| LinkExchange Member | Free Home Pages at GeoCities |
| LinkExchange Member | Free Home Pages at GeoCities |
and last updated August 28th.,1998.
Well, I'm writing this on my last day in America, having missed my 38th wedding anniversary in Australia.....
38 years ago, I would never have believed ANY of this.......nor, I guess, would the husband!!
LOTS of water under the bridge, hey??
And how have I spent this last day?
Then back to Enterprise Cars with my best friend to regale the staff re. my adventures since they last saw me..Guess you can imagine how they laughed when I actually climbed into the passenger side to drive to the checkup area...sat for a moment noticing something missing, (the steering wheel) before I realised, and climbed out, redfaced..
But I'm not having any great worries about driving in Australia...I don't think this learning-to-drive-on the-other-side replaces the old, much-used part of the brain...it feelsw more as though it has opened up a new part..kind of a good feeling, actually!
The drive from Bakersfield, which I had been dreading, was really quite4 enjoyable.... I suppose if I can negotiate from the country to the city, via the freeways, having only been honked at TWICE, I could be awarded some kind of Drive in USA diploma?
As it was, I had more trouble with the different kinds of gas-pumps than I did with the driving, and actually experienced the first deliberate dishonesty on the part of an American retailer when an ancient pump attendant insisted he had put $12.50 worth of gas in the tank while I was in the restroom, and I know for a fact that the tank was almost full because I had just stopped twenty minutes earlier, at a similar run-off, but the queue to the Ladies' had been just too long, there, for me not to need another stop quite soon!
Well, in preparation for an 18 hour flight, I slept late, made my own breakfast and then headed to Manhatton Village to collect photos, envelopes to send them in, some Maybelline nailpolish, in a color that won't show plane-acquired chips.... then to United Airlines to get a new ticket printout and check on delays..(NONE, dammit!!), and to various card counters to find cards just right for some important people in my life here....and to a B Dalton bookstore where I used my membership discount card to buy (heavy) computer books not easily obrtainable in Australia, but which will push my luggage up into the three suitcases/excess charge bracket......*gloom*!
Makes one wonder how many usused grey cells most of us carry most of the time?
And they are a bit slow to hand out restroom keys without a gas-sales slip in some parts of this country!!
I arrived back at the Residence Inn at Manhatton Beach in time for the weekly barbecue, having only taken a couple of wrong turns, (instantly repairable), and having seen El Segundo without meaning to, but having enjoyed that bit of the drive very much!...
And my car and I havealready paredt company...
I had decided to come back here, because not only does my car live just down the road, but there is also a Mailboxes,INC. right opposite..
Nor did they mind taking $350 from me to send home three packages with the aim of avoiding paying United Airlines excess baggage....I know...does seem a roundabout way of doing things!!
And I have to pay a full day here for today, even though I will be leaving at 8pm...oh well!!
Tthere was a bit of a lump in the throat then...
She had been a good and stalwart friend, and could tell a few stories , were she so inclined...
And a pretty car, too...just a bit frivolous, lightweight in appearance but sturdy under
stress....the best kind of friend for soemone like me to have!
Apart from the scratches some of my cross-country orienteering has caused, she has one deep gouge from bumper to passenger door...acquired right here in the carpark on my last day before heading North...
So she gets the weekend off, waiting for repairs, to gather and regroup for her next temporary owner!
It would have been nice to have had more days at Bakersfield, where the Best Western Motel was just as I like...inexpensive but spacious, with a balcony out to lawns and a pool, a datapoint phone and roomy desk, and right in the middle of eating places and foodstores..but all I could afford, timewise, was a one hour later checkout.....and instead of spending that lounging by the pool or sunning on the balcony, I spent it trying to retrieve the file-type that my Webpage directory uses, but which Corel-Draw appears to have eaten, digested, and disgorged as Internet Explorer files...a bit of a problem when I don't use Explorer...!
So I'm not sure when this page will be continued, folks...I had planned to use the Iomega drive simply to transfer the entire directory of text and graphics to the home computer and start right in...but there is no way I will transfer the mess this drive appears to be in to what was a well-organized parent machine when I left...so it could be some time...
Of course, there are some things about America I HAVEN'T taken to..
Aned, though I've really tried hard, ever since Belgium,to overcome the morning reluctance, 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, I still can't handle things fried or sweet for breakfast....in fact, he said I was letting him down at the breakfast table!!
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!!
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!
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...
OPn my last day, I met a lady whose one Australian friend lives in my hometown!
Not that I need to worry about coexistence for a few days yet..I left Webweavr in Chico on the 26th....polishing his glasses in a very suspicious way, and we were both looking forward to catching up online that night...
I suppose we shouldn't have been surprised that Webweavr's landlord/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 Bakersfield safely.....
HE had 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!!
Q
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 U-Hire trucks pulling a small car, probably students moving to college this week, since I was driving through a lot of College towns...but I also saw a totally awesome, HUGE moving van merrily towing a Cadillac....
The highway junction where I stayed overnight, 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!
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 lunch 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 steamlined 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!
Rather different from the place I pulled out of a couple of days 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..
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!!
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!....
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
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 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*!!
I emailed him last night asking if I should call him before I leave..we are only a couple of hours apart, right now...but I am not going to hold my breath waiting for a reply...
HIS loss, I rather think!
WANT TO SEE WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
June 4th:WANT TO LOOK BACK AT SOME EARLIER PAGES?
June 5th:
June 19th:
June 23rd:
June 27th:
July 4th:
July 7th:
July 9th:
July 13th:
July 18th:
July 28th:
August 2nd:
August 8th:
August 15th:
August 22nd:
August 27th:
