California: Day Six
Monday, February 22, 2010
Today the sun shone again in Los Angeles. While I have not been lucky with temperature, I have been mostly lucky with rain, the bulk of it falling while I slept. With today's sun came that additional 10 degrees I had been missing since Day One. As the guy at Eagle Rider (the motorcycle rental company) said when I complained about the cold, well it is February. This is our winter. I mentioned Venice Beach and he said, “Yeah, the babes all wear sweatshirts and hoodies; that's their winter coat.”
My last vacation day was a soft day. I walked up to the Denny's and posted the February 14 Polar Bear blog. I got a delicious meal at a cost approximately one-tenth of the breakfast options here at the hotel.
I figured to turn the bike in by 4 p.m. This evening my work starts with a 6 pm screening and meeting and another 7 pm meeting. Film distributors will pitch their movies.
I also wanted to change my hotel room. So despite getting raked over the coals to be here at the same hotel as the convention, which included twenty-five bucks for overnight parking for the bike, I still had to pack my bags yet again, if only to ride the elevator down and back up again.
With my leisurely breakfast and then switching rooms, I figured to check out the L.A. Zoo and get a photo of the Hollywood sign.
My route there was 90 percent freeway. So I also figured to leave and return before rush hour. It is Monday.
Traffic was moderately heavy all the same. These freeways twist and merge with dual lane entrances and exits. Each of these big merges leads to a slowdown. They do severe rubber banding here, speeds from 65 mph to 0 with very little warning.
Is lane sharing an awesome concept or what? I finally got my chance. Cars actually move over to let you through. When traffic slowed, or stopped or crawled, I slid the bike from one lane to the next, hopscotching my way along through the much slower lines of cars. Too bad we don't have the tradition back east. Somehow I think our drivers are just too nasty to let it work.
Unfortunately, California is also populated with distracted drivers. It seems the great majority are on cell phones all the time. They drive with their windshields and rear view mirrors. I don't recall seeing a single driver swivel his head to check blind spots.
Even so I had great fun on the freeways.
The L.A. Zoo was fair at best. But they had meerkats and it was fascinating to see the interest people take in these active little animals. The exhibit had one high rock. That generated never ending activity as the meerkats took turns keeping lookout up on the high rock. They stood on their hind legs in that cute way they do. Sometimes three were up, sometimes only one. What was cool was that every few minutes they would switch positions. They were the most active animals I saw in the whole zoo.
Most of the rest of the animals were just laying in a corner somewhere, or in the case of the single hippo and single rhino, just standing stock still.
It was warm enough in the sun as I walked around the zoo that I actually sprang for a snow cone.
Exiting the zoo I worked my way around to the other side of Griffin Park to ride up the hill to the observatory. And there, up on top, facing away from the observatory was the famous Hollywood sign. I took a few photos, but in the camera lens it is much farther away than in person.
More freeway fun and I was at Eagle Rider at 4 pm, right on time. They checked-in the bike and gave me a ride to the hotel.
Left for next year is the southern end of the PCH and maybe the Hollywood walk of fame and Rodeo Drive, although they are not so much my thing. Across from the zoo is the Will Rogers museum of western history. That I would like to see. It is closed on Mondays. San Diego will have to wait.
If I am back at the IMAX convention next February, I may need to give it another try. I would especially like to ride that upper PCH along the cliffs through Big Sur with another 10 degrees of warmth. But it is winter in California. You have to stay out of the mountains. After we got rain last night, they had snow up in Big Bear, just a short ride to the east of here.
Showing posts with label California. Show all posts
Showing posts with label California. Show all posts
Sunday, August 22, 2010
California, Day Five
California Day Five
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Sightseeing eats time and cuts miles. Who cares?
Not obeying my own mantra, “Fear of rain is most always worse than rain itself,” last night I determined to see if I could come in a day early at the Airport Marriott, where my IMAX convention starts in two days.
I called in the morning. The rate was $199, my convention rate of $99 was not yet available. I played my government rate card and they came down to $110. So here I am, sitting in the Marriott restaurant, typing in today's ride remembrances.
My artisan hotel in Santa Barbara served no breakfast. No breakfast places were to be found close by. So I determined to hit the road and find something en route to L.A. I was hoping for a Denny's or something.
Nothing appeared for quite some time. I was really wanting that first cup of morning coffee, for nothing else than to burn out the leftover cigar taste in my mouth from the night before. Since my destination was now L.A., a reasonable two hour ride, I stuck with Route 1 the famous PCH, headed back in the direction I came a couple days earlier.
Suddenly a little sandwich board flashed past along the side of the road. Seaside Cafe, breakfast, lunch and dinner was advertised. I made a “uey” and dropped down a very steep switchback drive to the beach. It was one of the parks common to the California coast. Nothing more than the beach, parking lot, a few painted lines for RV parking, a pod for hookups, picnic table and fire ring. The campsites on the beach here are on the beach.
Opposite the campsites was a small building with restaurant and camp store serving meals and selling firewood and sundries. In front was one, very long, picnic table. A couple of surfers were standing around, tops of their wetsuits turned down exposing their chests and tattoos. I overheard they are here for the winter, down from Alaska to enjoy the warmth and waves. A lady was there too, sipping coffee.
A hand-written menu board offered breakfast burritos with bacon or “tri-tip,” six dollars.
I stood by the window for a very long time. I could hear someone was inside. The grill was sizzling. Glorious smells of grilling onions and meats wafted out of the window and mixed with the fresh, salty, beach air. Someone is in there. I hear grill noises, chopping, clanging metal spatula. Eventually the grill noises stopped. I figured maybe someone would take my order now. I waited, and waited longer and longer still.
Finally a very attractive, middle-aged lady, tall, with long blonde hair pulled back tight and sun weathered face appeared with a big smile and four breakfast burritos wrapped in shiny foil. She wore a bikini top over extra ample breasts with an apron layered on top. A set of turquoise beads started around her neck and disappeared into her cleavage. Hippy or surfer? I couldn't decide.
She seemed surprised to see me. But before I could explain, the lady sipping coffee walked up. “I'm sorry,” the cook lady said to me, “I'll take your order in just a moment.” To the coffee sipping lady she said, “Two breakfast burritos with tri-tip, and two with bacon.”
But the coffee lady had ordered only one with bacon. She asked if anyone wanted the extra with bacon. I hesitated. But the surfers were uninterested, so I said yes, in fact, that was exactly what I meant to order. (I had no idea what “tri-tip” was.)
The coffee lady paid in full for four burritos, then handed me the extra one with bacon. I held out my six dollars. But the coffee lady would not take it. I protested. She refused. “Give it to her instead as a tip,” the coffee lady said nodding her head toward the cook lady. So I did.
The cook lady was baffled too. “Well thank you,” she said to the coffee lady. The coffee lady said to forget it. “Let me give you something extra,” the cook lady offered. “It's okay. I know you,” the coffee lady said, adding that she was a regular and would be back and appreciated the cook lady and her cooking. “Then may I have your name?” the cook lady asked, preparing to write it down, I presume to later render some kindness or bonus to compensate on a future order. “None of that,” the coffee lady admonished, then walked off with her three burritos.
I stood there unsure of proper protocol for such a situation.
“Oh, now I have to make coffee and make breakfast for these boys, they've been very patient. Do you like strong coffee or weak coffee?” the cook lady asked me. “Any coffee,” I answered. “The coffee is 45 minutes old. I have to make new coffee. I will give you the old coffee for free in thanks for the extra money for the burrito. If you don't like the coffee, I will give you fresh coffee as soon as I make it, but first these boys have been so patient.”
She was California spacey and sweet and handed me a cup of steaming coffee. I'm guessing the permanent looking trailer next to the cement block cafe is hers. Guess she was attracted to the beach and found a way to stay.
I assured her I was fine, took the coffee from her with thanks and sat down to eat my very tasty, and large, and filling, breakfast burrito and drink the hot coffee. The coffee was fine. No waiting required. By fortune's smile I had jumped to the head of the line.
Looking to the surfers to see if they were upset, they were blissfully ignorant of the entire exchange.
“We may have missed our window of opportunity,” the one surfer said to the other. For a moment I thought they were thinking of me and my karma-produced, no-wait burrito. But it turned out they were assessing the wave action.
Eventually the surfers got their burritos. The were waiting for tri-trip after all. I will have to Google that. Never heard of the stuff. It sounds like a chemical.
I munched away, watching the waves and people.
My breakfast burrito was an entire Denny's “Grand Slam,” rolled into a tortilla. There were eggs, bacon, home fries, salsa, onions, all in an easy-to-hold form. No forks required. It was hot and delicious.
Another couple appeared and called into the window, rather loudly. I hadn't thought of that tactic. They were told the grill was out of breakfast. They ordered burgers and fries instead. The cook lady disappeared again.
She reappeared mid-preparation to sell a couple bundles of firewood to another camper.
Finally the surfer boys from Alaska got their breakfast. The other couple sat and waited for lunch.
A surfing couple emerged from the waves and walked up to an open public shower in front of me. They were muscular, both of them. Young and beautiful. He stripped off his wet suit first, down to nothing and then pulled on a pair of board shorts with nary a moment of modesty.
Unfortunately she wasn't so bold. He held a beach towel around her as she transitioned from wet suit to bikini. They washed the salt off their bodies and wet suits and surfboards and then threw everything, including themselves, dripping wet into an open Jeep.
