Lifting spirits

We have just been in a lift with a young couple. Sounds nothing out of the ordinary, but  the lift is tiny only made for 4 people, looks like the service elevator in our hotel - Hotel Shangri-la, Santa Monica. 

As we were stood next to the buttons, we asked them which floor. The girl said "Penthouse", I was like - where's that button then, it was unlabled. The young boy had to press the button - he even knew where it was on the panel.  

As the lift was very small, and my chest (actually sizeable belly - but chest in my mind) was almost pressing the young couple into the back wall, I searched for something intelligent to say. 

"So have you been in this lift before?"

Yes that's it. That's all my brain could think of. I'm in a lift with some boy-band super star (I have absolutely no idea who he is, probably one Justin or another, you know, Beiber or Timberlake or something) and all my brain could find were those words. "Have you been in this lift before". 

Throwing the stupid comment aside, the Young Boy played along graciously with my stupidity, and humoured me with some conversation, and yes in fact he had been in that lift twice already today. 

I've never been in a lift with someone wanting the Penthouse Suite, or someone from the famous five. Or wherever he was from. He might even have just been visiting. But something tells me he (or she) was some kind of local celeb. He was too young to be a business person. Unless it was Mark Zuckerberg, but I might have recognised him. 

 

Black Magic...

Santana Row, Thursday 23rd August.

This is a great location for wealthy San Jose residents, shopping, night life, bars with live Mexican music, and dining.

One shop peaked my interest straight away - the one with a car in it. Tesla.

There's a 4 door Tesla coming soon in $55k, $65k, and $75k guises. This is the same car with different battery packs.

Clearly the Sales people were 'on it', selling all the benefits of the wonderful electric revolution (as you would expect) but one questions they didn't really give a satisfactory answer to was what happens when the thing runs out of juice?

The idea is you charge it every night, so you should then have 300 miles of charge. There or thereabouts. That's definitely enough for an average round trip commute in the Valley (or anywhere in the world really). You take it home, plug it in, and its ready for the next day's commuting.

What about longer trips, I asked.

What happens if you are, for example, on your way from San Jose to Los Angeles, some 350 miles away. "Ah" said the sales guy "there's a plug in station ('super power' or something, can't quite remember the terminology he used) about half way between the two place on the freeway. You would just pull up, plug in, get something to eat, and come back in an hour and you would be ready to roll again". Great. So I have to wait an hour to fill up my car? And what happens if there is no super power station? Well that's an 8 hour wait....

And what happens if you want to tow a trailer? A boat? If for example, you were going on a camping trip? The answer is you can't.

Hmmmm maybe not quite the revolution they would have us buy into at that price point. It would save around $17,000 a year in fuel bills though... that's based on the current summer Californian gallon of $4.10 ish. That is, incidentally, getting up there with UK prices.  

However, I guess the point is you have an electric car for the commuting and 'buzzing' around (see what I did there) and you have regular gasoline (if you're in the US) or diesel powered vehicles for doing the other stuff. So that means you have to have at least 2 vehicles per house hold, possibly 3, depending on how many people there are.

As we in Britain continue to refuse to build car parking capacity into new developments and want to keep extending charging people to use car parking at offices and out of town shopping malls, and reduce the number of available spaces outside new houses, this electric revolution is going to cause many problems.

The technology just isn't there yet to replace the standard petrol powered motor car.

Back to Blighty

Well that's the end of Tim's U.S. Tour 2009!

We landed in good ol' Blighty yesterday morning at about 10:15am - a full 45 minutes ahead of schedule! If thats not good customer service, I don't know what is. Continental airlines even manage to change the wind, to reduce their flight times.

What a great airline though! Last time I did the Manchester - San Francisco route, Air France cocked everything up before we'd even set off, by delaying our first flight out of the U.K. meaning that we couldn't make our connection... that just started a catalogue of errors, ending up with lost baggage on the return journey! Mind you, they are French. In stark contrast, everything about the Continental experience was brilliant (apart from the "automated check-in" at SFO, where we had to get a Continental advisor to assist us. It took far longer to mess with the computer, than the normal procedure with an employee at the check-in desk).

