There's No Place Like Home

We are home. It was a long day, but we finally arrived here at 8 p.m., missing the opportunity to go to the San Francisco Symphony by about 3 hours. Fortunately I had foreseen that this might be a problem and so had arranged for a friend to take my ticket. With that accomplished, I was free to take my time and not push it too much heading home.

I actually slept all right last night, but for some reason, all I had to do was get behind the wheel of the car and Peggy was asking me if I was OK to drive even before we got on the freeway. Maybe it was because I decided not to make a pot of coffee first and so was flying caffeine-less.

But whatever, as we approached Solvang, less than an hour up the road, I decided it might be a kewl place to stop for a coffee break. As it turned out, it was one of Peggy’s most expensive cups of coffee. Solvang is a little Danish village stuck out in the middle of nowhere and a favorite of tourist buses. It offers a little bit of everything--mostly Danish crafts, but also things from Europe, Indian art, and the usual tsatskes that you find in souvenir shops.

We started off with coffee and a bear claw at Solvang’s most popular bakery (or so the sign said ). Both were excellent. While I was finishing up my coffee, Peggy went off "for a minute" to check a store. Half an hour later she was back with some GSP stuff ("German short hair pointer") and a lead on another store which might have more of same. We traipsed down to that store, did indeed find more GSP stuff, bought that, and then made a significant dent in a store that features Indian crafts. Oh yeah--we also checked out the sale at the Izod store and Peggy took advantage of the slashed prices.

We finally got on the road again, though it was by now nearly lunchtime.

Peggy photographing the James Dean Memorial

W set the CD player to cranking and cruised up the road to Lawsuit music (Peggy hadn’t heard the band before; she probably won’t again either), and then lots of John Denver which got us as far as the Harris Ranch, where we bought some steaks to bring home, and picked up some snacks for "lunch." We sat outside by a fountain and ate muffins and drank coffee. Peggy informed me she’d bought more snacks which she would dole out at appropriate intervals if she felt I was getting too sleepy.

Many miles and many potato chips later, we finally turned our wheels from I-5 onto I-80 with the next stop Davis. Kimba was very pleased to see us and Walt was in San Francisco.

The car got unpacked, the telephone messages listened to, and then we sat on the patio reminiscing about the week and marveling that we’ve now been together for almost all waking hours for nearly 3 weeks now and we are still friends, we are still laughing, and nobody has had any short temper at all. Given that we are now at the halfway point of this trip, we figure this is a pretty positive thing.

Finally Peggy went off to bed and I turned on the computer and picked up my 70 e-mail messages and started to ease back into "normal." I promised the psychologist that I’d fax him a report tonight so he’d have it first thing in the morning--and around midnight when I went to do that, discovered I hadn’t typed it yet. So I’m back to normal with a bang and though I intended to be in bed and sleeping soundly by now, it looks like I’ll be transcribing again for the next hour.

Keep the Wagons Moving

We took no pictures yesterday. This is pretty much a monumental thing since we seem to have been averaging about 100 a day each for the past week or so. But it was a travel day and we saw no lions or tigers or bears (oh my!) and the order of the day was just to get started on the road home.

I hoped to be on the road by 9:30. We were on the road by 9:28, which is in itself something of a miracle. I thought it was going to be a 2 hour drive to LA, but it was more like 3 by the time we arrived at Steve's. We didn't get lost and we only stopped once, for gas, so we're starting to feel like we know what we're doing. On top of that, as we drove through Huntington Beach we felt right at home. We even got off on the Magnolia off-ramp, when it was time for our gas stop, since we spent so much time wandering around on that street on our drive down and we more or less knew we we'd find there.

As we drove through LA, the offramps now seemed like old friends -- Mulholldand Drive, Sunset Blvd.... We could reminisce about being Lost in Beverly Hills just a few days before.

We got to Steve's shortly before 12:30. Today is his birthday and I'd told him we'd take him to lunch to celebrate. We drove to an eclectic cafe in NoHo (North Hollywood). I know it was an eclectic cafe because it was called The Eclectic Cafe. Steve and I ordered baked chicken and Peggy ordered scallops and when the waitress asked if she wanted them blackened, she said yes, thinking they would broil them or something. She didn't realize that "blackened" meant they would come Cajun style, and extremely spicy, so after she took the first bite and smoke poured out her ears, I decided to switch plates with her. I'd never had an order of scallops before (though knew I liked them because I'd eaten them before). They were quite tasty and Peggy was much happier with the roasted chicken.

