Turning North

We have turned north and are heading home.

It should take us about a week to get back to Victoria.  Both of us are feeling like we have spent enough time in the U.S.  We left Canada around the middle of September and it is getting close to the end of October.  A month and a half is more than enough time down here.

We did pay a visit to the San Diego Zoo.  It was very interesting with lots of interesting animals.  My favourite was the gorillas and Telen's favourite was the elephants.  When we saw the giraffes I thought how ironic it would be if a giraffe was born with a fear of heights.  Just projecting, I guess.

Male Ourang-Outan hiding from the crowd

We will miss the California weather, or lack thereof.  Back home we have an excess of weather whereas here they seem to have only sunshine and warmth.  Walking along the beach with the blue water and the palm trees feel very much like a tropical holiday.  A bit of a Pavlovian response, I guess, but we seem to feel more and more relaxed as the days wear on.  It would feel more like Mexico if everyone here had the Mexican attitude.  The California attitude seems to be “Hello, how are you?  How do I look?”  California is balmy…

California pose...  How do I look?

 There is not much else to miss… especially the traffic.

We had to drive through Los Angeles on our way north.  Telen did the driving and she was wonderful but I didn’t know she knew those words.  There are as many people in California as there are in all of Canada and California would fit into one corner of British Columbia.  That means population density…  and I mean that in more ways than one.  Driving from San Diego to Bakersfield is like driving at warp speed through a densely populated city alongside homicidal, psychopathic drivers with double lobotomies who think they are Hollywood stunt drivers.   No wonder there are freeway shootings.  People live like this every day, here!

We drove as far as Bakersfield the first day.  Once we got away from the coast the cities seem to become interchangeable.  Bakersfield is non-descript – it could have been anywhere.  Apparently it ranks tenth for obesity in the US.  There is something for a city motto!  

The next night we stayed in Modesto.  The only significant difference I could see between Bakersfield and Modesto is the size and quantity of the shopping centers.  In Modesto there are more and they are larger.  Modesto was where George Lucas was born and raised and where American Graffiti was filmed.  I did not hear an abundance of fifty’s music or see guys with crew-cuts or jelly-rolls cruisin’ in their 57 Chevys’ trying to pick up girls in poodle skirts.  Disappointed!

 The drive between Bakersfield and Modesto was considerably less stressful and when we got to Modesto we did not have to spend a couple of hours shaking and crying before we got out of the car.

We drove up the central valley of California, which is dead flat and very agricultural.  We saw lots of vineyards, cotton plantations, olive and citrus groves.  I guess this is where all the California produce that we get back home comes from.  Especially those California strawberries – you know the ones… look great but have no substance or taste…

Currently we have arrived in Redding California.  Tomorrow we go over the mountains to Oregon and a change in the weather.  Even this far north we see occasional palm trees and the sun is still very warm.  Once we are into Oregon all that changes.  I might even have to put on some actual clothes rather than my habitual shorts, sandals and sleeveless shirt.   That part I am NOT looking forward to…

Surf's Up!

 We have arrived at the Pacific.

We have gone from the Pacific to the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico and now we are back to the Pacific again.  Even though this is nothing like the Pacific Ocean back home it feels good to be back.  The water here is warmer, bluer and has more surfers than back home but it is still the same ocean.  As we were driving from Anaheim we came over a hill and there it was – it had two aircraft carriers floating on it which took away some of the warm and fuzzy feeling - but it was still our ocean.

We are now ensconced at a city called Solana Beach that is just north of San Diego.  We are staying in a little cottage just a couple of blocks from the beach and about a twenty-minute walk to Telen’s conference.  The cottage is in a neighborhood so we get to see a little of how the people of Solana Beach live.  This area is like Broadmead on steroids!  No one cuts their own grass or washes their own cars.  The average household income is over one hundred thousand dollars and I don’t think they are double income households.  When I walk back from escorting Telen to her conference in the morning the streets are alive with women on their way to the gym, to yoga, to the beach with surfboards, or out running.  Husbands are at work, kids are in school – time to play!

It feels really good to get back to the west-coast attitude.  There are people cycling, running and surfing all the time.  We are starting to see more Prius’s and even some Chevy Volts.  The grocery stores carry organic products and a thing called “vegetables”.  I have yet to see a buffet or anything deep-fried and I think I have only seen one person of the magnitude I saw everywhere in the south and east of the US.  The other thing that tells me I am back on the west coast is the periodic pungent, “burning-leaves” smell wafting out of alleys and up from the beach.  Dude!