Meanwhile I was joined by a local who decided that since I was sitting at the table by myself, I wanted conversation. He had just drawn a cup of the now fresh coffee.
He was the proud renter of the only odd numbered address in town. All the others are even numbered, because they sit on the beach side of the Pacific Coast Highway. His is the only place on the inland side of the PCH. He took obvious pride in his contrary address. Such is a western psyche earned by pioneers who braved hardships to push ever westward.
His place, my uninvited Californian said, is a hacienda in a lemon grove, what is left of an original ranch sold off in parcels to rich outsiders desiring water views. There was a lot more to his story. He told a good bit of it, and well.
He looked like a westerner. Thin and strong and wiry, he had a well worn baseball cap, the name of some equipment company advertised on the front. Between bill and cap was an earned stain of sweat and dirt. The brim was severely curled. Like the cook lady, his was another wind worn face. It bespoke years in the sun. He was a tradesman of some sort, a heavy equipment operator. He had a big and easy smile, crinkles at the corners of his eyes.
I got a decent chunk of his life story. How he found the lemon ranch place by chance after he moved up here to work for a local company, and moved from a trailer into a house, and was working to save up enough to bring his wife up from Southern Cali. It was a good story. And he loved telling it.
I would have asked the lemon rancher what the heck tri-trip is, but couldn't get a word in edgewise. I would have asked the cook lady, but she had disappeared again, sounds of sizzling and chopping in her wake.
Now I've done California, found it by serendipitous collision of a hungry belly and a small roadside sign.
Until this morning, I had seen the scenery of California, but had not experienced her personality. Today along the PCH, in glorious sun, I had California for breakfast alongside the sand and waves and surfers and beach folk.
There was a strong, on-shore wind today. At some points the PCH was obscured by mist rolling of the comers.
Once again the temperature was tolerable, but 10 degrees below desirable. Even so there were lots of bikes out. Oh yeah; it's Sunday.
I tooled along, mostly in sunshine. In fact, I never saw any of the rain predicted for today.
In Malibu I stopped for a soda at the most un-Malibu site in town. There is a grubby, small Phillips 76 station right on PCH where it meets Coral Canyon Road. Enjoying the anti-extravagance statement, I sat on a stone wall next the the Harley and watched the parade of exotic cars, BMWs and Mercedes AMGs are a dime a dozen here, and motorcycles of all kinds.
Malibu is just about the end of the scenic PCH above L.A., that is to say it is the beginning if you're headed north.
From there, headed south, I jumped on the 10 then the 405 zipping into L.A. Note my California speak. They never use the word “Interstate” here. If you give a route number, it is assumed to be an Interstate highway. If it is not, you state “Route” so and so, or “California” so and so.
The freeways are fast, and intense, and many-laned.
California drivers are as bad as they say. It is not the aggressiveness of New York. They're just all out to lunch. Three-quarters are on cell phones. Half of them drive up close to the steering wheel peering ahead of them and seeing nothing to either side or in their mirrors. They make clueless lane changes and speed changes. They change lanes without looking or indication. They don't believe blind spots exist.
Fortunately a bit of aggressiveness goes a long way here. My East Coast attitude, backed up by the powerful Harley V-Twin, allowed me to feel in control. I was sure to, and able to, maintain a big space cushion around the bike at all times.
I still have not split any lanes, legal here, and much discussed among motorcycle riders. Tomorrow is my last chance this trip.
Maybe I was not so clever with the Marriott as I thought. Whether it was my government rate or my biker appearance can perhaps be solved with a discussion with my sister-in-law Kathleen who taught me, vicariously, the government rate trick. I will have to ask her if the government rate equals the crappiest room.
Marriott L.A. Airport sits perpendicular to the runway and boulevard. That means there are only two rooms per floor that directly face the noise. I got one of them on the seventh floor.
My whole purpose staying here tonight was not to have to move my stuff, packing and unpacking from a cheaper hotel to move here for my IMAX convention. I will have to see what noises tonight brings. I am not optimistic. In addition to the jets and the honking taxi drivers, there is a window with a padlock that squeaks in the wind. If I was traveling with my own bike, instead of a rental bike, I would take some duct tape out of my tool kit and try to seal the window or at least dull the metallic click of the padlock.
Last night when I determined to stay in L.A., instead of striking out for San Diego, I justified it in figuring I would do some of the touristy things here. To that end, I dumped my stuff in the room and went back out to the bike for a short trip to Venice Beach.
Unfortunately, this was winter Venice Beach. A stiff wind was off the ocean and blowing a good bit of the beach across the parking lot. (I have sand in my ears still tonight at dinner as I write this.) I parked the Harley to take a picture near a break in the parking lot wall, but then moved it. I was afraid the paint would be sandblasted off if I left it in that spot near an entrance to the beach. Plus I was slipping on sand as I tried to backpedal the bike out of its space. I finally settled on the most sheltered spot I could find, as far away from the beach as possible on the city side of the parking lot.
(Boy am I ever on vacation. I just put cream and sugar in my coffee. I have been drinking coffee black since college. I forgot how good it tastes this way, like an indulgent coffee milkshake.)
It wasn't the Venice Beach you see on the Travel Channel. Oh, a very few girls gamely tried to show some skin. But it was like 50 degrees with gale force winds. A few rollerbladers went by, more skateboarders, more in the skate park. Muscle beach was deserted. The actual beach had less than a handful of strolling people. Nobody was sitting down. The sand was blowing across the beach and sweeping up the dunes and blowing off the tops like a “Lawrence of Arabia” movie. Mostly just folks, probably tourists like me, bundled up in sweatshirts and windbreakers, were walking the famed Venice strip.
Even the crazies were cut down to the hardcore few. One carried a cardboard sign, hand lettered, that said, “Circumcision Kills!” Funny, it hasn't deterred me for the past 54 years. Another decried the L.A. County Commissioners' moves to inhibit free speech on the Venice strip. (I am guessing someone asked them to pay rent for their stall.) Another had pictures of Hillary Clinton and George Bush, but so many confusing signs I could not really discern any pattern his protest.
Mostly it looked to me like a multi-block long walkway lined with Jersey Shore boardwalk type shops on the city side and a parade of losers on the beach side, all trying to eek out a living on cheap wares and marginal talent, respectively. I kept thinking maybe Annie would like something from Venice beach, something that said “California,” something unique. I saw only one potential vendor. But his painted mini surfboard would never have made the plane ride home.
I walked out to the end of the pier to watch the sunset. You can watch the sun fall into the ocean on this side of the country. At the very end of the pier a small group of people was having a ceremony of some sort. It involved flowers and in the end the leader passed a plastic grocery bag around for donations. I stayed away.
Like Santa Barbara, the bums tainted the ambiance. They blend in better in Venice than in the “Rivera of America.”
Rain finally came, at 11:11 p.m. I was very comfortably watching it from my seventh floor window. Dry. Inside. It's supposed to clear out by tomorrow late morning. Maybe I'll sleep in. It is, after all, my last vacation day.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Sightseeing eats time and cuts miles. Who cares?
Not obeying my own mantra, “Fear of rain is most always worse than rain itself,” last night I determined to see if I could come in a day early at the Airport Marriott, where my IMAX convention starts in two days.
I called in the morning. The rate was $199, my convention rate of $99 was not yet available. I played my government rate card and they came down to $110. So here I am, sitting in the Marriott restaurant, typing in today's ride remembrances.
My artisan hotel in Santa Barbara served no breakfast. No breakfast places were to be found close by. So I determined to hit the road and find something en route to L.A. I was hoping for a Denny's or something.
Nothing appeared for quite some time. I was really wanting that first cup of morning coffee, for nothing else than to burn out the leftover cigar taste in my mouth from the night before. Since my destination was now L.A., a reasonable two hour ride, I stuck with Route 1 the famous PCH, headed back in the direction I came a couple days earlier.
Suddenly a little sandwich board flashed past along the side of the road. Seaside Cafe, breakfast, lunch and dinner was advertised. I made a “uey” and dropped down a very steep switchback drive to the beach. It was one of the parks common to the California coast. Nothing more than the beach, parking lot, a few painted lines for RV parking, a pod for hookups, picnic table and fire ring. The campsites on the beach here are on the beach.
Opposite the campsites was a small building with restaurant and camp store serving meals and selling firewood and sundries. In front was one, very long, picnic table. A couple of surfers were standing around, tops of their wetsuits turned down exposing their chests and tattoos. I overheard they are here for the winter, down from Alaska to enjoy the warmth and waves. A lady was there too, sipping coffee.
A hand-written menu board offered breakfast burritos with bacon or “tri-tip,” six dollars.
I stood by the window for a very long time. I could hear someone was inside. The grill was sizzling. Glorious smells of grilling onions and meats wafted out of the window and mixed with the fresh, salty, beach air. Someone is in there. I hear grill noises, chopping, clanging metal spatula. Eventually the grill noises stopped. I figured maybe someone would take my order now. I waited, and waited longer and longer still.
Finally a very attractive, middle-aged lady, tall, with long blonde hair pulled back tight and sun weathered face appeared with a big smile and four breakfast burritos wrapped in shiny foil. She wore a bikini top over extra ample breasts with an apron layered on top. A set of turquoise beads started around her neck and disappeared into her cleavage. Hippy or surfer? I couldn't decide.