After lunch we walked over to the El Portal theatre, which Steve's partner Jimmy runs, stopping en route at the office of Ronda Espy, in whose recording studio Steve had cut a demo CD a week or so ago. But when we got to the El Portal, Jimmy was out galavanting, so we didn't get the chance to see him, or to give Peggy the grand tour of the theatre complex, though Steve did talk about the city's planned renovation of the NoHo area and how it was going to become a big entertainment complex, with the El Portal at its center. It all sounds very exciting. (Maybe I'll come down and review some theatre for The Enterprise now that I'm a big theatre critic.)

We went back to Steve & Jimmy's for a bathroom break before getting back on the road again. Steve played his latest song for us (even Peggy, who is not a fan of Steve's music, liked it) and explained his concept for his next show, which sounds very kewl indeed.

And then for the last leg of the trip, the drive to Santa Barbara, which was another short jaunt. We took a brief turn around downtown Santa Barbara just so Peggy could get a feel for what the town was like, and then we came here to Walt's sister's house to wait for her to get home from work. Oddly enough even after so much time in the car together in the past week, it was very nice to have the chance to just sit, without the motor running, and to talk, watching the crows flying overhead through the open sun roof. We reminisced about our activities thus far, and talked about the time Peggy has left of her vacation here. I enjoyed it very much, and I realized what close friends we have become in a short period of time and how much I will miss her when she returns to Australia.

Alice Nan returned from work, followed just a few minutes later by Tom so after introductions, we all piled in Alice Nan's car and drove out to see the new condo she's just purchased while there was still some daylight left. It backs up on property owned by the University of California Santa Barbara, an area called "the bluffs" and, I think she said "the marsh" and will be just great, because she has a vast expanse of land between her back fence and the cliff overlooking the ocean, and no threat of development in the foreseeable future. She said when she was looking at the house she was already wondering where I'd plug in my computer when I came to visit. With luck, it will be at a window overlooking the ocean. I might plan an extended stay....

Dinner was at Harry's, the hauf brau for the "in" crowd of Santa Barbara. Nothing fancy...just good plain cooking. Peggy's style. And after dinner we went up to show Peggy Tom & Laurel's new apartment and to allow her to get her dog fix by playing with the two big dogs, Sierra and Akila.

Then back here to visit for a bit until we were all having drooping eyelids. Tom went home, Alice Nan and Peggy went to bed and I sat here reading the 50 e-mails that had accumulated during the day. I was going to write a journal entry, but I was too tired and had nothing to say. When I awoke at 5 a.m., I was no longer too tired, but still really had nothing exciting to say, and now I've said it.

It's not a great story. It's just what happened.

Today we'll head out as early as we can and hope to get home in time for Walt and me to get into the car (groan) and drive to San Francisco for the symphony. It's Blomstedt conducting! How can I miss it? I just hope I snore in time to the music.

I'm a Survivor

I learned one thing today: I am a survivor.

It was Founder's Day at the San Diego zoo. That means that admission was free for the day. Someone at the Wild Animal Park yesterday said there would be "a lot of people." That's like saying Cecil B. DeMille invited a few people to stand around during the filming of Ben Hur. Every school class south of Seattle and every toddler with a stroller and a parent was at the zoo today. English was very definitely not the dominant language. And the whole thing was...well...a real zoo.

We actually kind of lucked out at the beginning of the day. We first went to the panda exhibit. I suspect it's about 10 feet from the entrance, but they route you through the whole zoo before you finally find it. We managed to get there just a few minutes before the first viewing session at 10 a.m. and there were relatively few people in the line. Best of all, the new baby panda, HuaMei was visible, sleeping in the tree, while her mother wandered around below.


I've been following HuaMei's progress through "PandaCam" on the Internet ever since her birth a year ago. She's the first baby panda born in captivity to survive and so she's pretty special. I remember the early days, before her Mom let her outside to greet the public. Watching the play between mother and baby was so touching. And now I was able to see them "in the fur," as it were.

