America - Trees and Sh*t. Dedicated to Jerry.

It was Monday, I got up, showered, and got dressed before ("Ooh minty!") preparing breakfast in the middle of the breakfast bar where it was dogproof. I had summoned up courage and decided to go into town - on the bus and the train. Margie gave me a lift to Linda Mar, where I bravely caught the bus to Daly City, where I bravely caught the BART. In the City it was sunny but with a cool breeze blowing in from the sea, the top of the Golden Gate obscured by fog. "What a great burning combination!" I thought, remembering the suntan lotion lounging in my suitcase.
I hoiked out the guide and riffled through to find the "Downtown Walk", the book, Lets Go San Francisco, I had bought from the remainders box in a bookshop, as I now consulted it I discovered it to be, "The Budget Conscious Traveller's Guide" something I hadn't noticed before - honest, though it did explain the directions to walk everywhere. I started out, looking for the cartoon museum - moved, the fortune cookie shop in Chinatown - moved, Jack Kerouac's bookstore - moved, Lyle Tuttle's tattoo museum - a lot can happen in five years. The big bits of architecture fortunately proved immutable, I enjoyed the Yerba Buena Arts Centre initially for its post-breakfast-coffee rest rooms and later for the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial (the aqueous nature of which leads inevitably back to the restrooms). The memorial consists, finally, of a waterfall, representing the change in the Black Man's enfranchisement - drips to waterfalls. Sadly the memorial is made of granite so that the waterfall is never going to get noticeably bigger which, equally sadly, feels apposite.
On to Chinatown, moving rapidly through the main tourist section with it's OTT objet's d'art (I though ivory importation was illegal) and tat stores, full of fans, fireworks, buddhas and lucky kittys, to Chinatown proper and shops full of soon-to-be-unlucky frogs, soon-to-be-unlucky catfish, previously unlucky chickens and the like. I turned a corner - Italy. Hang on, turn back - China, go left - Italy, how strange.
Popped into the art school and checked out the Rivera at the San Francisco Art Institute, something that should remain there 'til the Big One.
After the sublime, the ridiculous, I arrived at Fisherman's Wharf, how shall I sum it up? Ooh, Rainforest Cafe, Hard Rock Cafe, T shirt shops that sort of thing. I gave up, caught an antique tram (not a cablecar) which wheezed up to Market and then did the reverse journey with an extra bus thrown in. During the wait for the transfer I went into the Linda Mar Safeway and experienced a strange deja vu, it was familiar but wrong, I eventually sorted it out, it was identical to Half Moon Bay but inverted, so that the pickles were where the bread should be and so on, how dare they non-standardise their stores, I mean if it was on the other side of the equator I could understand it!
I arrived back (You've been through Chinatown, and had a strange experience in Safeway), we had a quiet night in.

It was Tuesday, I rose and had bre (Your inside leg measurement is twenty nine inches) akfast then Margie took me to Purissima Creek Preserve, showed me a path and said, "See you in six hours."
Purissima Creek is a mixed Douglas Fir and Coastal Redwood forest, the Redwoods were logged out about 100 years ago when they were cut and then dynamited into convenient chunks to put on the railroad for Redwood City. Over the past 100 years, new growth of "Daughter Trees" has taken place, so that as you wander through the forest you become aware of tree boles about fifteen feet across sprouting (if one can use that on this scale) several five foot diameter, 150 feet tall siblings. The original forest must have been truly awe-inspiring, sadly the sort of awe that said, "Shee-it look at all that there wood. There's a powerful lot of planks to be sawed outta them thar trees.".
The path climbed up into the fog (yes fog) heading up for the North Ridge where there "are fantastic views over Half Moon Bay" today there was a view of the fog, however my disappointment was tempered by the sight of a Banana Slug (the world's second largest slug) followed by finding a lizard's tail on the path. Lizards shed their tails when being chased as a diversionary tactic or possibly a consolation prize, I found the tail but no lizard, so it looked like the tactic had failed this time. As I moved back into the woods the sun came out, actually I think I climbed above the fog, it was balmy, I slipped into my shorts, crossed the peak and started off down another trail. Not being the nervous type, stoic Brits and all that, I decided not to worry about Poison Ivy (probably cos I was on the West Coast), Poison Oak and Diamond Back Rattlers, consequently when a humming bird flew behind me at knee level I only yelped a small amount, rather than the full blown scream of lesser mortals.
The path contoured down and round the mountain, diving back into the trees. Naturally as I contoured down and round the mountain the fog receded before me, no doubt revealing fantastic views of Half Moon Bay, though it did allow me to see more trees. It was about this point that disaster struck,and the elastic on my underpants gave up (some of you may realise that this is a not uncommon experience for me, my pants being of a certain age), so it was that I continued with, perhaps, a more refreshing outlook on life. A mile before the finish I saw my first human, I think I ruined his day too.
I returned to the Gaterpad and (Your elastic's gone!) pottered in the garden before settling for a doze in the sun. Rocket also settled for a doze, finding the one strip of sunlight (there was a yardful to choose from) that was Rocket width and sunned his belly.
In the evening we went to The Half Moon Bay Brewhouse it being $2.50 Tuesday where we met up with Pat and Liz, a couple that I'd subjected to the Nixco Ye Olde Pubbe Tour (now booking) and their two children, Nathan and Grace. The kids went hyper on root beer and I went hypo on the IPA. Later we ate, I had the Baby Back Ribs, half a pig smothered with a trickle of cooling BarBQ sauce with cold garlic mash on the side, they seemed to be having an off day. However, I soldiered on, knowing full well that I had several hours of sleep in which to digest it and partake of the lurid dreams such digestion engendered. My favourite was where I told someone off to inject a little humility into their life (a Doctor - naturally), and then walked across the water to work.
Tomorrow, back to town and Alcatraz.