In true British fashion, the first English person I speak to back on British soil was complaining. He was the attendant at the immigration queue; mind you I can see his point - I was next in line, and just about to walk to the immigration officers' desk as she became free, and she gets up and walks off - lunch time! (Don't worry about the 300 Brits trying to get back into the country luv, you take your time). I bet service like that doesn't come cheap.

Gosh everything is weird here. I had to ride home in the drivers side of Dad's car. What a bizarre experience. I'm suprised we don't just all crash into each other. And what about those circle things in the middle of the roads - seems like a free for all to me! Cars just don't stop!

So I managed to locate my car this morning, and after I'd managed to get in and located the steering wheel, I noticed that was in the passenger side also. There was a complicated arrangement of 3 pedals on the floor, I assumed the far left one was the parking brake. Anyway, I started it up and thought the world had just exploded. It clattered into life like a London bus and didn't quiet down either! Gosh its loud! Plumes of black smoke errupted from the rear in environmentally-friendly clean diesel style (don't worry about the particulates, they are harmless in comparison to that deadly carbon dioxides that comes from petrol).

I attempted to put the shifter into reverse through a strange procedure of pushing down on the shifter (no button to press?) and heard a big crunch, the car jerked, and the engine stopped. I wondered if it had fallen out. After checking under a few pebbles (as I know British cars have very small engines) I couldn't locate it there, I looked under the hood - ah! It was still there!

Remembering something vaguely about the very left pedal being something to do with a complex clutch mechanism and that having something to do with gears(?), and not in fact anything to do with parking, I managed to put the car into reverse after several attempts with different combinations of the left hand pedal. Gosh this is going to be a long day.

Finally making the car move out of the garage, and selecting 1 (I couldn't find D), the car would now move forward and I have managed to get it to Manchester. It went quite slowly, was very loud, and bounced off its rev limiter with lots of noise and smoke all the way - for some reason it seemed like it just simply wouldn't up shift gear. Cars were swerving all over the road in front and coming straight for me - how people manage to move around this crowded little island without crashing I will never know. I will have to take the car to a garage and get it looked at. Think it needs a Smog test.

Claire took us to the Trafford Center today (a large, Valley Fair sized, shopping mall), after she managed not to crash into people driving on the wrong side of the road - how she managed it, as she was on the wrong side as well, I will never know. She must be a very good driver, as she squeezed the car into what could only be described as motorcycle parking - but it looked like everyone was parking there - perhaps the car lots were full. First stop was a reasonable size store called Deben Hams. It was crowded. There were about 7 people in it. Although it didn't sell any meat, and it wasn't a butchers. It was a clothes shop. I didn't see any checked shirts, or gator skin boots. Call that a clothes shop! And where was the personalized service? Not one of the sales representatives asked me how our day was going and if we needed any help. They all seemed to ignore us. How they expect us to buy anything I am not sure. I decided to take the lead and ask one of the representatives how she was doing and if she was having a nice day - but she then had a slightly disgusted somewhat vacant look on her face. Never mind I thought.

The mall got busier though. Literally thousands of people poured in from all over the place. It seemed like a sea of people. I had to jump out their way; they walk as they drive - straight towards you. Brits. I was physically attacked on several occasions by people with strollers and other parafinalia.

Its going to take a long time to get used to this!

17 Mile Wonder

Today we have been around a bit. To Mon-erey to start with to the pier and downtown areas for some brief shopping, and a wonder aound and admire the fantastic boats which inhabit the marina at Mon-erey. Boats everywhere, beautiful yachts and power boats.