After we'd seen the pandas, we did the rest of the zoo. We walked miles and miles up and down hill. Peggy says I "suffered in silence," but actually I was glad to have been forced into doing all that stuff. I saw things I would not have seen had I sat off in a corner reading a book. Of course it got more and more difficult as the day progressed and the crowds got thicker and thicker.

I did overhear some interesting conversations, though. At the orangutan enclosure, two girls were talking about the grouping (large orang, two smaller ones, and then the largest off by himself).

"Those are the kids," a girl said. "They're playing and the Mom is over there saying 'just go away and leave me alone.' The big one is the dad. He just wants to get away from all his responsibilities," she continued. (I decided this might be a good place to do psychotherapy!)

Another girl asked "What do they eat?" Her companion helpfully replied. "Chicken. They can't give them live chickens, though, 'cause that would be cruelty to animals, so they give them whole dead chicken. Frozen chickens."

We took pictures of the frozen-dead-chicken-eating orangutans and wondered if this is why they looked so fierce!


After that it kind of gets blurry. Raptors...and zebras...and bears...oh my!. Up hill and down hill, snapping photos as we went. I kind of hit the wall at one point and had just HAD IT with people shoving and children crying.

I think it was in the Polar Bear viewing area when someone ran a stroller over my sore foot.


Oh, I knew it was an accident and I didn't get upset, but there were four people deep trying to photograph the polar bears, you got jostled if you moved in any direction and I just longed for the peace and quiet of the previous day's wild animal park. The photo shows just a small segment of the crowd standing at the polar bear enclosure (and yes, that's Peggy standing up on a bench to get a photo)


We stayed till near closing time, wending our way through the zebras and giraffes to the front exit and the gift shop (which was wall to wall people, of course). But finally we limped back to the car--well, I limped and Peggy was sympathetic.

On the way home we drove through Old Town San Diego and I suggested we stop and--I can't believe I said this--walk around to get a bit of the flavor of historic San Diego, which included dinner at one of the restaurants. Unfortunately, I forgot about Peggy's sensitive stomach and felt absolutely horrible that she couldn't eat any of the dinner she was paying for.

[Post visit addendum: As we walked back to the car, I asked her if she thought we would continue to stay in touch after she returned to Australia. Peggy, ever the bluntly honest person that she is, said that she didn't think so. She felt her curiosity had been satisfied. I had to fight back the tears and not let her see how disappointed I was. Fortunately, as it turned out, her decision changed before she left to return to Australia.]

We finally returned to the motel, both of us exhausted. In fact, I was too tired to type this journal until 4:30 a.m., when I woke up with stabbing pains in my back.

So we say goodbye to San Diego and get back on the freeway in a couple of hours. With luck we will NOT get lost this time and will find our way to Steve's house with a minimum of u- turns.

Where the Wild Things Are

We are, as Peggy says, "stuffed" (which I am assuming means "exhausted"). We have had a full day, but it was a great one.

But let me start at the beginning. We got on the road early for us--9:30--and drove to Escondido, to the Wild Animal Park (we didn't get lost). On the way we passed a huge ostrich ranch--the first I'd ever seen.

It was either a great day to be at the park, or the place is so huge that you just never feel you're there in a crowd. We started out by taking the tram tour--an hour around the park, to give you an idea of what's there and where. It's so huge it's impossible to do it all in one day. The place opens at 9 and closes at 4 and we didn't make a dent in the possible things to do. But we got a great feel for this wonderful park, where the animals live under as much "normal" conditions as they would in their native habitat.

One of the fun things we did was to feed the lorikeets. These colorful birds are native to Australia. To pass through their enclosure is free, or you can buy a little cup of liquid food to take in with you. If you have a cup in hand, you will be covered with birds very soon. They perch on your arm, your arm, your hand, your shoulder, your head--sometimes all at once. Trying to take pictures of each other was fun, since we were covered in birds at the time.

