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and last updated August 24th.,1998.
Well, I'm in BAKERSFIELD right now, having done the drive from Chico, down Route 99, (Trucksville!), in nine hours!! That's about two hours more than it would have taken had I not gotten lost at all.....but I did, of course, get to see a lot of Santiago and a whole lot more of Bakersfield....I had no idea that Panorama Drive was there, or that there could be such a spectacular view from what looks to be a totally flat city....but I am now very well acquainted with that particular vista,filled with strollers and cyclists and joggers and spectators.. and with what must be a University with inadequate onsite parking...and with the acres of railway yards, whose boom gates stay closed for a VERY long time!!
And when I finally found a Best Western Inn, I knew it wasn't the right one, but they were new owners and VERY anxious to keep me, and showed me a nice room they were going to REALLY discount,which had a 'frig, and even offered to lend me the microwave from their own kitchen, but I said people were going to call me at the one I had booked into, so they were kind enough to explain to me EXACTLY how to get back onto the right road, which wasn't called the same thing as in the AAA Book, now, and their directions were so good that I found the place in only three tries!
But Webweavr has taught me well, once the realised the enormity of my gauche Australian tipping-ignorance, so I expended anther $12.00, that is $5 for the porter who helped me with my luggage after he saw me manoevering the luggage-trolley by myself..and to whom I confided my need for a 'frig, , and $7 charge for the 'frig!
I am afraid I am not yet Americanized enough to really enjoy American BREAKFASTS!!
Even though Barney at the Music Inn cooks up a storm....he said I was letting him down at the breakfast table!!
So long that this hesistant Aussie finally followed the local lead and wove her way in between and around and across the rails....in a strange city at sunset, facing due west with no trees between that great red sun and her sunglasses.....AAGGHH!!
And the room has a balcony and coffee-maker and modem-point,and fronts the pool , but the promised 'frig and mocrowave were nowhere in evidence
But on the strength of THAT, there will be no room service breakfast, with 15% service-charge, plus tax, plus tips, for THIS paying guest...
I mean, I can't eat that 'frig, but I can sure as Hell eat OUT of it...and I think Bread and cheese, and a dash of Promite on the balcony, washed down with tomato juice, sounds better than FRIED everything,with syrup and jelly, anyway!!....
I'm not really much of a breakfast eater, and rarely bother to go share the Residence Inn Breakfasts, despite the fact that the staff try hard to get people mixing, and they give you the morning papers as a kind of bribe...
But breakfast with Barney is much more of an occasion, though informal enough that one can attend in kimono or bathing suit....not unique, I guess, though I venture that this is probably the only place where breakfast is cooked and served by the jovial one-legged host zipping around in his wheelchair, turning out ham and eggs and waffles and French toast to die for!!
NICE!!!!!
It is probably just as well I didn't find that place earlier in my travels...I would definitely not have seen nearly so much of America!
It isn't the only Bed & Breakfast in the country, of course...
And you can serve yourself freshly squeezed juice and chopped fresh fruit in gleaming glassware, and make toast the way you like it, and eat at the kitchen table or at more formal dining tables and talk to anyone and everyone...
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..
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!)
Nevada City has kept its old buildings and seamlessly blended in some new, but not many...
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...
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 was 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!!
The actual highway driving is so much easier than in Australia!!
Americans have a very clear way of telling you they want you to either speed up or
move over...they simply pulll closer until the curved front bumper is filling your rearvision mirror...someone told me once that drivers of cars wearing that pale gold-bronze metallic paint are the most agressive of all...and, funny thing, I found that, too, today.....
Another thing I found a bit different....in the summer, an Australian driver gets used to having to wait for, or drive around, the slow cars pulling caravans....
But that seems to be the way a lot of folk move house, too...I saw lots of U-MOVE or
This junction where I am staying for tonight, rather than pushing on all the way to L.A., is your typical Neon-Neighbourhood...all flat and hot and dry and brightly, very brighly lit!