She seemed surprised to see me. But before I could explain, the lady sipping coffee walked up. “I'm sorry,” the cook lady said to me, “I'll take your order in just a moment.” To the coffee sipping lady she said, “Two breakfast burritos with tri-tip, and two with bacon.”
But the coffee lady had ordered only one with bacon. She asked if anyone wanted the extra with bacon. I hesitated. But the surfers were uninterested, so I said yes, in fact, that was exactly what I meant to order. (I had no idea what “tri-tip” was.)
The coffee lady paid in full for four burritos, then handed me the extra one with bacon. I held out my six dollars. But the coffee lady would not take it. I protested. She refused. “Give it to her instead as a tip,” the coffee lady said nodding her head toward the cook lady. So I did.
The cook lady was baffled too. “Well thank you,” she said to the coffee lady. The coffee lady said to forget it. “Let me give you something extra,” the cook lady offered. “It's okay. I know you,” the coffee lady said, adding that she was a regular and would be back and appreciated the cook lady and her cooking. “Then may I have your name?” the cook lady asked, preparing to write it down, I presume to later render some kindness or bonus to compensate on a future order. “None of that,” the coffee lady admonished, then walked off with her three burritos.
I stood there unsure of proper protocol for such a situation.
“Oh, now I have to make coffee and make breakfast for these boys, they've been very patient. Do you like strong coffee or weak coffee?” the cook lady asked me. “Any coffee,” I answered. “The coffee is 45 minutes old. I have to make new coffee. I will give you the old coffee for free in thanks for the extra money for the burrito. If you don't like the coffee, I will give you fresh coffee as soon as I make it, but first these boys have been so patient.”
She was California spacey and sweet and handed me a cup of steaming coffee. I'm guessing the permanent looking trailer next to the cement block cafe is hers. Guess she was attracted to the beach and found a way to stay.
I assured her I was fine, took the coffee from her with thanks and sat down to eat my very tasty, and large, and filling, breakfast burrito and drink the hot coffee. The coffee was fine. No waiting required. By fortune's smile I had jumped to the head of the line.
Looking to the surfers to see if they were upset, they were blissfully ignorant of the entire exchange.
“We may have missed our window of opportunity,” the one surfer said to the other. For a moment I thought they were thinking of me and my karma-produced, no-wait burrito. But it turned out they were assessing the wave action.
Eventually the surfers got their burritos. The were waiting for tri-trip after all. I will have to Google that. Never heard of the stuff. It sounds like a chemical.
I munched away, watching the waves and people.
My breakfast burrito was an entire Denny's “Grand Slam,” rolled into a tortilla. There were eggs, bacon, home fries, salsa, onions, all in an easy-to-hold form. No forks required. It was hot and delicious.
Another couple appeared and called into the window, rather loudly. I hadn't thought of that tactic. They were told the grill was out of breakfast. They ordered burgers and fries instead. The cook lady disappeared again.
She reappeared mid-preparation to sell a couple bundles of firewood to another camper.
Finally the surfer boys from Alaska got their breakfast. The other couple sat and waited for lunch.
A surfing couple emerged from the waves and walked up to an open public shower in front of me. They were muscular, both of them. Young and beautiful. He stripped off his wet suit first, down to nothing and then pulled on a pair of board shorts with nary a moment of modesty.
Unfortunately she wasn't so bold. He held a beach towel around her as she transitioned from wet suit to bikini. They washed the salt off their bodies and wet suits and surfboards and then threw everything, including themselves, dripping wet into an open Jeep.
Meanwhile I was joined by a local who decided that since I was sitting at the table by myself, I wanted conversation. He had just drawn a cup of the now fresh coffee.
He was the proud renter of the only odd numbered address in town. All the others are even numbered, because they sit on the beach side of the Pacific Coast Highway. His is the only place on the inland side of the PCH. He took obvious pride in his contrary address. Such is a western psyche earned by pioneers who braved hardships to push ever westward.
His place, my uninvited Californian said, is a hacienda in a lemon grove, what is left of an original ranch sold off in parcels to rich outsiders desiring water views. There was a lot more to his story. He told a good bit of it, and well.
He looked like a westerner. Thin and strong and wiry, he had a well worn baseball cap, the name of some equipment company advertised on the front. Between bill and cap was an earned stain of sweat and dirt. The brim was severely curled. Like the cook lady, his was another wind worn face. It bespoke years in the sun. He was a tradesman of some sort, a heavy equipment operator. He had a big and easy smile, crinkles at the corners of his eyes.
I got a decent chunk of his life story. How he found the lemon ranch place by chance after he moved up here to work for a local company, and moved from a trailer into a house, and was working to save up enough to bring his wife up from Southern Cali. It was a good story. And he loved telling it.
I would have asked the lemon rancher what the heck tri-trip is, but couldn't get a word in edgewise. I would have asked the cook lady, but she had disappeared again, sounds of sizzling and chopping in her wake.
Now I've done California, found it by serendipitous collision of a hungry belly and a small roadside sign.
Until this morning, I had seen the scenery of California, but had not experienced her personality. Today along the PCH, in glorious sun, I had California for breakfast alongside the sand and waves and surfers and beach folk.
There was a strong, on-shore wind today. At some points the PCH was obscured by mist rolling of the comers.
Once again the temperature was tolerable, but 10 degrees below desirable. Even so there were lots of bikes out. Oh yeah; it's Sunday.
I tooled along, mostly in sunshine. In fact, I never saw any of the rain predicted for today.
In Malibu I stopped for a soda at the most un-Malibu site in town. There is a grubby, small Phillips 76 station right on PCH where it meets Coral Canyon Road. Enjoying the anti-extravagance statement, I sat on a stone wall next the the Harley and watched the parade of exotic cars, BMWs and Mercedes AMGs are a dime a dozen here, and motorcycles of all kinds.
Malibu is just about the end of the scenic PCH above L.A., that is to say it is the beginning if you're headed north.
From there, headed south, I jumped on the 10 then the 405 zipping into L.A. Note my California speak. They never use the word “Interstate” here. If you give a route number, it is assumed to be an Interstate highway. If it is not, you state “Route” so and so, or “California” so and so.
The freeways are fast, and intense, and many-laned.
California drivers are as bad as they say. It is not the aggressiveness of New York. They're just all out to lunch. Three-quarters are on cell phones. Half of them drive up close to the steering wheel peering ahead of them and seeing nothing to either side or in their mirrors. They make clueless lane changes and speed changes. They change lanes without looking or indication. They don't believe blind spots exist.
Fortunately a bit of aggressiveness goes a long way here. My East Coast attitude, backed up by the powerful Harley V-Twin, allowed me to feel in control. I was sure to, and able to, maintain a big space cushion around the bike at all times.
I still have not split any lanes, legal here, and much discussed among motorcycle riders. Tomorrow is my last chance this trip.
Maybe I was not so clever with the Marriott as I thought. Whether it was my government rate or my biker appearance can perhaps be solved with a discussion with my sister-in-law Kathleen who taught me, vicariously, the government rate trick. I will have to ask her if the government rate equals the crappiest room.
Marriott L.A. Airport sits perpendicular to the runway and boulevard. That means there are only two rooms per floor that directly face the noise. I got one of them on the seventh floor.
My whole purpose staying here tonight was not to have to move my stuff, packing and unpacking from a cheaper hotel to move here for my IMAX convention. I will have to see what noises tonight brings. I am not optimistic. In addition to the jets and the honking taxi drivers, there is a window with a padlock that squeaks in the wind. If I was traveling with my own bike, instead of a rental bike, I would take some duct tape out of my tool kit and try to seal the window or at least dull the metallic click of the padlock.
Last night when I determined to stay in L.A., instead of striking out for San Diego, I justified it in figuring I would do some of the touristy things here. To that end, I dumped my stuff in the room and went back out to the bike for a short trip to Venice Beach.
Unfortunately, this was winter Venice Beach. A stiff wind was off the ocean and blowing a good bit of the beach across the parking lot. (I have sand in my ears still tonight at dinner as I write this.) I parked the Harley to take a picture near a break in the parking lot wall, but then moved it. I was afraid the paint would be sandblasted off if I left it in that spot near an entrance to the beach. Plus I was slipping on sand as I tried to backpedal the bike out of its space. I finally settled on the most sheltered spot I could find, as far away from the beach as possible on the city side of the parking lot.
(Boy am I ever on vacation. I just put cream and sugar in my coffee. I have been drinking coffee black since college. I forgot how good it tastes this way, like an indulgent coffee milkshake.)
It wasn't the Venice Beach you see on the Travel Channel. Oh, a very few girls gamely tried to show some skin. But it was like 50 degrees with gale force winds. A few rollerbladers went by, more skateboarders, more in the skate park. Muscle beach was deserted. The actual beach had less than a handful of strolling people. Nobody was sitting down. The sand was blowing across the beach and sweeping up the dunes and blowing off the tops like a “Lawrence of Arabia” movie. Mostly just folks, probably tourists like me, bundled up in sweatshirts and windbreakers, were walking the famed Venice strip.
Even the crazies were cut down to the hardcore few. One carried a cardboard sign, hand lettered, that said, “Circumcision Kills!” Funny, it hasn't deterred me for the past 54 years. Another decried the L.A. County Commissioners' moves to inhibit free speech on the Venice strip. (I am guessing someone asked them to pay rent for their stall.) Another had pictures of Hillary Clinton and George Bush, but so many confusing signs I could not really discern any pattern his protest.