Next we spent a lot of time at the gorilla habitat. In contrast to the small enclosures we saw at the Sacramento Zoo, the animals here have as close as possible to what would be their habitat in the wild and it was a delight to watch the interactions among the group, the old silverback staying on top of the antics of all the younger ones, and especially keeping the young adult males in tow, while the old pregnant females sat off to the side chewing bamboo and probably talking about what to name the babies.


And then we set off on foot for Africa. It's a mile and a half trail that wends its way around the park. But it goes in so many directions, it's hard to know really how far you go. We didn't cover nearly the whole thing, but did see the things that most interested us. I thought I was keeping up pretty good until Peggy stopped to take my picture and said that my face was beet red. I suspect that a part of the reason we spent so much time at our next stop (the elephant pens) was because she was trying to give me a chance to catch my breath and get back some normal color.

We spent a lot of time watching some African elephants and each took about a disk's worth of photos (I thought Peggy's photo of some butt-sniffing behavior might interest Ned).


They were just great, and it was especially nice when one youngster came over to where we were standing and stood directly beneath us begging for food (which we didn't give). At another spot in the park, apparently you can feed giraffes, but we didn't get that far today.

Our last animal visit was to the Meerkats, who are such fun animals, and then the traditional half our in the gift shop after which we staggered to the parking lot and came home again. We were very definitely "stuffed."

Dinner was leftovers from last night, so we didn't have to go out for food. Then we settled in to watch The Olympics. Fantastic closing ceremonies, but I have to admit that I will not be shedding any tears at missing Bob Costas' voice in the next week...and I hope we have seen the last of the "tribute" montages. The athletes were all great, but the coverage left a lot to be desired, especially for Peggy who had no idea that she would be getting such terrible coverage in this country.

Tomorrow the plan is to do the San Diego Zoo. We are a bit dubious, though, because we were told that admission is free tomorrow, since it's "founder's day," and that it will be very crowded. I suspect that comparison of the two parks will put the Wild Animal Park waaaaaay ahead of the zoo for satisfaction of experience.

Room with a View

It was called Ocean View motel. This was the "view" from our room in Huntington Beach, we discovered this morning. Awww...c'mon. Surely you can see it. Look real hard. There is actually about an inch worth of water you can see between two buildings across the street.


We got the heck outta there ASAP this morning and got on the road to Laguna Beach. Peggy's friend had recommended that we visit "Fashion Island" and said that there were several good places where we could have brunch in the complex. Well, ya couldn't prove it by us. We walked miles around the "island" and the only restaurants we found were closed until 11 or so. The guy had recommended The Cheesecake Factory (which made our ears perk up), but it only opened at 11. We futzed around Circuit City for awhile and finally left at 11:10, but The Cheesecake Factory was still not open, so we called the whole thing a bust and just went looking for somewhere else.

We found Panini, where we had a lovely brunch sitting at an outside table where conversation was all but impossible for the traffic, especially the motorcycles, but it was a delicious meal and, feeling fortified, we got on the road again. Our directions for today were a little more clear: Get on the 405. Get off an San Diego. I figured we could do that. We could.

We stopped at one scenic overlook where there were tons of seagulls and people feeding them. We took lots of pictures, trying to get some good ones of the birds in flight.


Peggy also discovered a real squirrels' nest and got some great photos of some of the squirrels. The photo below of a seagull flying off with a piece of bread in its beak isn't the best, but I was tickled to get it.


And then we arrived here. We went to the tourist information booth to get some information on hotels. They found us a terrific place, The Vagabond, where we have adjoining rooms, with all the amenities and all for quite a bit under $100 a night. Peggy is thrilled. We shared a bed last night and she had to keep kicking me to tell me to roll over when my snoring kept her awake.

We had most of the afternoon ahead of us, but we just settled in here for our 3-night stay. We went to a supermarket and loaded up on food, then went to Mervyn's, where Peggy gave me a course in power shopping (that girl does know how to spot a bargain!), and then to Target to get a real coffee cup, and an electric kettle so we can have both instant coffee (her) and brewed coffee (me) in the morning.

We came home with our treasures and loaded up the fridge. Then we cooked up some chicken, fixed a salad, and set a table for ourselves here in the room while we watched the Olympics. All very civilized and much cheaper than going out to a restaurant. We have enough leftovers that we will do that tomorrow as well.