Rather different from the place I pulled out of almost twelve hours ago...
I had four days at a Bed & Breakfast Inn, right on Chico City outer limits, an Inn which is also a music school, and one front room is filled with musical equipment, stands, trophies, electronics and memorabilia, for Irene and Barney, the owners, have lived and worked here for 18 years..
And after three months spent in pretty cramped quarters, I was revelling in the incredible SPACE..I had three rooms, and the choice of a king-sized bed, three single beds..or the couch if I was 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!
There are big bowls of silk flowers, and dried flower wall wreaths, and countertop arrangements, all in the same powder-blue, pink tonings.....even the wall prints match right in!
Oh, and the pool isn't all bad, either!
In fact it was all so very restful that I might have to turn an analytical, (jaundiced?) eye to my own home quarters, which we have always furnished on the BRIGHT IS BEAUTIFULand NEW is NICERprinciple!
And speaking of NEW, I keep getting messags from my number-One-Son, the proud new father, about how his daughter wants to meet her grandmother..
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*!!
June 4th:
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He said he had 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!!
Not that I need to worry about coexistence for a few days now..I left Webweavr in Chico this morning...polishing his glasses in a very suspicious way, and we were both looking forward to catching up online tonight....
I suppose we shouldn't have been surprised that Webweavr's housemate needed to use the internet as soon as we achieved mutual logon.....it was ever thus, and ever will be, I suspect!
But at least I was able to assure him I reached here safely.....
HE told me that if the street signs changed to Spanish that I would know I had gone too far south...but he didn't tell me what to do when all the RADIO stations changed to Spanish.....that was a serious worry!!
The roads are so good that one can actually relax, and even though everything is going so very fast, it all seems quite safe...
Think I have come a long way since I cowered under the dashboard each time Webweavr insisted on eating or drinking as he drove, despite my offers to take the wheel...he said everyone in America is geared up to eat as they drive!!
Well, *grin* they ARE.....and I DID!!
It was easier to eat my luch on Highway 99 than it was to find a pulloff place to eat...but the roads are so well designed that steering with one hand seems easy, even at *gulp* 175 mph, which you have to do if you don't want a truck (speed limit 55mph in some areas) to run clean over you!
Anyway, you need the other hand to work the scan button on the radio!!
Of course, some upwardly mobile, (or more mobile?) folk match a nice four-wheel-drive vehicle to their steamlained caravan, but the car pulls the van....well, usually!!
Here, it's the other way around...you see a few, very few, strange, squareshaped vans hurtling along behind what THEY call Sports Utilities, or small trucks, but mostly, wait for it, the van tows the four-wheel drive...!!!!
They do this by putting a motor in the front of the van, and a V-shaped towbar/frame behind and hooking up the family vehicle...which trundles merrily along behind at 165mph....truly the cart before the horse!!
I wouldn't have minded peeking inside THAT van...I figure THAT furniture and THAT car probably belonged to the Vice-Chancellor!
Each room/suite 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....there, the lights are everywhere , the globe sizes generous, and the double power points exactly where you would hope to find them !
And it was so blissfully QUIET!!
Despite the antique furnishings, mod. cons. are not neglected...shuttered white doors opening to reveal a microwave and generous-sized 'frig., and there was a marble-topped antique night-stand alongside for simple food preparation..and lots of drawers to hide my travelling culinary supplies ...no Hi-Fi or VCR., but the TV swivels on an ancient inlaid seaman's trunk, and the high-tech phone on the antique desk is the exact, matching blue
Guess now I MUST go home, folks...
Even though I have bought clothes and toys for her all over the world, it isn't the same as BEING there!!
the answer is It is starting to look like...NOT!!!.
That elusive friend wrote me a long a jovial Email....again!!
And said he is going to get his home computer back online.....
Might even put his picture here if he doesn't show up!!!
What do YOU think??
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