Because (that is so bad practise, starting a sentence with "because" - but thought I'd do it anyway) no-one can really afford the expensive yachts and power boats they all bought on credit during the good times, they are out at work every day paying for them. Although that's probably not the case recently, and now they have plenty of time to be out with their boats; they just can't afford the payments so the banks now probably own most of them. Which, if you think about it, now means we own most of the boats. Which means, following the logic, that I should just be able to get aboard one and drive it. Or do whatever you do with a boat to make it go.

We had some clam chowder samplers along the pier. Well I should say, that I didn't. Clam chowder is disgusting, poisonous, and should be banned. Clam soup. Can you think of anything more hideous to eat? (Not sprouts Karen; they are very nice. No seriously. You should try one).

Mon-erey pier hasn't changed much since Sam and I were here in '06. In fact, the boat we went on whale watching was still taking the Japanese tourists for a trip out into the Bay. Lovely big boat with multiple decks. It was tossed around like a cork the day we went out though, by big rolling waves which the boat crashed over. What fun! Japanese tourists scurrying to keep hold of their hats (its cold out there) and cameras. (The children were flung around but the cameras were safe).

You can tell there's something not quite right about the place though; it was very quiet. Mon-erey is normally teeming with tourists. Even the Japanese ones seemed to be on a recession today...

That wasn't the case as we got onto 17-mile drive though. They appeared out of the woodwork again, and started taking lots of photographs at inopportune moments with the huge leneses and 3 video cameras each one has strapped to them at birth.

17 mile drive is actually a route using various roads in a section of very pretty and expensive land between Mon-erey and Carmel. Probably one of the most expensive places to live in America. Unfortunately the wealthy residents of the area have to live in very large expensive houses, so they all clubbed together and decided to earn some money by charging $9.25 for a car to drive along the 17 Mile Drive route. (Think about it. If you could charge some stupid plebs $9.25 for driving next to your house, you would. The British Government are trying to implement that now anyway. They just call it "Road Pricing" instead). Plus, that $9.25 from each car that drives the route goes to paying the property taxes for the rich people as their compensation for living there. Or for the boat payments that they can't afford because they are forced to live in such expensive houses. I felt like offering the guard $20 I was so sorry for the residents. Luckily though, we had a free pass, as we know someone who knows someone that lives there - so we just said we were visiting, bringing food parcels for them, so the guard let us in. There were no shortage of Japanese tourists paying full price; so it didn't worry us.

After viewing all the rich people in their large houses that must be a real struggle to live in, (with annoying, expansive views of the coast line and ocean - I mean how irritating must it be to have to listen to the ocean hour after hour, and all you could look at was coastline and sea. How boring. It would keep me awake at night, let me tell you, having to listen to waves crashing against the rocks and sugary sandy beaches. Almost like the trains in Flagstaff. No seriously, I sympathise with these people. With their private golf courses - I mean, they almost never have to wait for a tee, or have put up with divots and prols in the way. How boring can life be?), we headed to the other end of 17 Mile Drive, which exits into Carmel. Clint Eastwood's town.

Clint and I went for a few beers at the Hogs Breath. (A Hogs Breath is Better Than No Breath At All). He said "I know what you're thinking punk. You're thinkin' did he fire 6 shots or only 5..." I said "Shut up Clint you're boring me" drunk up and left.

Ok so I didn't. He does drive a beat up old Jag, apparently, in British Racing Green. Poor man. Can't afford a new one, what with the property taxes and massive houses around there. There's no other property you see, he (and lots of other Carmel locals are forced into these mansions). Maybe he should go live on 17 Mile Drive, then the Japanese tourists could contribute to a replacement Jaguar for him. Mind you, he is almost 80. That's too old to be driving anyway.

Carmel is a lovely place too - very quaint. But all the residents of Carmel are so poor they don't like people visiting and looking at their cheap, low quality mansion housing. So they refuse to have a decent road built, which causes traffic jams of stupid plebs and Japanese tourists trying to get in and out. Not sure why they don't just start charging a $10 entrance fee. Then they could all afford to eat at the end of the day, instead of having to paint pictures to sell in the local shops, or act in Hollywood movies.