Peggy wrote some e-mail while I napped and she's now gone to bed, with closed door so she will sleep soundly for a change, and I'm about to do the same thing. Tomorrow we will be spending at the Wild Animal park, which was the real reason for this trip.

Lost in Beverly Hills...and everywhere else

Yesterday proved one thing--with or without directions, with or without maps, both of us are hopeless at navigating the Los Angeles freeways. We're ready to go back to Tahoe.

It seemed like it was going to be such an easy day: wake up, eat breakfast, shower, get in the car, drive to Disneyland, drive to Huntington Beach to run an errand, find a hotel, spend the night, get up, go to San Diego. What could go wrong?

First we blew a fuse. Peggy was toasting a bagel and I was re-heating my coffee in the microwave and apparently it was too much for the house's old wiring to handle. Peggy eventually found the fuse box and we got it re-set.

Then we packed up to leave. I did a sweep of upstairs to make sure we hadn't left anything. Then, knowing me well enough by now, Peggy did her own sweep of upstairs to make sure we hadn't left anything. Satisfied we had everything, we packed up the car and, following Merrell's directions, headed up Beverly Glen to Mulholland drive. Halfway up the hill, I went to look at my watch to see what time it was and realized I'd left the watch on the sink. Back down Beverly Glen to get the watch. Back up Beverly Glen to Mulholland.

Merrell's directions seemed fairly simple: Go on Mulholland until it ends at the 405 freeway, and follow the signs from there. What could go wrong?

Well, there comes a place where Mulholland meets a couple of other roads. I could have SWORN I took the sign that said Mulholland, but after a time it became clear we were no longer on Mulholland. We wound around and around Beverly Hills (lovely to look at, at least) and up and down hills. It was like we were in a movie--Beverly Hills...Rodeo Drive...Sunset Blvd. The only thing we did not find was the 405. Somehow we ended up on the campus of UCLA and someone there told us how to find the freeway. After only an hour of wandering around we were finally on the 405 headed to Disneyland. From there it was simple: drive till the 405 hits I5, follow I5 until the signs for Disneyland. What could go wrong?

How can you lose Disneyland 3 blocks from the park? Somehow we did. The sign said "Disneyland Resort" and we assumed that was to the hotel, so we looked for a better turnoff. Many miles and many u-turns later, we finally ended up back where we'd started and the signs in the OTHER direction said "Park and Resort" so we ended up back where we started from, 3 blocks from the park. But finally we were there. Disneyland. Only 2 hours after we started.



The day in the park actually did go well. And nothing really did go wrong, except that Peggy wanted more "adventure" in her day. The attractions were entirely too tame for her tastes, though we managed to just avoid the crowds for the biggies like Pirates of the Caribbean and The Haunted Mansion. Tomorrowland offered more promise of adventure and we did enjoy Star Tours. I made her drive one of the cars on Autopia so she could get behind the wheel of a car on the proper side of the road (I'm not entirely sure I'm ready to hand the Honda over to her!)...

...and I agreed to go on the Matterhorn, a huge concession for wimp me. I was going to subject her to Small World, but somehow she managed to avoid it.


By 5, after the parade, we decided we'd had enough of Disneyland and we would just drive to Huntington Beach, settle into a motel, get a bite to eat, deliver our package to Peggy's friends, and come home to watch the Olympics. What could go wrong?

I'll spare you the details, but suffice to say that it's an 18 mile drive from Disneyland to Peggy's friend's house, and we put 100 miles on the car and only had jellybeans for dinner. Let's just not talk about it, OK?

We found a sleazy motel with no in-room coffee, in-room TV with 65 channels of static and 5 channels of infomercials, with closed captioning that can't be turned off, one bed, no tissues, one flat pillow each. I can't get onto the Internet, so I'm writing this in WordPerfect and hope to post from San Diego. It's called the Ocean View Motel, and I think I can see a piece of the ocean between the two buildings across the street. Barely.

We woke up at what we thought was 6:30 and Peggy was waiting till 7 when she could go down and get coffee from the office. However, we realized that it was 5:30, not 6:30 and we had another hour or so before the office opens, so she went back to sleep. I went down at 7, found warm coffee, no cream; and a choice of Sweet 'n' Low or a box of sugar that was full of lumps.

