Those of you with a literary bent will not be surprised to hear that I was reading Tom Wolfe at the time. Others will notice that it’s pre-iPhone and pre-mobile internet, and that take-out coffee hadn’t arrived in New Zealand yet. ~ Ian
Well, gosh — we’ve been here three weeks and never written since the first few days. Boy, have we been on the go. At least we were until yesterday. But today we’re parked in a delightful part of Quebec and I’ve only got about 50 emails to answer, so to hell with them…
It’s nice that some of those emails are from people saying they enjoyed the last instalment (those who thought it was crap will have to write more often!) but if you can’t be bothered reading all this — and I don’t blame you — let’s just say we’re having a great time. We’ve enjoyed ourselves so much so far.
However, for a fuller story, read on.
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If you’ve exhibited your normal patience with me, you’ve already read about our time in Southern California with Jeff and Terri and Teegan. We were sorry to leave them — sorry to leave South Cal full stop — partly because we were by now pretty familiar with the language, which consists principally of…
“Uh Hunh” (Yes)
“Uh Oh!” (Gosh/Oh dear!)
“Hunh!” (Really!)
“Nyuh Unh” (Absolutely not)
“Oops!” (Uh Oh!)
— and of course —
“Cool”, and
“Would you like Fries with that?”
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Shopping in LA was something else. Need a birthday cake for your cat? A porcelain jar to keep your doggy’s farts in? You got it. You got EVERYTHING.
Heather got a personal shopper at Nordstrom (Cool!) who organised for her two identical pairs of trousers, amongst other things. One of them fitted her perfectly while the other was just two poles short of a tent. We’re working on it.
We went to COSTCO, where there were aircraft hangars-full of electronics of all kinds and garden stuff and tools and software and records and books and toys and clothing and shoes and grain-fed beef and delicatessen items galore and stuffed salmon steaks (which Jeff cooked for us) and — and — and…
We agonised about buying 6 white T-shirts for $6, and eventually did — but bought “extra large” in error. Fortunately, that is now our correct size (see Eat Your Heart Out, or just read on).
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And we travelled the freeways. That was exciting for a while. Seven lanes to choose from, and a 70mph debate about which one we should be in, while Heather tries to read our one-page, fully detailed rental car map of Los Angeles and cross-reference it to the terrific Yahoo internet maps we’ve down-loaded.
The most exciting moment was when the guy alongside us blew a tire.
Bang!!!
Road rage? Are we dodging bullets? No — just a wildly careering car in the next lane… Fortunately for him (and us) he was in the shoulder lane and he did a masterly job of bringing his jalopy to a halt.
Apart from that we went to see the occasional customer and tried to make the new cell-phone that Stephen had organised for us work, and then it was time to move on.
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Picture us leaving LA on Day One of our road trip — the Freeway behind us, no Jeff and Terri to hold our hand, confident we can drive on the right, and heading up the highway towards Lone Pine, Yosemite and Death Valley.
Doing what I’ve always wanted to do — drive a car across the US of A. It was great. It was beautiful. And we were hungry, so of course a Denny’s was our first stop.
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I don’t want to just talk about food and phones — so for now let’s just leave it at Heather being a bit preoccupied reading cell phone manuals on the lovely drive up towards Lone Pine and Death Valley, with the still-snowy Sierras to the west. The plan was to visit Death Valley, Yosemite and Lake Tahoe, but it was still Day One when reality dawned, and we decided we’d have to give Death Valley a miss and head straight on north to Yosemite.
Unfortunately Yosemite was closed — or at least the road in from the East was — so we drove on to Lake Tahoe and stopped for a few days.
It was lovely, once we’d found a motel. The first one we stopped at, this half dead woman came stumbling out, stinking of smoke and hacking like a crone. We asked for a non-smoking room. Can you imagine our cheek? I thought she’d die laughing (it would only have taken a nudge). The room was so bad that I felt my nostrils closing like a seal’s, and my lungs would only work on “exhale”. We were outa there. Fortunately the next was a charmer — and it did classy things with coffee and bagels.
We walked and fed the squirrels and tried to use our cellphone, and read, and ate, and… watched Real Sex on HBO. And read and ate and watched…
Let me tell you, the most frustrating thing in the world is trying to find something kinda worth watching among the 99 channels available, and you find something, but you think — hmm, maybe there’s something better— so you keep looking. But, no there’s not, so — which channel was it that was KINDA worth watching?
People go to Tahoe for the skiing and the casino. I think casinos are the devil’s work and the very talk of skiing is terrifying, so we spent a lot of time outdoors in comparatively flat places. We sat on the beach, and ate, and caught a paddle-steamer out on the Lake — and ate.
And we went shopping. All the T-shirts were intimidating skiing ones with messages on them such as Hold my poles, wimp, while I kiss your girl-friend. I was not their target market.
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The only thing wrong with Tahoe was that it was about to be spoilt for us by Banff in Alberta, which was even more ravishing and had better motels.
Don’t tell anyone, but the most fun we had there was a visit to the absolutely hokey Ponderosa Ranch! It was great fun. We’d all watched Bonanza. We had Hoss Burgers and barbecued corn for lunch, and watched a western wedding, and chatted to these lovely guys who ran the ticket office and had a great line of patter. And we jes’ moseyed around looking at this incredible collection of wagons and cars and all sortsa country gear. A bit like MOTAT, but with gunfights every afternoon in the main street.
Next stop was Sacramento. We had to work there, and Cara had done a good job of lining up appointments, so apart from an evening in Old Sacramento, we just hung out at the Ol’ Red Roof Inn and checked out a few more chain eateries.
Cara gave us something to think about too. She’d liked our albums but said, “How do we design them? Do you have album planning software?” No, we didn’t. But her question changed our lives for sure, especially Stephen’s.
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When we got to San Francisco we had a delightful day doing the cable car thing and visiting China Town and Union Square. Went to a place called Urban Outfitters (like Remo with body piercings) and bought some real classy trash. Went to Fisherman’s Wharf and ate fish on the street, listening to pop and blues from a black 40-year-old with braided hair, and a white guy our age with too few teeth. It was c-o-l-d, and I started to worry about sunny Alberta, half a continent to the north.
Then down that afternoon to Silicon Valley (Silicon Valley!) to see Melissa and her photographer mentor, Kirstie. Kirstie specialises in oil-painting over black and white photos for families with LOTS of money to spare. I could see our customers green with envy at the thought of operating in the richest place on earth. Her lovely but little bungalow was worth two million of our miserable dollars. Very talented, both these two, and couldn’t have been nicer to us.
We went to dinner in Palo Altos at a cool Mexican restaurant called Left at Albuquerque and then they took me to worship at the Apple Campus in Cupertino. It was late so the Apple Store — at 6 Infinity Way! — was closed, but boy I would have loved a T-shirt.
Anyway we had a plane to catch back in San Francisco and no bed booked for the night. So we headed off – and finally, well after midnight, found the last bed in town at a bleak but boisterously expensive Best Western next to the freeway and slept for a few hours. Picture us up at 5.00am in the freezing cold re-packing our bags in the car park so we could catch the plane.
We made it — no dents on the car — and were off to Canada.