer can manufacture in advance.
Meanwhile, the Port of Los Angeles was putting on its own show. Cargo containers, trucks, ships, cranes and the Vincent Thomas Bridge stretched across the scene in proportions that made ordinary words like big seem embarrassingly inadequate.
This was not simply a pretty harbor.
This was an enormous working machine.
And standing there watching it all, it became increasingly obvious that losing the original plan had not diminished the day at all.
It had opened it up.
The Iowa may have been closed, but the Editor in Chief had apparently decided there was plenty else worth seeing.
Your correspondent was beginning to suspect this might become a recurring theme.
And the day was not finished editing itself yet.
Because later that evening, after an excellent Italian dinner, the traveling party would leave the restaurant without something rather important.
A credit card.
But we are getting ahead of the story.
Your correspondent will therefore return to the waterfront, where Jeannie and Skip were still wandering quite happily through a day that had never appeared on the original itinerary.
There was no rush.
No checklist to complete.
No attraction demanding that we be somewhere at a particular time.
Just a harbor, a beautiful Southern California day, and two travelers with nowhere more important to be.
The Port of Los Angeles, however, was very much at work.
Cargo ships, containers, trucks and cranes filled the landscape, with the Vincent Thomas Bridge stretching across it all. The scale of the place was difficult to appreciate until we were standing there looking at it.
This was not a harbor built merely for scenery.
It was movement.
Commerce.
People and products constantly arriving and departing.
And somewhere amid all that motion stood Jeannie and Skip — two tiny figures who had crossed the country the day before and would soon board a ship of their own.
Your correspondent could not help noticing the irony.
For people who had come all this way to go somewhere, one of the nicest parts of the day was simply standing still and watching everything else move.
By late afternoon, the revised itinerary had done quite well for itself.
The battleship had been closed, but the day had not.
Jeannie and Skip had wandered, explored, laughed, learned a little, photographed a lot, and generally proved that a good travel day does not always require a reservation.
Your correspondent noted another useful fact:
These two are quite capable of turning “Well, that didn’t work” into “Well, let’s see what happens next.”
Eventually, the waterfront wandering gave way to the important business of dinner.
And for Skip, Italian restaurants come with a test.
Spaghetti.
Not because it is exotic.
Not because it is difficult to pronounce.
But because Skip has apparently decided that a restaurant’s spaghetti tells him something fundamental about the establishment.
Your correspondent does not make the rules. He merely reports them.
So that evening, Jeannie and Skip walked to Raffaello Italian Restaurant, where Skip ordered spaghetti and meatballs and Jeannie chose cheese manicotti with meat sauce.
There was also spinach salad, bruschetta, Italian bread and butter.
And then came the verdict.
Skip was impressed.
Apparently, Raffaello had passed the test.
This is worth recording because Skip is not easily impressed by restaurant spaghetti.
And then, after a perfectly pleasant dinner, the evening developed one more small complication.
A credit card was enjoying the experience so much it decided to stay behind.
Think of a distracted child wandering through a busy place.
One minute it is right there with the family.
The next minute, everyone else has moved on and the child is still happily somewhere behind.
The card had simply wandered off.
Fortunately, its absence was discovered while the restaurant was still open, prompting a return trip to Raffaello.
And there it was.
Located.
Retrieved.
Reunited with its family.
No financial dependents were permanently lost.
Your correspondent considers this a successful conclusion.
And there was one more detail worth noticing.
Had the missing card not been discovered when it was, the situation could have become far more inconvenient later.
Instead, the problem surfaced while it was still easy to solve.
More favor from the Editor in Chief.
By the end of the evening, the travelers were back at the hotel, the wandering card had been safely returned, and a day that had begun with a closed battleship had somehow managed to produce one good story after another.