Today we are going to have an easy day. We will drive to Laguna Beach for breakfast, then get back on the 405 and drive to San Diego. We have maps. We have directions. What could go wrong?

The Raveled Sleeve of Care

This seems to be a good time to talk about sleep. It's about 2:30 a.m. and I'm sitting in a house perched on the side of a hillside somewhere in Los Angeles. I have a cat and a laptop on my lap, Jay Leno is droning on in the background, and our hostess is snoring softly.

Peggy and I left Davis around 10 a.m. this morning. I was a bit worried about the drive down here, since I'd had only 2 hours of sleep the night before and wasn't sure how I'd deal with 8 hours of driving. I had to go see Beauty and the Beast the previous night and write a review, as well as unpack from Tahoe, do laundry, repack for this week's trip to San Diego, get some transcription finished, etc., etc. It was a short night of sleep even by my standards. But except for about 2 hours in the middle of the 8 hr drive, when I was doing a lot of squirming and trying to keep myself awake, I did OK.

We stopped a couple of times to get out and walk around. First we stopped near a cotton field and Peggy got out to look at how cotton grows.


And then we stopped at the Harris Ranch feed lot, the smell of which dominates everything as you drive past it on I-5. Peggy was impressed with the seemingly endless mass of cattle all being fed for the slaughter.

Another stop was at a rest stop, where Peggy accosted a truck driver to ask if she could take a look around the cab of his truck, since all those big semi's we kept passing had fascinated her. She reported that the cab was quite nice, had space for two beds and a refrigerator.

We were meeting our hostess this evening at a Thai restaurant in Los Angeles at 6:30. I love it when I can start out 400 miles away and get to a place I've never been before, and arrive exactly on time, so I was a little disappointed that we were an hour early, but Merrell was half an hour early herself, so we ate earlier than anticipated. A delicious non-spicy Thai dinner with lots of laughter and conversation. Merrell and Peggy seemed to hit it off just fine.

After dinner, Merrell sped through the streets of LA to her house, with me trying to follow, and eventually ending up here. We all sat around pretending to make conversation, but really all nodding off, so finally at 8:30 we all went to bed. I can't remember the last time I was in bed-- and asleep--so early. But of course 1:30 came and I was wide awake..

I don't sleep much. I decided that it must have been all those years of getting up in the middle of the night with babies and toddlers that got me out of the habit of sleeping. I've never been one to lounge around in bed. When I'm awake, I have to be up and doing.

Part of my work involves typing psychiatric evaluations and invariably I come across some person who "suffers from insomnia" and who "can't get more than 6 hours of sleep." Heck-- THAT's insomnia??? I average 4 hours of sleep, with an occasional night of 6 which is a real "sleeping in" night for me. I seem to be functioning just fine on this average. Of course I read somewhere once that there should be a pre-sleep period, where you gradually begin relaxing, and if you fall asleep in less than 20 minutes, you're probably sleep deprived. If I toss and turn for more than 3 minutes before falling asleep, I consider that insomnia. I have no difficulty falling asleep, but I also don't fret if I wake after just a few hours. I either get up and work on the computer, or I come downstairs to the reclining chair, get a blanket, and turn on Nick at Night, which almost always helps me go back to sleep.

Of course "going downstairs to the recliner" is often not necessary because I sleep in the chair many nights anyway. If I'm working late at night and have a deadline to meet in the morning, it's easier to just get in the chair, set the timer on the stove for 2, 3, or 4 hours and sleep there, getting up at 4 or 5 a.m. to get the work done at that time. I seem to work most efficiently between 4 and 6 a.m.

But when I sleep, I sleep hard and nothing wakes me. In the middle of writing this entry, I decided to see if I could get a bit more sleep, and fell back to sleep around 3 a.m., waking at 6:30. By the time I woke up, Merrell was gone and I hadn't even heard her leave, though she made coffee, fed the cat, and let herself out all within feet of where I was dozing on the couch. Peggy awoke and reported that my snoring had kept her awake. It may be a long week for her, since from here on we will be sharing a motel room.