Didn't see Clint. I'm disappointed. Might not get many more opportunities. He's as old as the hills he owns around Carmel, and probably one of its poorest local residents. At least he's had a good idea though; of removing a few trees from around the 17 Mile Drive area, and building another golf course. Obviously, it will be cheap to play here, to encourage people from outside of the area to visit, and pay the $9.25 entrance fee to the Drive. Something like $800 a round should be about right. That will put his course in competition with the other 7 in that locality, you know, Pebble Beach and all that. Those municipal courses. For plebs.

Following that though, we headed home for some more amazing food from our hosts, and seeing as I may have to start cooking for more than one soon, it was a good idea for me to learn a new recipe. In payment, I have fixed the computer which now works like a dream. I have never seen Windows XP work so good.

2 Buck Chuck

Having been on the 2 Buck Chuck (NOT the wine that doesn't give you a hangover) again, thought I'd write another bit of blog.

Gosh my belly is getting bigger. Its even showing in some of the photos. Oops. Need to get those online too, but the camera battery needs recharging... I'll put it on now.

Done! Right what to say... hmmm...

2 Buck Chuck is Charles Shaw - the grapes from the California Wineries that don't make it into the expensive wine... its thrown together and labelled as Charles Shaw, and is, well you guessed it, priced at $1.99 per bottle. Its actually very nice, (it goes down well anyway) we have been on the Cab Sav this evening - although you can buy a white, and other types of grape I believe. Its better than the supermarket wine you get in England for sure. But then I don't usually drink that anyway, don't you know...

I don't think the Wong's are particularly impressed with it, but then they aren't here. It'll do for me for the moment.

Today, we have been down to the beach at Monterey. That's pronounced Mon-erey for all you neanderthals (t's mid word are silent over here, or replaced with d's. Santa Cruz is San-a Cruz, and butter is budder. Shit is still pronounced shit... Well I needed an example that ended in t...).

Mon-erey is a lovely place, sort of proper California, nice sugary beach, freezing Pacific water (no matter how inviting it might appear, dipping your toe in liquid nitrogen is not a good idea), palm trees, cycle lanes, canneries, world-leading aquarium and sea conservation center (see I'm even spelling in American. Well at least its not French). The weather was sunny and a normal mid 70s temperature - Mon-erey doesn't get that hot, and it can take a while in summer for the fog to burn off. Around here, the fog comes in over night - due to the geography of the place - it gets sucked in from the Pacific, due to the heat in the Valley (Silicon Valley, if you will) during the day, as the valley will get up to 100F regularly. Unfortunately, that puts places like Mon-erey and Aptos (that is pronounced Aptoes, so includes the t and adds an e) under a thick layer of coastal fog - this process of drawing the sea fog in is what San Francisco experiences daily too.

But today, the fog was burned off by 11am, the sun was out and it was warm! The family joined us at the beach, and gave me some children to play with at digging, making dams, and pools. That is good, because it looks odd if my Dad and I dig with no children present. And the beach is the place for making dams, and pools. And Chevys. If you have imagination.

We took a picnic, and literally had sand-wiches. They had authentic American sand. Grains of which are big. As you would expect.

And, although I had sun-creamed up, the liquid nitrogen and sun has removed the top few layers of skin from my feet. Brill.

Today we travelled in a 1991 Mercedes 190E 2.3. The oldest car I've ever seen over here (you see, its German). But a classic nonetheless. The 190Es were legendary in their time. I even had one. Unfortunately, on these roads, you feel like you are on a skateboard. And you aren't much safer. But its a very comfortable skateboard.

Tomorrow, another trip over to Mon-erey is planned, for coffee, and then over on the 17-mile coastal drive to Carmel. We can do the 17 mile drive for free, as we know someone who knows someone... Hopefully we might bump into Mr Clint Eastwood, who used to own most of Carmel, and still owns much of the surrounding land. He bought it all to remove the possibility of development and the urban sprawl of Carmel, which has remained a very quaint (but equally expensive) little place.