America - Being there.

NATURE
Rosy-fingered dawn had touched the sky, somewhere above the fog, I surfaced through a fog of my own and sought solace in the shower. When I emerged, swathed in a towel, Rocket came and gave me his greeting, in fact he gave me this greeting at every available opportunity. What was it with this animal, had he been a sniffer dog for testicular cancer, was he attempting to induce some sort of psychological trauma, or was my crotch the canine equivalent of Kleenex?
"For those annoying little sniffles - try NIXCROTCH! Nixcrotch is mansize and comes in a variety of smells and textures, try Earlyamnude and really wake up the neighbours! Yup, try Nixcrotch today - as recommended by Fido, Rocket, Rover and Patch." After that he came and ate my breakfast when I wasn't looking! I mooched about, admiring the way the hummingbirds ignored the feeder, and made a mental note to grub up the fuschia should I ever move to the States. Then we took Rocket, a round, surfeited, Rocket off to "camp", before heading back to Safeway for supplies. I love American supermarkets for two reasons, firstly the enormous range of stuff they have and (sort of) secondly the vast variety of crap they have, like completely fat- and cereal-free cereals.
In the afternoon I made myself useful, I built soup, a sandwich lunch, watered the plants and had a nap. Paul arrived fresh(?) from work, so we loaded the car and headed off along Highway One to Point Reyes. This means crossing the Golden Gate Bridge (tick) and then hanging a left at Marin City where Highway One turns into a road that Wales would be boast of, it twists, it dives and swoops, it dives its head in its armpit, I was proud of it. Brief stop at Bolinas Lagoon,
Passenger, " Cor look at all those, wonder what they are?"
Supposed Birders, "Pelicans!"
Passenger, "Nope I meant the 5000 other things, wheeling around the sky in those patterns so loved by chaos theory people, the groupings and partings forming shapes that Escher would have died for."
Supposed Birders, "?"
Passenger, "Those!" points.
SB's, "Oh!"
I don't think we found out, maybe terns.
Onward to our residence for the next two nights, An English Oak (I've linked it so that you can revel in its tweeness, I wouldn't recommend it) where we installed and tried the breakfast cookies before hightailing it to bar for steak and oysters and Lagunitas IPA (recommended - in medium doses, let's put it this way, on the way home, Paul slipped into the ditch, well I say ditch, Paul slipped into the gulch - about forty foot deep and two hundred and fifty feet wide, apparently he didn't see it, though he did stop after six feet or so, thanks to the large patch of brambles. A welcome import from the Old Country, as I pointed out as we inspected the damage, I thought his response somewhat terse). And so to bed.
Still digesting, I had the remains of my breakfast cookie and headed out to sip, slightly stale coffee while contemplating the Zen Garden, I knew it was a Zen Garden because it had a hand-painted sign, propped on a stone (not representing an island, unless it was a small one with a big sign on it) telling us that it was. It also had a Japanese Lantern and a Japanese Bird Table (?), it did have gravel though, sort of, have a look at the picture and you'll see.
Then off to the Port Reyes Station and the Earthquake Trail where we read all the boards and learned that the area was prone to earthquakes because of tectonic plates and the subduction zone where the Pacific Plate dives under the North American Plate, damn careless if you ask me. After that we zoomed up to Pierce Point, a backbone of rotting granite supported on what seems to be windblown sand and other sediments so that the severely cut gulches are marbled and fluted.Here we had a wander down the path while being serenaded by Bull Elks bugling to attract the girls with their somewhat wheezy prowess (they sound a bit like me with 'flu'). Bull Elk run harems, the older males coralling in the cows to make their own private mating herd. However, such are the ups and downs of the mating game that the whole thing tends to run like a student disco. At the edge of the herd you'll see the adolescent males, strutting their stuff along invisible boundaries, trying to attract the odd wayward cow, some of them lurk in the undergrowth with just their antlers visible. Occasionally a cow will wander from one harem, ignore the bull who's trying to chase her back, and end up in the harem next door, leaving the bull attempting to look like he doesn't care. Sometimes whole harems decamp and head off for the bull who obviously has a car and might buy you cocktails, leaving their previous boyfriend to stand dejectedly in the middle of the dancefloor, antlers scraping the ground, trying not to shed unbully tears. As we walked along the spine we were kept pace by Turkey Vultures who cruise looking for carrion, they found some this day in the guise of a dead sea-lion on the beach, however there were only three hardy souls in attendance - everyone else being, presumably, on a low sodium diet. Scattered along the paths, were Docents, unpaid experts who will tell you about stuff if you ask and will let you look through their telescope (very docent of them). It being a wildlife sort of day we agreed that the occasional dollop of non-elk crap on the path must be that of mountain lions, who live there taking advantage of an elk diet. We had a mercifully small lunch, watching the disco and doing the odd bit of birding, Paul won with a raptor of some sort (a black-shouldered kite, apparently), then wandered back to the car, avoiding stepping on the snake on the way.