Mostly it looked to me like a multi-block long walkway lined with Jersey Shore boardwalk type shops on the city side and a parade of losers on the beach side, all trying to eek out a living on cheap wares and marginal talent, respectively. I kept thinking maybe Annie would like something from Venice beach, something that said “California,” something unique. I saw only one potential vendor. But his painted mini surfboard would never have made the plane ride home.
I walked out to the end of the pier to watch the sunset. You can watch the sun fall into the ocean on this side of the country. At the very end of the pier a small group of people was having a ceremony of some sort. It involved flowers and in the end the leader passed a plastic grocery bag around for donations. I stayed away.
Like Santa Barbara, the bums tainted the ambiance. They blend in better in Venice than in the “Rivera of America.”
Rain finally came, at 11:11 p.m. I was very comfortably watching it from my seventh floor window. Dry. Inside. It's supposed to clear out by tomorrow late morning. Maybe I'll sleep in. It is, after all, my last vacation day.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
California Day Four
California Day Four
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Waking early I serenely fell back to sleep until my late alarm at 8 a.m. Amazing that, because the hotel was filled with girls youth soccer teams. They were up early, boisterously so.
Next door there is a diner and the hotel offers, in lieu of free breakfast, a five dollar voucher. It was not nearly enough. This is not a diner, at least not East Coast style. Maybe all diners in California charge $4.75 for a glass of orange juice. And it was a regular size glass, nothing jumbo about it. Five dollars? Really? Don't they grow the freakin' fruit just down the road?
I got a short stack of pancakes, which was more than enough and a cup of coffee. That's it. My voucher still covered just half my breakfast expenditure.
Guess the Greeks haven't found California yet.
Last night I was perusing the hotel information booklet. A listing under “area attractions” caught my eye, a warbirds museum. This morning I arrived at Estrella Warbirds, walked in just behind a classic car club, one of whose members apparently was also a member of the museum. The delightfully sweet, older lady who took my 10 dollars, suggested I join the car club's tour as it was just getting started.
Notice how you always find old people at museums?
The guy leading the tour was a WWII pilot, met Pappy Boyington, in person. He gave a delightful tour. I ended up spending more time here than even Monterey Bay Aquarium. The old fellow had a story for every exhibit. He kept promising to speed up the tour, then drifted off into another story. We won't have these guys around for very much longer. Hopefully they will be replaced by other old guys who flew in Vietnam or Iraq.
It is the same at the New England Air Museum. If you go there on certain days, they have pilots who actually flew, in combat, the same type of plane you are viewing. Each pilot stands next to the kind of plane he flew and tells stories. What it really was like.
How amazing it must be for those who were there and came out alive. I am too old now to serve. But I always wonder how my life would have turned had I accepted a Marine Corps commission straight out of college. I would not have been a pilot. My eyes require correction.
I am not sure where, or how, I would have served. And that is a big factor that kept me out of the military. I was not afraid to go to some troubled land. It was that I was not so ready to surrender my destiny so completely. With my college and writing ability, I could well have ended up behind a desk. What good is joining the Marines if you don't get to blow something up?
“All man's achievements pale in comparison to war.” It was a tank commander who said that, a Californian named George Patton. And when you look at the millions of dollars of airborne death machines, now museum pieces, you glimpse only a sliver of what Patton said.
The museum encompassed most all of aviation. There was a not so good model of the Wright flyer. Some very interesting WWI artifacts, the war to end all wars.
All the WWII planes, except for a Douglass Bomber, were in hangers. They have some scout planes, small stuff and the big bomber.
Parked outside are a collection of fighter planes from various wars, starting with Korea. They have the Saber Jet, a plane I have always admired. It was the jet plane model I played with as a kid. Famous MiG killer. Compact, powerful and those menacing six, 50 caliber machine guns sticking out of the nose.
Also is the similarly built Douglass A6 Intruder. I have been fascinated with the plane since reading “Flight of the Intruder.” Like the Saber, the Intruder is a stubby plane. Pilot and bombardier sit side by side. Unlike the Sabre, Intruder carries no guns or missiles to defend itself. It relied instead upon its speed and radar jamming equipment.
My morning melted into the past.
When I suited up to go the sun was so bright I optimistically donned my fingerless gloves. I was hoping to come back from California with the telltale tanned patches on the back of my hands that only a fellow biker would recognize. After an exit or two on the Interstate, I got off to switch to winter gloves. It was warm enough, at least, that I did not need my heaviest set of insulated winter gloves.
Clouds were all around, hovering over the mountains again. Intrinsically I understand convection and precipitation. It is another thing to see it demonstrated so clearly. You don't get the same effect back East.
Here you are riding down Route 101 South on a pool table flat plain. On either side of you are what appear to be scrub covered hills. Except some of these rise up 1, 2, 3 thousand feet, some up to five, in a very short distance.
Our mountains are much more gradual. There are lots of trees disguising the rise in elevation. You can't get so close to Eastern mountains without first traveling through Piedmont and hills. In California you look across the plains and, zoom, the mountains leap up from the plain. Can you imagine getting here in an ox-drawn wagon? Knowing where the passes are would be critical.
Again today I had to squeeze through the mountains at the end of the valley. When I did, I got rained upon again. Not a lot. On the other side I was back skirting the Pacific Ocean. It's winds drove the clouds inland to the mountains. The air was cool still, too cool for what I had hoped from this trip. But at least today the sun shown most all my ride.
My target today was the Santa Barbara zoo. They have meerkats and I was hoping to get some good pictures, or at least see how they were exhibited. (Such are the sumer attraction at The Maritime Aquarium where I work.) Only when I approached the ticket booth the sign said the exhibit was closed today. I did not go in.
By now it was 3:00 and I was maybe an hour above L.A. I'm thinking I don't want to stay in L.A. I don't want to ride into L.A. anywhere near 5 p.m. And I am not sure I have enough time, or warmth, left in the day to cross the sprawling city for something better on the south side.
I backtracked through Santa Barbara and found a boutique hotel for tonight. It's a little pricey at $124, that was $20 off the regular rate, or so they told me.
Santa Barbara says it is “America's Riviera.” Funny, South Beach, Fla., says the same thing on the right coast.
Santa Barbara has more bums than South Beach. Here the bums are very scruffy looking. The ocean front is littered with them, gathered in clans, sleeping alone surrounded by their piles. The dodge is on and they all have their hands out, some with signs declaring their hunger.
I always wonder what these guys were like in high school. They had access to the same free education as us all. I wonder, did they waste it? Were they too young to see the value?
Well even Jesus said, “The poor will always be with us.” That's some cold hearted reality from Emmanuel, the God among us.
Santa Barbara offers a long jogging, walking, bicycling path sandwiched between the main road and beach.
I had time to go for a run along the beach on the path with the sound of waves and seagulls. Geeze, I gotta get back in shape. My hotel is at the northern end of the path. I never ran far enough to see the southern end.
Tonight I am eating out on a pier, overlooking the harbor, channel buoys blinking red and green outside the window; remember, red right return.
After dinner I now walked the long path back to my hotel, enjoying a good cigar picked up in Monterey yesterday. A chilly wind comes off the ocean. I zip my rain jacket all the way up my neck and fasten the snap to hold it close, push my free hand (one required to tend the cigar) down deep into the pocket. Shouldn't complain. It is February after all.
Just as I am finding my relaxation, I am nearly out of time. Tomorrow, Sunday, is predicted for rain. I haven't yet decided what to do. Riding all day in the rain is not my first choice.
Los Angeles is like a gulf, a dead zone of urbanization, that I must cross to get back to scenery. I have to MapQuest it out to see if I should try. The bike isn't due until Tuesday morning. But I have IMAX meetings at 6 and 7 pm on Monday. So I will turn the bike in Monday before Eagle Rider closes at 5. That means I really have one and a half days left of vacation.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Waking early I serenely fell back to sleep until my late alarm at 8 a.m. Amazing that, because the hotel was filled with girls youth soccer teams. They were up early, boisterously so.
Next door there is a diner and the hotel offers, in lieu of free breakfast, a five dollar voucher. It was not nearly enough. This is not a diner, at least not East Coast style. Maybe all diners in California charge $4.75 for a glass of orange juice. And it was a regular size glass, nothing jumbo about it. Five dollars? Really? Don't they grow the freakin' fruit just down the road?
I got a short stack of pancakes, which was more than enough and a cup of coffee. That's it. My voucher still covered just half my breakfast expenditure.
Guess the Greeks haven't found California yet.
Last night I was perusing the hotel information booklet. A listing under “area attractions” caught my eye, a warbirds museum. This morning I arrived at Estrella Warbirds, walked in just behind a classic car club, one of whose members apparently was also a member of the museum. The delightfully sweet, older lady who took my 10 dollars, suggested I join the car club's tour as it was just getting started.
Notice how you always find old people at museums?
The guy leading the tour was a WWII pilot, met Pappy Boyington, in person. He gave a delightful tour. I ended up spending more time here than even Monterey Bay Aquarium. The old fellow had a story for every exhibit. He kept promising to speed up the tour, then drifted off into another story. We won't have these guys around for very much longer. Hopefully they will be replaced by other old guys who flew in Vietnam or Iraq.