San Franciscan

Its been a while since my last post.

Happy Birthday Sam! (Sorry, I forgot to wish it on the day). How did the party go?

Well I have been over to my Cousin's lovely place in Morgan Hill for the last couple of nights. What a fantastic property, and view over the California valley's and hills. (The garage is a triple American garage - I want one! - which could contain 6 Tahoes with ease. That's the approximate volume of Lake Mead). And what a lovely family! Putting us up (or putting up with us) for the last few nights, and taking us to San Francisco for a couple of days out.

Been all over in fact - did the Fishermans Wharf, Pier 39 thing (and gosh - even had a fish dinner! Well, Salmon steak) and also the California Academy of Sciences museum yesterday which was very interesting - complete with its own Planetarium, and 3-D film about bugs. All 8 of us fitted in Dave's Tahoe with ease. We all layed out on our beds, in our separate rooms, and had a kip whilst the driver got us to our destination. His Tahoe has a snazzier grill, bigger wheels and micro-fibre seating! It made me miss my old Tahoe... sniff... I tell you what, it must have managed about 20 miles to the gallon on the way to SF and back - that's awesome! It is the most comfortable car in the world, the best designed car in the world, and everybody in the world should have one.

Today been over to Valley Fair mall and bought some things. Well someone has to restart the California economy, and Abercrombie & Fitch were charging enough to do just that. Valley Fair is roughly the size of a small country. Like England. Although the weather is better at Valley Fair, and it doesn't rain. But then it doesn't rain much in San Jose.

This evening went out sippin' Mojitos by the beach at Rio del Mar with Auntie June and Uncle Ken. Sam and I did this in '06 and got rather drunk... so drunk in fact, that someone's front garden will never look quite the same again... (it went a sort of a yellow colour with orange bits...) Not today though! We're all sober as dasssirys.

California Winery

All this California hospitality is certainly winning awards in my book.

Today we have been to Capitola - the nicest smallest City in the world - Sam and I loved it here. Theres hardly any beach bums (unlike some other places), there are plenty of ordinary people - working class types even - and the weather was brilliant after 12:00. Capitola has the feel of a touristy place, but with an honesty about it. More down to earth than other little places. But don't think Capitola is cheap by any means. It is not. Its just the atmosphere which is more real.

The property prices are sky high here, like anywhere else, and its a wonder anyone can afford a place. $400,000 buys you very little property here. Lets face it, that's a big mortgage. Imagine that on $6.50 an hour. That's a lot of hours. Property around this area is so expensive, that even in the good times a few years ago, the State couldn't afford the land to widen the freeway which runs past here. (The State certainly couldn't afford it now; even with the relative drop in land prices as it is pretty much bankrupt, and writing IOUs to its contractors...).

After Capitola, we visited the mall. My Dad actually bought some Levis. The worlds most popular (and perhaps the best) brand of Jeans. This is the first pair of Levis he has ever bought. They are slightly too long, however, because they come down just above his shins. (The white ankle socks cover up most his calves so that's ok, and the sandals are perfect on his feet). Socks and sandals. English people.

Following the new purchases (going to Gottschaulks netted me a pair of ordinary jeans for $6.99), we went back to the house for lunch, and off to Ken and Sue's for dinner and wine this evening.

What fantastic people, and hospitality. Great company and food, Tri-tip, bell peppers, wine, port, cheese, chocolate... To be fair, this is what California is all about. It was an 'awesome' evening (the word the natives use to describe something which is 'really good').

Dinner was served in the wine cellar - a converted, double size American garage, big enough for two Tahoe's (4 English cars, and 83.5 Smart cars) and lined floor to ceiling on 3 sides with wine. And we're not talking Blossom Hill here either. So good was the wine in fact, no one had a hang over this morning. Not that they didn't try hard for one. Boy did some of them try.