Remember when I said that, as we were coming through the American south, that I felt slim and athletic?  Well, here I feel like Fat Albert.  This city is the birthplace of Triathlon and I have never seen so many fit cyclists in my life.  All the main roads have cycling lanes and all the drivers drive like they are cyclists in their real lives.  Everyone has high-end bikes.  I feel like the poor relative with my Roubaix.

On the beach

Yesterday I went for a ride.  It has been sunny and warm here since we arrived.  Except yesterday.  I was not alone on the road by any means!   A woman rode up beside me, looked at me and said “Yuck!”   I am used to that, to a certain extent, but it seemed gratuitously mean.  It was a conversation starter, that’s for sure.   What she was referring to was the weather (she said) since it was raining “heavily” (what we, at home, would call “misty”).  I was able to ride with a number of different groups all of whom seemed very capable on their bikes.  They were all ages from young lightning bolts to old thunderers with a million kilometers in their legs.  And there I was – yucky old Fat Albert on my cheapo bike struggling to keep up.  

A humbling experience, indeed.

My bike and the ocean without the yucky Fat Albert person

After my ride I stopped at a coffee shop to have some refreshment.  Apparently that’s where local cycling community hangs out.  So many cyclists, so many nice bikes! Trek, Orbea, Pinarello, Cervelo, Scott, etc. I was looking at the cars parked on the street in front of the coffee shop: Mercedes, Porsche, Cadillac, BMW, and, ok, one Prius. I think this is an affluent community.  Money talks!

I have been to the beach a number of times.  It is really beautiful – white sand stretching away into the distance.  The water is not as warm as the Gulf of Mexico but certainly warmer than Victoria.  When you put your toes into the water here you don’t instantly develop hypothermia.   It is a surfer’s paradise with everyone toting surfboards around. I have yet to see any large waves but everyone seems pretty happy with the gentle ones I have seen.  Or, maybe no one actually surfs.  Maybe the surfboard is, like, an accessory…

As I was walking along the beach I saw a sea lion playing in the surf and a seal swimming close to shore.  There are the usual sea birds like pelicans, seagulls, and sandpipers around.  Apparently, though, there are more sinister things out there.  Two years ago a man was attacked and killed by a Great White Shark just offshore.  We see military helicopter gun-ships flying along the beach and there are those aircraft carriers we saw earlier.

All is not well in paradise

Pacific sunset

Dogs! Everyone seems to have them and no one cleans up after them.  In an affluent neighborhood like this you have to watch where you step?  There are signs on the entrance to the beach that say “No Dogs Allowed at any time” yet you see people running their dogs on the beach.

I guess rules don’t apply if you have the cash.

I volunteered at Telen’s acupuncture conference as a patient.  I sat in a chair in front of a room with twenty-five physicians of all disciplines staring at me.   Kind of like a doctor’s waiting room in reverse.  After asking me all kinds of penetrating questions about my life history, my relationships, my physical health and my mental state they all agreed that they could not treat Neanderthals and I should probably go see a veterinarian…

When asked what I wanted treated I said that my fear of heights was at the forefront of my mind and could they do anything about that?  The main suggestion was to take me to a high cliff and push me off in the same spirit as throwing someone in the deep water to teach him to swim.  I think it was meant humorously but I could see Telen looking contemplative.

Telen writes:

This suburb of San Diego is indeed picturesque: palm trees, warm sunshine, lovely beaches and sun tanned lean bodies everywhere.  Spas, cosmetic surgery clinics, fitness centers, pet grooming centers and cafes are everywhere.

I just finished 4 days of acupuncture workshop here in Solana Beach and now am looking forward to sleep in tomorrow morning.  I really did not like the sound of the alarm clock at 6:30 am.  Rand is such a good sport to volunteer as a patient.  There were 24 participants in class, all MDs.  We all tried our best to figure Rand out but with great difficulties (Just kidding!).  Anyways, we came up with an acupuncture treatment plan for him to help relieve his fear of heights and I gave him the first treatment in class yesterday.  The treatment involved burning moxa on 2 points on his chest followed by needling over 4 points in his feet.  Rand certainly was not thrilled to hear about the needles in his feet, which are very sensitive.  We all tried to reassure him.  He coped very well until he saw smoke rising off his hairy chest from the burning moxa!  I will continue to give him treatments over the next few weeks.  Then, he should challenge himself near a cliff…

Telen and the sunset - relieved at finishing her course!