It is the same at the New England Air Museum. If you go there on certain days, they have pilots who actually flew, in combat, the same type of plane you are viewing. Each pilot stands next to the kind of plane he flew and tells stories. What it really was like.
How amazing it must be for those who were there and came out alive. I am too old now to serve. But I always wonder how my life would have turned had I accepted a Marine Corps commission straight out of college. I would not have been a pilot. My eyes require correction.
I am not sure where, or how, I would have served. And that is a big factor that kept me out of the military. I was not afraid to go to some troubled land. It was that I was not so ready to surrender my destiny so completely. With my college and writing ability, I could well have ended up behind a desk. What good is joining the Marines if you don't get to blow something up?
“All man's achievements pale in comparison to war.” It was a tank commander who said that, a Californian named George Patton. And when you look at the millions of dollars of airborne death machines, now museum pieces, you glimpse only a sliver of what Patton said.
The museum encompassed most all of aviation. There was a not so good model of the Wright flyer. Some very interesting WWI artifacts, the war to end all wars.
All the WWII planes, except for a Douglass Bomber, were in hangers. They have some scout planes, small stuff and the big bomber.
Parked outside are a collection of fighter planes from various wars, starting with Korea. They have the Saber Jet, a plane I have always admired. It was the jet plane model I played with as a kid. Famous MiG killer. Compact, powerful and those menacing six, 50 caliber machine guns sticking out of the nose.
Also is the similarly built Douglass A6 Intruder. I have been fascinated with the plane since reading “Flight of the Intruder.” Like the Saber, the Intruder is a stubby plane. Pilot and bombardier sit side by side. Unlike the Sabre, Intruder carries no guns or missiles to defend itself. It relied instead upon its speed and radar jamming equipment.
My morning melted into the past.
When I suited up to go the sun was so bright I optimistically donned my fingerless gloves. I was hoping to come back from California with the telltale tanned patches on the back of my hands that only a fellow biker would recognize. After an exit or two on the Interstate, I got off to switch to winter gloves. It was warm enough, at least, that I did not need my heaviest set of insulated winter gloves.
Clouds were all around, hovering over the mountains again. Intrinsically I understand convection and precipitation. It is another thing to see it demonstrated so clearly. You don't get the same effect back East.
Here you are riding down Route 101 South on a pool table flat plain. On either side of you are what appear to be scrub covered hills. Except some of these rise up 1, 2, 3 thousand feet, some up to five, in a very short distance.
Our mountains are much more gradual. There are lots of trees disguising the rise in elevation. You can't get so close to Eastern mountains without first traveling through Piedmont and hills. In California you look across the plains and, zoom, the mountains leap up from the plain. Can you imagine getting here in an ox-drawn wagon? Knowing where the passes are would be critical.
Again today I had to squeeze through the mountains at the end of the valley. When I did, I got rained upon again. Not a lot. On the other side I was back skirting the Pacific Ocean. It's winds drove the clouds inland to the mountains. The air was cool still, too cool for what I had hoped from this trip. But at least today the sun shown most all my ride.
My target today was the Santa Barbara zoo. They have meerkats and I was hoping to get some good pictures, or at least see how they were exhibited. (Such are the sumer attraction at The Maritime Aquarium where I work.) Only when I approached the ticket booth the sign said the exhibit was closed today. I did not go in.
By now it was 3:00 and I was maybe an hour above L.A. I'm thinking I don't want to stay in L.A. I don't want to ride into L.A. anywhere near 5 p.m. And I am not sure I have enough time, or warmth, left in the day to cross the sprawling city for something better on the south side.
I backtracked through Santa Barbara and found a boutique hotel for tonight. It's a little pricey at $124, that was $20 off the regular rate, or so they told me.
Santa Barbara says it is “America's Riviera.” Funny, South Beach, Fla., says the same thing on the right coast.
Santa Barbara has more bums than South Beach. Here the bums are very scruffy looking. The ocean front is littered with them, gathered in clans, sleeping alone surrounded by their piles. The dodge is on and they all have their hands out, some with signs declaring their hunger.
I always wonder what these guys were like in high school. They had access to the same free education as us all. I wonder, did they waste it? Were they too young to see the value?
Well even Jesus said, “The poor will always be with us.” That's some cold hearted reality from Emmanuel, the God among us.
Santa Barbara offers a long jogging, walking, bicycling path sandwiched between the main road and beach.
I had time to go for a run along the beach on the path with the sound of waves and seagulls. Geeze, I gotta get back in shape. My hotel is at the northern end of the path. I never ran far enough to see the southern end.
Tonight I am eating out on a pier, overlooking the harbor, channel buoys blinking red and green outside the window; remember, red right return.
After dinner I now walked the long path back to my hotel, enjoying a good cigar picked up in Monterey yesterday. A chilly wind comes off the ocean. I zip my rain jacket all the way up my neck and fasten the snap to hold it close, push my free hand (one required to tend the cigar) down deep into the pocket. Shouldn't complain. It is February after all.
Just as I am finding my relaxation, I am nearly out of time. Tomorrow, Sunday, is predicted for rain. I haven't yet decided what to do. Riding all day in the rain is not my first choice.
Los Angeles is like a gulf, a dead zone of urbanization, that I must cross to get back to scenery. I have to MapQuest it out to see if I should try. The bike isn't due until Tuesday morning. But I have IMAX meetings at 6 and 7 pm on Monday. So I will turn the bike in Monday before Eagle Rider closes at 5. That means I really have one and a half days left of vacation.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
California Day Three
California Day Three
Friday, February 19, 2010
Monterey Bay Aquarium was, is, awesome.
Everything is done well. Thoughtful touches are everywhere. Cement support columns are painted as pilings. Rocks crop up all in hallways and doorways as you walk through the galleries, always with patches of corals, fans or mussels attached. Sometimes the rocks simply break up open space on the floor. Other times they form great arches, decorated with undersea plants and barnacles, giving you the feeling of being underwater everywhere inside the Aquarium.
They use sounds to good effect. There are video screens, big ones, lots of them.
It is rare to find a tank with a single species. Typically there are shrimp or crabs or multiple fish, even when one animal is clearly the focus. Their schooling tank is an amazing circular dome, fish swirling above your head. Another schooling tank for mackerel is cleverly constructed so that you see only one straightaway on the fish racetrack. The impression is a never ending stream of fish going by you.
They have jellies, a whole gallery of them. Monterey grows moon jellies as big as dinner plates. They have brown nettles, big ones, tentacles tangled together in a mass. They have comb jellies, streaming cilia clearly flashing.
Their penguins share their water with fish. Bromeliads accent their rockwork. Underwater views are natural with rockwork sides and sandy bottoms.
Monterey's “jewel” tanks come in various shapes and sizes. Some are domes you can walk around, others are half circles mounted to the wall with bottoms that appear to fall away to infinity. There is much clever use of perspective and trope d'oeil.
Touch tanks abound. One is a very long, serpentine presentation. There is a wave crash exhibit, not all that big. The aviary also was small, but amazing. And in the aviary waters leopard sharks and rays patrolled with small bait fish accents.
I was unimpressed with their big Outer Bay tank. Much hyped, it seems to fall out of character with the rest of the exhibits. It is big. But all plain blue with a curving back. The bottom had sand and rocks. Yes, I know the open ocean lacks perspective. Somehow the effect is lacking. Instead it looks like a big tank of water, a cement swimming pool painted blue. Fish population in this tank seemed lacking. There were some big fish. Tuna are amazing to see up close. Unfortunately one tuna was very obviously damaged or sick with a scaly growth around its mouth.
Hammerhead sharks are always cool and unique. Perhaps the best entertainment was the ever swirling school of bait fish darting around the tank, flashing and changing direction. There was no ocean sunfish, as promised in their advertising. (I was glad to see I'm not the only one that gets jammed up like that.)
The otter exhibit is big and two stories tall. But there were only two otters which significantly dampened the drama.
Monterey's signature tank is the three story tall kelp forest. That exhibit did not disappoint. They really maximize the tank with views from various related galleries. I was lucky enough to catch an interview with a diver as he fed the fish and spoke via wireless mike with a docent standing outside the tank, relaying questions from the audience.
Outside balconies along the back of the Aquarium open up to water views of Monterey Bay and the Pacific Ocean. Decks offer broad spaces for relaxation and tie Aquarium to bay and sea.
As morning neared noon the experience became less enjoyable. Obstreperous school children grew in number and volume.
I was ready to go anyway. Rain was forecast for the evening. It was cold along the coast. Luckily I was lured inland to Salinas to see John Steinbeck's old stomping grounds and museum. It was a worthwhile trip.
As you come up through the hills from Monterey, quite suddenly you drop down into the tabletop flat Salinas River Valley. I also picked up a few degrees temperature and even, gasp, some breaks of sunshine.
This is perhaps the richest soil on earth, millions of years of rich topsoil drained from the mountains on either side of the valley. The hills are now scrubby, not much grows on the depleted and arid slopes after the good soil ran off to the valley. Hills are deeply cut, like most of the California I have seen so far. But the bottom land, black, deep soils, mounded high and covered with plastic for strawberries or neatly plied into rows of various construction according to their crop, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce. Amazing vistas stretched on either side as I cut across the valley, east to Salinas.