A quick whizz down the road, then out for more nature at Abbot's Lagoon, where we used our combined birding skills to identify firstly Pied-billed Grebe, and then an immature Moorhen as the Virginia Rail that the docent had told us was there, before heading off to the coast, past hills reminiscent of the cellulite-dimpled buttocks of mature ladies (well, I could see it, the others struggled with the concept). The coast held a mixture of Pelicans and one Blue Heron (resembling a badly put together feather duster, I wonder if this is camouflage?
Natured out we high-tailed it to the Old Western Saloon, following in the footsteps of Charles and Camilla. The Great Western Saloon is a pub, pure and simple, well when I say pure - the carpet is a pub carpet, thick, stiff and redolent with sins and spills past, made more potent with the ban on smoking. We watched the barman chew his way through a series a bar snacks, only drawing the line at the Demon Dog, a sausage about the same thickness and colour of a firecracker and, we suspected, with the same kind of oral punch. However, it was the ingredients that put him off, the phrase "mechanically-recovered meat" and his suspicion that the Dog was only made from the extreme front and rear ends of the cow, I had a chaw of jerky, it's made of steak.
Back to the "cottage" for a shower, where I discovered my towels to have the same degree of freshness as the Old Western carpet, resulting in two showers and a dry on a spare handtowel, no mean feat some of you may think. Then back to Port Reyes and the Station Cafe, for salmon fishcakes (somewhat drowned in oriental herbs and spices) followed by seared baby backribs - baby here being more of a PIGLET than a piglet. I pigged out on a pig. The couple next to us troughed their way through two bowls of clams whose aphrodisiac qualities became more self-evident throughout dinner. The size of the dessert however, may have put paid to any of the more energetic, umm, roistering. We returned with a chicken breast about the size of one of the ones barely contained next door, and a half bottle of wine, which we drank.
DRIVING
After a breakfast of Costco peach yoghurt (the cheapest) and some coffee we hit the deli in Port Reyes and watched Margie rack up an impressive collection of expensive cheese followed by an impressive collection of expensive vegetables for me to buy, the twitch abated after thirty minutes or so. Then we offed to a breakfast of polenta cake in a layby/pullover overlooking the Tomales Bay (1 Heron - Blue, 3 Egrets- Great, several Cormorants - varied - in a panic). The polenta cake was fine. The off, over the hills to Bodega Bay where The Birds was filmed for a quick stop at the harbour (Pelican- Brown, Bittern - American, Lion - Sea) before heading on to Russian River (discovered by Russians) where we flicked from coastal heathland to Coastal Redwood. The road was in a bit of a state having had several "washouts" (I think these are landslides, I myself, have had several washouts but I think they involved women) so that the river was hidden behind large concrete barriers - and holiday homes.
We motored on - popping out of the forest and being drawn into some strange kind of gravity well centred round the Sonoma valley (reknowned for its wine-making apparently). And so it was that we turned up at the Iron Horse Winery, in fact at the tasting bench. Now I'm interested by the choice of Iron horse by My Hosts as the vineyard (that's what we call them in Europe) was much favoured by Ronald Reagan (who was not much favoured by MH) but perhaps they didn't do red then. Sadly the picnic area was shut, so that all we could do was taste the stuff, quel horreur! Wine was delivered at breakneck speed by a rather gushy girl whos delivery was not impeded one jot by her piercings - I decided to call her Mildred. The sauvignon blanc drew the most comment, who would have thought that the addition of 1 % viogner could turn this friuty refreshing, rather spritzy w....
So, no picnic spot, what to do, for me, quaff wine number 13 and slide back into the car for a trip to the next winery with a picnic spot, down the road. Anyway I think that's what we did, after being forced to taste theirs we sat outside for a very late lunch and a modicum of picnic rose, the cheeses lived up to their price. Then back in the car and a trawl through the rush hour back to Half Moon Bay, where we were met by Rocket ("99% sauvignon blanc and 1% viogner, interesting, I'll bet it took some of the zing out. And speaking of zing, I say those towels! What were you thinking?") in the usual manner. We had just enough energy to fling the steak on the broiler (or gas-powered barbecue) and eat it with some wine, before an early night.

