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and last updated August 22nd.,1998.
Well, I'm in CHICO right now, having done the 10 minute drive from Paradise, CA, in my usual four and a half hours!! That, of course, is another whole story, which I MAY have the strength to tell you....if I can stop grinding my teeth long enough....but I am now very well acquainted with the tops of Ponderosa pines, and know that if an American road is only maintained for a few weeks each year, there is a good reason, and that reason is why you see so many four-wheel-drive vehicles out and about here.....which I was not, of course, driving this time....
.....but the nice boys at the tyre-place hammered the wheel rims back into shape very nicely, and have assured
me the car is quite safe to drive back to Los Angeles to catch the plane home......Pity!!
I am staying at a Bed & Breakfast Inn, which is also a music school, and one front room is filled with musical equipment, stands, trophies, electronics and memorabilia, for the owners have lived and worked here for 18 years..
Each room/suit is quite individual, and so filled with decorator things that the effect would be O>T>T> were it not all so exquisitely matched and tastfully blended..and there is none of the small-globe-economy you find all-too-often in accomodation houses....here the lights are everywhere , the globe sizes generous, and the double power points exactly where you would hope to find them !
And after three months spent in pretty cramped quarters, I am revelling in this SPACE..I have three rooms, and the choice of a king-sized bed, three single beds..or the couch if I am not speaking to myself!.....
And I have decided an antique drop-down-front desk is most hospitable to a laptop computer and all its paraphenalia, especially when all the power points and phone plugs are in the right placeand that shady blues and pinks and frilly white see-through curtains work very well in this kind of heat when combined with huge shady verandahs and the most silent air-conditioning I have encountered in this country!
Oh, and the pool isn't all bad, either!
This isn't the only Bed & Breakfast in the country, of course...
It is probably just as well I didn't find this place earlier in my travels...I would probably not have seen nearly so much of America!
But it is probably the only place where breakfast is cooked and served by the one-legged host zipping around in his wheelchair!!
I saw a place, called Grandmere's, where I'd really like to stay one day, on the way to and from Reno...at the old town of Nevada City, which is, would you believe, not in Nevada, but in California..
I couldn't look at it right then..they close the doors from 12 till 4 so everyone can rest, I guess!
Nevada City seems a place where the stresses of modern life seem not to have intruded too much, yet...
It is chock-full of eating places and craft shops..a real tourist town..
Nevada City has kept its old buildings and seamlessly blended in some new, but not many...
There is a sinful icecream and hand-dipped chocolate shop, (Americans LOVE their sweet things!), and I bought some interesting handmade glass earrings to match a pendant I have had for many years at a shop that sold almost anything..even a fibreglass chair in the shape of a giant hand!!!
(Webweavr LIKED that!)
And the local historical society has done some serious work, so that one can see lots of interesting stuff just by strolling about the streets, icecream in hand..
There is even the water cannon they used to knock down the mountain to get at the gold....until the environment protection folk made their presence felt, of course!
And Reno?
Reno is a mind-blowing, sensory-overload experience...
Reno is like a Blade-Runner backdrop magnified a thousand times!
Reno is...Wow!!
.
And Reno has not a blade of grass out of place, nor a dirty street, nor an unkempt yard, as far as I could see!
Certainly there is no sign that Reno is in any way depressed or going downhill...
And they are really very nice about taking your money in Reno...free drinks brought to you in the very friendliest fashion...!
And people seem to really LOVE to be there...
But, as happens in each town, it seems, the computer decided to act up...
*********
This time the modem decided to stop connecting me to the outside world, which, with a new grandchild about to be born in Australia, and the trip home to be organized with my husband, would have been a serious inconvenience!
But Webweavr found a Toshiba agent via the phonebook..(I have this theory that Americans probably CALL before they learn to say Mum,Mum or Dad,Dad!), and he called them, and then he finally found the huge COMP USA building, where the nice 2OC didn't even have to sit down to work out what was wrong....
Seemed I had TWO modem drivers installed and the computer had just, for some reason, decided to use the OTHER one...happens all the time,he said, and he didn't charge me for taking off the imposter!!
And this was SUNDAY, remember!!!
And while we were in Reno, the thing with President Clinton and Monica was really hotting up...
America has these news channnels which do nothing but broadcast and discuss the news and so one could, if so motivate, examine President Clinton's situation for all one's waking hours....
I was moved to consider how many impromptu sex education lessons had needed to be given as a result of some of this explicit description on family-time TV!
I'm not much for turning the TV on during this trip,(or ever I guess), but Webweavr, like most males, unwinds best to the touch of the remote-control, so the period after a long trip together is always a bit egg-shell like, since I need QUIET then, and I have this need to UNPACK and ARRANGE THINGS...and he needs to lie down amidst the chaos with a beer and the phone and the news played LOUD!!
And I had another four days back at Paradise after Reno...
He says he has NOTICED my tidiness but decided, for the sake of coexistence, not to say anything, not to let it get to him....hmmmm......*grin*!
Think our ideal accommodation is probably that place down at Long Beach...you know the one...Queen Mary, it's called!!
Darned if I know what I did all that time...if you don't count swimming and sunbathing, (which is still reasonably safe in America, lacking, as they do, our ozone-layer hole), and catching up on washing and ironing and mendind and walking to the shops, and actually finishing a book, and working at getting an Australian prescription made up in the States...
Oh, and chatting online to people back home, of course...a seriously time-consuming occupation
But because, once again, The Ponderosa Gardens Motel was booked out for the weekend, so that I would need to move on, Webweavr and I spent my last late afternoon checking out some of the other places advertised for the Paradise distirct..
Which was how I came to find out that one really CAN'T drive to the end of Skyway in a Meteor ........
Stirling City, you have restored my faith in slobs everywhere, a belief that was getting a bit dented in your country!!
Guess now I can go home, folks...
And he drove partway down Skyway, the long, long road that someone had said I should drive right down, right to the end...
And that night, as I was getting ready to move on to Chico, I noticed on the map that Skyway actually ended in Chico, or seemed to, so I packed the other maps and decided to go that way..
And since Webweavr and I had exchanged some HEATED comments the night before (he thinks I knock America too much and never praise; I disagree, of course!), he was certainly not around to point me in the right direction...!
And that Chico is on the OTHER end of Skyway, anyway!
And that even though maps say, at their edge, that Highway 70 leads to Chico, they don't really mean it...because it doesn't, not directly, it leads to a road that goes to a road that goes to Chico...Highway 70 actually goes....AAGGHHH.....BACK into the mountains.....
And believe me, folks, deciding to turn around and return to the beginning when one's bumper is hanging over the edge of a mountain at 2000 ft elevation is no minor decision....but when one will run out of petrol if one continues, one does it...
And when a truck comes careering around the next bend around the same time, one kind of holds one's breath!
But at a point along the way, (four times actually because I retraced and retraced at that point), I actually managed to get a look at an UNTIDY, RUNDOWN American town....
Especially since the new granddaughter , Astra, has been born in Melbourne to elder son , chris, and the lovely Lisete
Even though I have bought clothes and toys for her all over the world, it isn't the same as BEING there!!
And to those of you still asking
So I asked him if he had told his wife he has an old friend from chatroom days in town, who would like to be shown around or asked to dinner...!!
And.....*grin*.... I haven't heard another word from him......*giggle*!!
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