On the way across, I got a pleasant surprise as I passed by Laguna Seca racetrack. I did not stop. There was too much travel left for today and I already spent half my tourism time on the Aquarium, the second half was promised to John Steinbeck.
The museum was well done and included an agricultural museum and art gallery. There were some Steinbeck artifacts and an interesting history of this amazing farmland, and the immigrant workers who continue to come here and do the very difficult stoop work and hand operations required to grow high value crops.
An interesting adjunct was that Japanese farmers who first came here could not legally own land. So they leased the land until their children, born here and therefore automatic citizens, became of legal age and “purchased” the land on their parents behalf. I am not sure such a multi-generational plan would work with most Americans.
There has been an international parade of farm workers. Interesting that the great Mexican immigration was actually encouraged by the Federal Government to replace Japanese workers locked up by the government in interment camps during WWII. After the Mexicans, workers streamed in from other countries so poor as to make look good such backbreaking, hot, stoop work as is required by large scale vegetable growing. I think the museum said Philippinos are now the latest group.
From Salinas I stayed inland, riding Route 101 south. Lush lands stretched out before me and I tooled along an arrow-straight highway.
I could see the weather moving in from the seaside horizon. Riding south the mountains to my right were dark; angry, flat and heavy clouds boiled up and over them from the sea. The mountains to my right still glowed in soft patches of sun as puffy clouds cruised above them.
For a while there I was thinking I could make it back to Pismo Beach and that cool hotel hanging on the cliffs. But it was getting darker. I finally pulled off and switched my glasses from darks to clears. Well at least things appeared lighter with the clear glasses, but not off to the west. Now I could actually see rain falling on the hills on my right.
What was also clear was that the valley was ending. The two mountain ranges seemed to be converging ahead of me. As I got closer, the road began turning to work its way up, switchbacking through the hills. It also started raining, lightly, but rain brought cold.
I was starting to think that I wasn't needing to push too far today. Certainly it would be wetter and colder on the coast. As Route 101 exits this valley, that's where it heads.
A couple of billboards for Black Oak Best Western in Paso Robles convinced me and quite at the last minute I dove off the exit. I figured it just right. I mean I was no sooner parking the bike at hotel registration than the big rain drops began falling. (The hotel even had dedicated bike parking spots for registration.)
It rained, steady, well into the night.
Just around the corner I enjoyed dinner at Big Bubba's Bad BBQ. Actually, it was pretty good.
From my hotel room's information booklet, I learned Estrella War Bird Museum is nearby. A bit of Googling convinced me it is the way to start my day tomorrow.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Monterey Bay Aquarium was, is, awesome.
Everything is done well. Thoughtful touches are everywhere. Cement support columns are painted as pilings. Rocks crop up all in hallways and doorways as you walk through the galleries, always with patches of corals, fans or mussels attached. Sometimes the rocks simply break up open space on the floor. Other times they form great arches, decorated with undersea plants and barnacles, giving you the feeling of being underwater everywhere inside the Aquarium.
They use sounds to good effect. There are video screens, big ones, lots of them.
It is rare to find a tank with a single species. Typically there are shrimp or crabs or multiple fish, even when one animal is clearly the focus. Their schooling tank is an amazing circular dome, fish swirling above your head. Another schooling tank for mackerel is cleverly constructed so that you see only one straightaway on the fish racetrack. The impression is a never ending stream of fish going by you.
They have jellies, a whole gallery of them. Monterey grows moon jellies as big as dinner plates. They have brown nettles, big ones, tentacles tangled together in a mass. They have comb jellies, streaming cilia clearly flashing.
Their penguins share their water with fish. Bromeliads accent their rockwork. Underwater views are natural with rockwork sides and sandy bottoms.
Monterey's “jewel” tanks come in various shapes and sizes. Some are domes you can walk around, others are half circles mounted to the wall with bottoms that appear to fall away to infinity. There is much clever use of perspective and trope d'oeil.
Touch tanks abound. One is a very long, serpentine presentation. There is a wave crash exhibit, not all that big. The aviary also was small, but amazing. And in the aviary waters leopard sharks and rays patrolled with small bait fish accents.
I was unimpressed with their big Outer Bay tank. Much hyped, it seems to fall out of character with the rest of the exhibits. It is big. But all plain blue with a curving back. The bottom had sand and rocks. Yes, I know the open ocean lacks perspective. Somehow the effect is lacking. Instead it looks like a big tank of water, a cement swimming pool painted blue. Fish population in this tank seemed lacking. There were some big fish. Tuna are amazing to see up close. Unfortunately one tuna was very obviously damaged or sick with a scaly growth around its mouth.
Hammerhead sharks are always cool and unique. Perhaps the best entertainment was the ever swirling school of bait fish darting around the tank, flashing and changing direction. There was no ocean sunfish, as promised in their advertising. (I was glad to see I'm not the only one that gets jammed up like that.)
The otter exhibit is big and two stories tall. But there were only two otters which significantly dampened the drama.
Monterey's signature tank is the three story tall kelp forest. That exhibit did not disappoint. They really maximize the tank with views from various related galleries. I was lucky enough to catch an interview with a diver as he fed the fish and spoke via wireless mike with a docent standing outside the tank, relaying questions from the audience.
Outside balconies along the back of the Aquarium open up to water views of Monterey Bay and the Pacific Ocean. Decks offer broad spaces for relaxation and tie Aquarium to bay and sea.
As morning neared noon the experience became less enjoyable. Obstreperous school children grew in number and volume.
I was ready to go anyway. Rain was forecast for the evening. It was cold along the coast. Luckily I was lured inland to Salinas to see John Steinbeck's old stomping grounds and museum. It was a worthwhile trip.
As you come up through the hills from Monterey, quite suddenly you drop down into the tabletop flat Salinas River Valley. I also picked up a few degrees temperature and even, gasp, some breaks of sunshine.
This is perhaps the richest soil on earth, millions of years of rich topsoil drained from the mountains on either side of the valley. The hills are now scrubby, not much grows on the depleted and arid slopes after the good soil ran off to the valley. Hills are deeply cut, like most of the California I have seen so far. But the bottom land, black, deep soils, mounded high and covered with plastic for strawberries or neatly plied into rows of various construction according to their crop, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce. Amazing vistas stretched on either side as I cut across the valley, east to Salinas.
On the way across, I got a pleasant surprise as I passed by Laguna Seca racetrack. I did not stop. There was too much travel left for today and I already spent half my tourism time on the Aquarium, the second half was promised to John Steinbeck.
The museum was well done and included an agricultural museum and art gallery. There were some Steinbeck artifacts and an interesting history of this amazing farmland, and the immigrant workers who continue to come here and do the very difficult stoop work and hand operations required to grow high value crops.
An interesting adjunct was that Japanese farmers who first came here could not legally own land. So they leased the land until their children, born here and therefore automatic citizens, became of legal age and “purchased” the land on their parents behalf. I am not sure such a multi-generational plan would work with most Americans.
There has been an international parade of farm workers. Interesting that the great Mexican immigration was actually encouraged by the Federal Government to replace Japanese workers locked up by the government in interment camps during WWII. After the Mexicans, workers streamed in from other countries so poor as to make look good such backbreaking, hot, stoop work as is required by large scale vegetable growing. I think the museum said Philippinos are now the latest group.
From Salinas I stayed inland, riding Route 101 south. Lush lands stretched out before me and I tooled along an arrow-straight highway.
I could see the weather moving in from the seaside horizon. Riding south the mountains to my right were dark; angry, flat and heavy clouds boiled up and over them from the sea. The mountains to my right still glowed in soft patches of sun as puffy clouds cruised above them.
For a while there I was thinking I could make it back to Pismo Beach and that cool hotel hanging on the cliffs. But it was getting darker. I finally pulled off and switched my glasses from darks to clears. Well at least things appeared lighter with the clear glasses, but not off to the west. Now I could actually see rain falling on the hills on my right.
What was also clear was that the valley was ending. The two mountain ranges seemed to be converging ahead of me. As I got closer, the road began turning to work its way up, switchbacking through the hills. It also started raining, lightly, but rain brought cold.
I was starting to think that I wasn't needing to push too far today. Certainly it would be wetter and colder on the coast. As Route 101 exits this valley, that's where it heads.
A couple of billboards for Black Oak Best Western in Paso Robles convinced me and quite at the last minute I dove off the exit. I figured it just right. I mean I was no sooner parking the bike at hotel registration than the big rain drops began falling. (The hotel even had dedicated bike parking spots for registration.)
It rained, steady, well into the night.
Just around the corner I enjoyed dinner at Big Bubba's Bad BBQ. Actually, it was pretty good.
From my hotel room's information booklet, I learned Estrella War Bird Museum is nearby. A bit of Googling convinced me it is the way to start my day tomorrow.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
California Day One
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Los Angeles to Pismo Beach, California
Well the netbook booted just fine after riding all day in the saddlebag.
What an amazing first day. Is it better, I wonder, to have your best day of vacation be the first, or the last day?
Yesterday was mostly all airplane. So it counts as a work day. The time difference between East and West Coast caused me not a bit of trouble. Being a world champion sleeper, and having shorted myself with preparations Monday night, I simply slept through the extra three hours last night. Easy.
I woke refreshed and finally surrendered my watch to California time.