America - Getting there

I flew from Gatwick. In the light of enhanced security (this was two weeks after the arrests for potential bombings - this time liquid, severely denting duty free sales, lucky I sold my BAA shares) I arrived three hours before takeoff, I was inside the Departure Lounge within an hour. Amazingly, the Great British Public had taken notice of the restrictions, and arrived with the bare minimum, gobsmacked I had a coffee to give me takeoff jitters.

Once upon a time I went flotilla sailing in Turkey. The nice lady (well an Irish flibbertigibbit) said,
"There's a bit of a problem with your boat, the mechanic's working on it now. Come with me and I'll buy you a beer."
So we sat, in the shade of a thatch umbrella. As time wore on and the sun went down, a host of fairy lights came on under the umbrellas - I'm sorry, all the umbrellas except one, this set the pattern for the week.

Aircraft gained, I sat in my seat, listening glumly to the announcement that we were waiting for the TSA to give us clearance - about ninety minutes, then we missed our slot - about thirty minutes. I had decided to read, and inserted a digit into the button marked with a bulb, I was not illuminated. I vigorously poked the button with various digits in case size was a deciding factor, my gaze roamed around the plane spotting small constellations of lights.
We took off, after some time, I foolishly allowed my eyes to roam again, everyone was glued to the seatback in front of them wherein the video lurked. I turned mine on, and got a rather nice collection of stripes, I tried the one next to mine (it was a quiet flight, something to do with getting blown up I think) - more stripes, different pattern. The LED display on the armrest read E9, I came to the conclusion that this meant "Error 9 -I'm totally f*cked". So I moved to another empty seat nearby and managed to watch one film at a slightly obscure angle, so that it became less of a film noir and more of a film chiaroscuro, with head-bobbing.
As we taxied into Charlotte NC I had the pleasure of watching my connecting flight take off. In the UK this would have been a disaster involving, taxis, trains, other airports, tears and tantrums, in the US you just get on the next plane. So it was that they let me into the country, failed to find my undeclared farinaceous comestibles, and took my luggage to put on the flight due to leave in 30 minutes. I got out my instructions for using the phonecard and prepared to phone my hostess. I dialed and got the message, "You are English and stupid, wait for the Operator, Limey!"
"Oh Bugger! Collect call please?" All that American tv watching was not in vain.
"Name?"
"Eh? Oh - Gater"
"I have a collect call from Jacob>"
"?!" x 2
"NICK!" I screamed.
"Oh hi Nick!"

We were an hour late taking off, we had one go but moved off the runway again to stop the next plane landing from using our arse-end as a novelty braking system. So we then had to wait for the top of the hour stack to move through. Inflight entertainment was Mission Impossible 3, we watched the first fifteen minutes of the silent version three times before the crew gave up. Everyone then produced laptops and got down to some serious work, well, actually, if you took a stroll around the plane you could see that they got on to some serious pinball and solitaire.

I arrived, amazingly, so did my luggage - and Paul. A quick zip through the fog and here I was, greeted at the door by Rocket, who did a quick check of my genitals (two, one on each side of the nose, his nose, he's a dog), and Margie, who didn't, well, not that I noticed.
I ate, I drank, I went to bed.