After breakfast I caught a cab from my LAX Travelodge Hotel to nearby Eagle Rider motorcycle rentals. Business acquaintance Mark Bastarache of Business Network hooked me into a discounted Harley-Davidson rental. I picked up a beautiful Road Glide, blue, for my trip on the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH), U.S. 1.
Hey, wait a minute. How can we have two U.S. Route Ones? There's one of those on the East Coast too. Our part of the country being settled so much sooner, surely we were first. Shouldn't California's be U.S. Route Two?
Everybody at Eagle Rider was great. I packed the bike, left a bag behind with my Aquarium business wear for the IMAX convention next week and promptly made my first foray onto the famous Los Angeles freeways. Yes, they are as bad as you have heard.
My task was to shoot up the 405 to catch 10 west to Route 1 north. Seems simple, right?
Well thinking myself clever, I opted for the car pool lane. It was the only lane appearing reliable. The others were rubber banding severely at every exit and on-ramp.
Unfortunately once in the lane I felt bound by the double yellow line. There had been broken white lines here and there where cars could merge in and out of the car pool lane. I entered at a set. But when Route 10 appeared, no broken lines did. By the time I determined to sneak across, I had missed my exit. I might have made it on I-84 back home. But in L.A., once out of the car pool lane there were still five lanes to cross to make the exit.
I went on by I-10 and took Santa Monica Boulevard exit. Based upon my glance at the map before I left, I figured how far can it be to the ocean? So I turned left, west, and started down the Boulevard. Hey, just like the popular song, “All I wanna do is have some fun, I gotta feeling I'm not the only one . . . 'till the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard.”
Only the “Boulevard” looked very much like a dirty, gritty, four lane city street with curbside parking and a stop light every block. After a bit of this I figured it was not what I sought for vacation riding. Glancing at my AAA Triptik map, I turned left again, heading back south to pick up I-10.
A bit more stop and go city driving and I was zipping along again, headed as west as you can go in the U.S.A., to the Pacific Coast Highway. I was there in no time.
(Yeah, I know Hawaii is further west than this. And Alaska stretches nearly to Russia, just ask Sarah Palin. Let's not get technical. Okay?)
Weather was gorgeous. An above average 80 degrees. Sunshine. Brilliant Sunshine. It felt great!
Seems to me the only way to survive New England is to get the heck out to someplace warm at least once per winter. But then again, I did not grow up there, so I am not fully acclimatized.
I had started the morning with my light pair of winter gloves. When I hit the PCH I switched to fingerless, also zipped the winter liners out of my leather jacket and riding pants.
At first it was still very urban. Then there it was, the vast Pacific Ocean. Beautiful. Bluer than the Atlantic. Visibility to the horizon.
California gives every appearance of having, just very recently, fallen into the sea. To the west is the ocean. To the east are steep, very steep, hills. Sometimes the hills are maybe a mile away, sometimes they reach right to the water.
There is no transition here. Steep hills, mountains even, then the sea. No Piedmont nor gently rolling hills. Only abrupt, steep, deeply cut, hills.
California's geography looks very young. Features are sharp, angular, extreme. Every where water runs it cuts very deeply into the hills and mountains. I am no geologist, but it does not look like they have a bit of granite in the place. Maybe farther back to the Sierra Nevada. But here on the coast it looks like sand and mud, not even rock. Little scrubby bushes cling to the hills and sparsely so.
Then I got to Malibu and amazingly there were houses everywhere. They were right down on the beach, with the road hard on their backs. Even crazier, houses were clinging to these obviously eroded hillsides.
I'm no architect nor engineer. Even so, it seems to me any fool can see that the soft land is continually falling into the ocean. How do the people who live in these houses sleep at night? I would be pacing the floor, on the uphill side, ready to jump out before the house tumbled down with the rest of the sand into the sea.
It is hard for me to summon much sympathy for mudslide victims. When you moved in, wasn't it obvious the hill was just waiting to let go?
On the other hand, people live in New Orleans several feet below sea level with only an Army Corps of Engineers mud dike holding the water away. In Florida they rebuild after every hurricane. Even I live along the mouth of a river supposedly protected from flooding again like it did in the 30s by several dams upstream. The year my son Trever was born, hurricane Gloria paid a visit. We didn't move inland.
I turned up Malibu Canyon Road and cranked the big Harley up the hill through twists and turns clinging on the edge of a very steep and deep canyon.
As I carved the canyon I wanted to stop and take a picture of this amazing topography. I saw turnouts, advertised by signs a quarter mile in advance. But each turnout was lined with no parking, stopping or standing signs. I didn't get it. Why have a scenic turnout, if no parking is allowed? Not knowing the local custom I rode on.
Then I saw a sign for a “vista” and there the parking signs allowed me to stay for 10 minutes. That's where I grabbed some photos.
It was amazing to me how rural the canyon was. All the sudden you went from packed city to wilderness. Such extremes compose California's charm.
As I popped out of the canyon top I rode a bit more up the mountain. It was noticeably cooler. Not knowing how far it was to the very top, I turned around and headed back down. As I entered the canyon, a sign explained the no parking, stopping, standing turnouts. It said, “slower vehicles use turnouts.”
Since the highway was only two lanes, trucks and Winnebagos and such pull into the turnouts to allow faster vehicles to pass. Glad I wasn't parked in one, defiantly taking photos. They do run trucks and trailers up and down these roads.
Back along the coast, the PCH went from two lanes to four, then back to two. Again, it went from house lined to completely rural in a matter of yards. I guess there are some hills too steep even for these crazy Californians. Or maybe there just aren't enough Californians to build out this far.
They have a unique idea of freeways here. Instead of building over or underpasses, they simply declare that “freeway ends” with “cross traffic ahead.” It's all the same road, the speed limit drops from 65 down to 55. Nothing else changes. Once past the intersections a sign declares “freeway begins” and you can crank on another 10 mph.
I actually started out on Route 101. From Los Angeles to San Luis Obispo Routes 101 and 1 have an on-again, off-again, relationship. They split at Buellton and reconnect at Pismo Beach. It is marked as though you're always switching from one to the other. There are lots of signs offering 101 access once you're on 1.
At Buellton the geography changed dramatically. The ocean was gone and I was twisting and turning through cattle country with rancheros and very few signs of civilization. Another dramatic and abrupt change in scenery.
Vandenberg Air Force Base gets the shore on this part of the PCH. It's a missile test range. So I guess they don't want to be shooting rockets over the highway. Amazingly, you drive right past rifle ranges, I mean right off the highway. You could walk to them. Fortunately they shoot away from the road.
Rather suddenly once again, the country flattend out and changed from cattle to crops. Vegetable farms and packing plants stretched for miles.
Guadalupe was a working town. It looked like a hundred farm towns I have visited. One strong main street. Plants and trucks and tractors and mud dragged onto the highway at either end of town. Dying retail in the center. Old houses built right to the road. Pool halls, bars and VFWs and churches for Sunday cures to Saturday debaucheries.
At the northern edge of town I stopped to add a few layers and switch back again to the winter gloves. The warm sun was drooping in the sky.
A glance at my vintage Triptik and San Luis Obispo seemed a reasonable target for what was left of the day. That's where Routes 1 and 101 part ways for a hundred miles, with a ridge of mountains between them.
For a bit before that, the coast cut back into Route 1 again and I was enjoying the PCH with an ocean view. Just above Pismo Beach 1 rejoins 101. And just before it does, it skirts along a coastline cliff. I saw a couple of cool hotels and then I suddenly was back up to 65 mph on the 101 freeway.
As I rocketed toward San Luis Obispo, I was having a conversation with myself inside my head. The more I talked to myself, the more I became convinced that Pismo Beach scenery back there was pretty sweet. And now I was headed back inland. It took me a few miles to decide. Then I got off an exit, crossed over, and got back on the freeway retracing my tracks back south.
It turned out to be an extraordinarily good decision.
The cliff side hotel gave me a good government rate and a beautiful room overlooking the ocean. The sun was low and warm and casting long shadows and soft colors. Out over the water there was a low line of clouds miles away.
Perched upon the cliffs, an amazing gazebo dotted an impossible point of land. Before I walked out there for a better look, I called the wifey at home. And in our less than half-hour conversation, my beautiful scenery disappeared. That low line of clouds was a fog bank. I watched it roll right over me and the hotel. The sun was still up. The ocean and cliffs were gone.
They did not reappear the next morning either.
Meanwhile the hotel restaurant was under construction. Fortunately the desk clerk steered me to “Steamers” a short walk away. The restaurant's theme is “a mile of clams.”
I also took a walk on the beach. Beach access was via about three stories of steep staircase.
Returning to the hotel, I decided to take a dip in the pool. It was heated and open until 11 p.m. The air was misty, a light drizzle going. I started out in the hot tub then took a dip in the pool and then back to the whirlpool. Had the whole pool area to myself.
Back to my room late, I dressed and finally walked out to that gazebo. The hotel had bright lights shining on the cliffs and the rocks below. Very nice.
Finally I sat out on my room's porch with my net book and tried to capture today's scenes, Pacific waves offering a bucolic symphony.
Los Angeles to Pismo Beach, California
Well the netbook booted just fine after riding all day in the saddlebag.
What an amazing first day. Is it better, I wonder, to have your best day of vacation be the first, or the last day?
Yesterday was mostly all airplane. So it counts as a work day. The time difference between East and West Coast caused me not a bit of trouble. Being a world champion sleeper, and having shorted myself with preparations Monday night, I simply slept through the extra three hours last night. Easy.
I woke refreshed and finally surrendered my watch to California time.
After breakfast I caught a cab from my LAX Travelodge Hotel to nearby Eagle Rider motorcycle rentals. Business acquaintance Mark Bastarache of Business Network hooked me into a discounted Harley-Davidson rental. I picked up a beautiful Road Glide, blue, for my trip on the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH), U.S. 1.
Hey, wait a minute. How can we have two U.S. Route Ones? There's one of those on the East Coast too. Our part of the country being settled so much sooner, surely we were first. Shouldn't California's be U.S. Route Two?
Everybody at Eagle Rider was great. I packed the bike, left a bag behind with my Aquarium business wear for the IMAX convention next week and promptly made my first foray onto the famous Los Angeles freeways. Yes, they are as bad as you have heard.
My task was to shoot up the 405 to catch 10 west to Route 1 north. Seems simple, right?
Well thinking myself clever, I opted for the car pool lane. It was the only lane appearing reliable. The others were rubber banding severely at every exit and on-ramp.
Unfortunately once in the lane I felt bound by the double yellow line. There had been broken white lines here and there where cars could merge in and out of the car pool lane. I entered at a set. But when Route 10 appeared, no broken lines did. By the time I determined to sneak across, I had missed my exit. I might have made it on I-84 back home. But in L.A., once out of the car pool lane there were still five lanes to cross to make the exit.
I went on by I-10 and took Santa Monica Boulevard exit. Based upon my glance at the map before I left, I figured how far can it be to the ocean? So I turned left, west, and started down the Boulevard. Hey, just like the popular song, “All I wanna do is have some fun, I gotta feeling I'm not the only one . . . 'till the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard.”
Only the “Boulevard” looked very much like a dirty, gritty, four lane city street with curbside parking and a stop light every block. After a bit of this I figured it was not what I sought for vacation riding. Glancing at my AAA Triptik map, I turned left again, heading back south to pick up I-10.
A bit more stop and go city driving and I was zipping along again, headed as west as you can go in the U.S.A., to the Pacific Coast Highway. I was there in no time.
(Yeah, I know Hawaii is further west than this. And Alaska stretches nearly to Russia, just ask Sarah Palin. Let's not get technical. Okay?)
Weather was gorgeous. An above average 80 degrees. Sunshine. Brilliant Sunshine. It felt great!
Seems to me the only way to survive New England is to get the heck out to someplace warm at least once per winter. But then again, I did not grow up there, so I am not fully acclimatized.
I had started the morning with my light pair of winter gloves. When I hit the PCH I switched to fingerless, also zipped the winter liners out of my leather jacket and riding pants.
At first it was still very urban. Then there it was, the vast Pacific Ocean. Beautiful. Bluer than the Atlantic. Visibility to the horizon.
California gives every appearance of having, just very recently, fallen into the sea. To the west is the ocean. To the east are steep, very steep, hills. Sometimes the hills are maybe a mile away, sometimes they reach right to the water.
There is no transition here. Steep hills, mountains even, then the sea. No Piedmont nor gently rolling hills. Only abrupt, steep, deeply cut, hills.
California's geography looks very young. Features are sharp, angular, extreme. Every where water runs it cuts very deeply into the hills and mountains. I am no geologist, but it does not look like they have a bit of granite in the place. Maybe farther back to the Sierra Nevada. But here on the coast it looks like sand and mud, not even rock. Little scrubby bushes cling to the hills and sparsely so.
Then I got to Malibu and amazingly there were houses everywhere. They were right down on the beach, with the road hard on their backs. Even crazier, houses were clinging to these obviously eroded hillsides.
I'm no architect nor engineer. Even so, it seems to me any fool can see that the soft land is continually falling into the ocean. How do the people who live in these houses sleep at night? I would be pacing the floor, on the uphill side, ready to jump out before the house tumbled down with the rest of the sand into the sea.
It is hard for me to summon much sympathy for mudslide victims. When you moved in, wasn't it obvious the hill was just waiting to let go?
On the other hand, people live in New Orleans several feet below sea level with only an Army Corps of Engineers mud dike holding the water away. In Florida they rebuild after every hurricane. Even I live along the mouth of a river supposedly protected from flooding again like it did in the 30s by several dams upstream. The year my son Trever was born, hurricane Gloria paid a visit. We didn't move inland.
I turned up Malibu Canyon Road and cranked the big Harley up the hill through twists and turns clinging on the edge of a very steep and deep canyon.
As I carved the canyon I wanted to stop and take a picture of this amazing topography. I saw turnouts, advertised by signs a quarter mile in advance. But each turnout was lined with no parking, stopping or standing signs. I didn't get it. Why have a scenic turnout, if no parking is allowed? Not knowing the local custom I rode on.
Then I saw a sign for a “vista” and there the parking signs allowed me to stay for 10 minutes. That's where I grabbed some photos.
It was amazing to me how rural the canyon was. All the sudden you went from packed city to wilderness. Such extremes compose California's charm.
As I popped out of the canyon top I rode a bit more up the mountain. It was noticeably cooler. Not knowing how far it was to the very top, I turned around and headed back down. As I entered the canyon, a sign explained the no parking, stopping, standing turnouts. It said, “slower vehicles use turnouts.”
Since the highway was only two lanes, trucks and Winnebagos and such pull into the turnouts to allow faster vehicles to pass. Glad I wasn't parked in one, defiantly taking photos. They do run trucks and trailers up and down these roads.
Back along the coast, the PCH went from two lanes to four, then back to two. Again, it went from house lined to completely rural in a matter of yards. I guess there are some hills too steep even for these crazy Californians. Or maybe there just aren't enough Californians to build out this far.
They have a unique idea of freeways here. Instead of building over or underpasses, they simply declare that “freeway ends” with “cross traffic ahead.” It's all the same road, the speed limit drops from 65 down to 55. Nothing else changes. Once past the intersections a sign declares “freeway begins” and you can crank on another 10 mph.
I actually started out on Route 101. From Los Angeles to San Luis Obispo Routes 101 and 1 have an on-again, off-again, relationship. They split at Buellton and reconnect at Pismo Beach. It is marked as though you're always switching from one to the other. There are lots of signs offering 101 access once you're on 1.
At Buellton the geography changed dramatically. The ocean was gone and I was twisting and turning through cattle country with rancheros and very few signs of civilization. Another dramatic and abrupt change in scenery.
Vandenberg Air Force Base gets the shore on this part of the PCH. It's a missile test range. So I guess they don't want to be shooting rockets over the highway. Amazingly, you drive right past rifle ranges, I mean right off the highway. You could walk to them. Fortunately they shoot away from the road.
Rather suddenly once again, the country flattend out and changed from cattle to crops. Vegetable farms and packing plants stretched for miles.
Guadalupe was a working town. It looked like a hundred farm towns I have visited. One strong main street. Plants and trucks and tractors and mud dragged onto the highway at either end of town. Dying retail in the center. Old houses built right to the road. Pool halls, bars and VFWs and churches for Sunday cures to Saturday debaucheries.
At the northern edge of town I stopped to add a few layers and switch back again to the winter gloves. The warm sun was drooping in the sky.
A glance at my vintage Triptik and San Luis Obispo seemed a reasonable target for what was left of the day. That's where Routes 1 and 101 part ways for a hundred miles, with a ridge of mountains between them.
For a bit before that, the coast cut back into Route 1 again and I was enjoying the PCH with an ocean view. Just above Pismo Beach 1 rejoins 101. And just before it does, it skirts along a coastline cliff. I saw a couple of cool hotels and then I suddenly was back up to 65 mph on the 101 freeway.
As I rocketed toward San Luis Obispo, I was having a conversation with myself inside my head. The more I talked to myself, the more I became convinced that Pismo Beach scenery back there was pretty sweet. And now I was headed back inland. It took me a few miles to decide. Then I got off an exit, crossed over, and got back on the freeway retracing my tracks back south.
It turned out to be an extraordinarily good decision.
The cliff side hotel gave me a good government rate and a beautiful room overlooking the ocean. The sun was low and warm and casting long shadows and soft colors. Out over the water there was a low line of clouds miles away.
Perched upon the cliffs, an amazing gazebo dotted an impossible point of land. Before I walked out there for a better look, I called the wifey at home. And in our less than half-hour conversation, my beautiful scenery disappeared. That low line of clouds was a fog bank. I watched it roll right over me and the hotel. The sun was still up. The ocean and cliffs were gone.
They did not reappear the next morning either.
Meanwhile the hotel restaurant was under construction. Fortunately the desk clerk steered me to “Steamers” a short walk away. The restaurant's theme is “a mile of clams.”
I also took a walk on the beach. Beach access was via about three stories of steep staircase.
Returning to the hotel, I decided to take a dip in the pool. It was heated and open until 11 p.m. The air was misty, a light drizzle going. I started out in the hot tub then took a dip in the pool and then back to the whirlpool. Had the whole pool area to myself.
Back to my room late, I dressed and finally walked out to that gazebo. The hotel had bright lights shining on the cliffs and the rocks below. Very nice.
Finally I sat out on my room's porch with my net book and tried to capture today's scenes, Pacific waves offering a bucolic symphony.
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