It's a Dog's Life!

This is my new best mate Sherman...who lives with my cousins, Bob and Linda. Bob and Linda are generously putting me up between two of my trips- Hawaii and South America.

They live in San Marcos, which is in Southern California [not LA Southern Cal, but the REAL Southern Cal-a stone's throw from the Mexican border]. Sherman is a doll and he is part Dingo. Bob reckons this is why Shermie and I get along so well. He stays glued to my legs when I am walking around here- except when we go to the park, where he bounds off like a Kangaroo into the grass and gets spaced out on a blade of grass and can't hear me call him back.

My trip through Oregon and California has been a Dog's tour. Starting with my friends Linda and Roy who live Oregon. [This is them on the steps of their beautiful house in the Oregon bush]. And next to them is one of the collies -they have 3 dogs- two beautiful collies and a schnauzer [forgive my spelling if this is not right]. Their house is situated in the middle of the Oregon pine forests which makes the air fresh and clean.

Linda and I had a great time roaming around the area and reminiscing about the good old days at Hollywood High School. Linda helps me remember those days because my brain cells have died in relation to the 60's, so I am shaky on what happened. She also has all the class photos up in frames on the walls so we can stand there and point at people and say: "remember......". Good fun. I had 4 lovely days there and then headed down the coast road..which you may have read about in "If you can remember the 60's...." blog entry.

After my 2 day trip to Berkeley I moved south, to LA- [Los Angeles] Brentwood namely- to my friend Ellen, who is also a Hollywood High alum. She has three terriers of some exotic kind. [Can't remember the exact brand name, but they actually came from the Netherlands and Ellen flew over to Amsterdam to pick them up] Clarice, Conan and Claymore, who are enthusiastic barkers and keep her safe from harm. My fave moment was trying to drag Claymore up the road for a walk. [Conan bailed out at the driveway, but Clarice was into it]. I am not sure who is showing up in this snap, except for Ellen...who by the way, looks pretty much like she did in High School [hmm] We had a time of it, because she had somehow contracted some exotic staff infection and had to stay at home, so she sent me out exploring and I reported back at the end of my journeys. One of my forays into the world outside of Brentwood was spent with my HHS English teacher Harry Major down in Hollywood proper. That was an interesting afternoon. We went to a local coffee shop- the kind with booths and funky pictures on the walls- this one was called the Yukon Mining Company- and talked about pretty much everything under the sun. Harry Major was the teacher I learned the most from at HHS and it is always interesting to shoot the breeze with him. He has a great sense of humour as well.

My second day trip was to the Getty Museum. The Getty is perched on top of a hill overlooking Los Angeles city. Here is a snap of LA on the day I went. You can see why they have smog alerts and don't allow children to come outside on days like this. I don't know about you, but I can barely see the buildings of downtown LA in the distance. The grounds of the museum were pretty nice- lots of gardens and interesting buildings. But the content at the museum was less than ordinary. I stayed long enough for a stroll through some of the buildings and the gardens and not much more.

Which of course, brings me to Southern Cal and Sherman- where I started. Getting down here was a trip...I had to wait until 10ish so that I wasn't creamed out by the LA freeway traffic, which is dense and when it is flowing goes at about 100 mph [note all you Aussies, I said MPH not KM] It frightens me to go that fast, especially when they are on the other side of the road...I am not used to looking out that window to see oncoming traffic. The other traffic condition before 10AM is sitting in traffic for hours before you get to move.

I am sort of resting here before the next journey, which is to Hawaii with my cousin Sue. We are both looking forward to the experience. Meanwhile, I am practicing some hill walking- which of course will NOT prepare me for walking in the Andes, but is good fun and a bit of a challenge. This area is really interesting geographically. It is in the high desert- and the landscape is filled with rolling hills and boulders and scrub. I get up every morning and go for my usual hour long walk and then Sherman and I go to a nearby park while he runs and I watch.

I leave in a few days to cruise [once more] where life is filled with such interesting questios as: "What will they serve for lunch?" "Is there a spare treadmill in the gym?" and "Will I play bingo or trivia today?"

More from the land of the grass skirt and pineapple plantations

Genie

"If you can remember the 60's...."

Greetings from the North West Coast of the US of A! There's something about the Oregon Coast that just stays in your system...so when I left my high school buddys' Linda and Roy Arnett's house I rented a car and drove down the coast. It was a totally stunning day and I was totally blissed out that I declined a bus or a train. Highway 5-which is faster-is so boring and flat. This way I got to see beaches, mountains, redwoods all in one drive. Up top are some shots of the Oregon coastline...and below you are looking at Redwood Highway, North of Arcata and Eureka- just about one of the only stands of redwoods left in the state. The photo does not do it justice, because in reality you cannot see the tops of the trees they are so tall and so old. These ones are relatively new [maybe only 500 years old] because you can actually see the circumfrence of the tree. Between Eureka and Berkeley are another stand of redwoods which has the famous one that you can drive through.



As I indicated, I was headed towards Berkeley-from whence the saying: "If you can remember the 60's you weren't really there" came. I remembered some of it, but when did they change the name of one of the major streets to Martin Luther King Jr Way and what was the name of it before it was changed? I stayed on University Avenue, which was only a stone's throw away from the entrance to the Uni, so I had plenty of opportunity to walk around and reminisce. Perfect! You abosolutely cannot visit Berkeley without either a walk through the University grounds or a walk down Telegraph Avenue [location of every demonstration I ever went on except the first one, which was in front of the Admin building]. It's called Sproul Hall and it looks lonely and empty now, but imagine about 5,000 students standing in front of it listening to speeches about Free Speech. In the foreground would have been a police car which held one of the leaders of the student movement inside and about 40 people sitting on top of the car. It was an historic moment for the student movement in the 60's and thus began my political career. [much to the despair of my family]

The campus was every bit as beautiful as I remembered it [yes, I remember something]...and I had to buy a tie-die teeshirt before I left and headed south to LA. [more about LA in another entry]. I spent a couple of days there and noticed how trendy it had become. Had some conversations with older street sellers which was good and walked over to the last house I lived in before I left the place- only to come back as a tourist [like now].

The drive to LA was hot and dusty [I caved in and went down Highway 5] and about 100 miles outside of LA, the traffic slowed to a crawl and I crept into LA at about 5 miles and hour. I had heard the traffic was bad, but this was ridiculous!.

I am staying with another old friend from Hollywood High School and her dogs up in Brentwood. She lives down the street from John Travolta, and I am pretty sure that when I walked past his house this morning at 6:30 AM he would have come out to say G'day if he had only known it was me. I had lunch with an old teacher today, which was a gas. It is he who inspired me to be a teacher and he was a tough old bird [still is] but I learned more from him than any other of my teachers at HHS.

Tune into the entry called HHS friends to see some pics of my old mates....

More later- must immerse myself in some West LA cult-cher.

Genie

Klondike Kapers

So here we are in the land of glaciers, mountains, bears and eagles.
That's our ship- the Radiance of the Seas, docked at Juneau. Juneau- like Skagway looks like a movie set and it is hard to believe that there is something behind the shop fronts. Moira and I decided we didn't want to avail ourselves of the cruise ship inflated tour prices, so we went down on the docks and picked out our own tour. It was on this very funky old white bus-probably an old city bus from the 50's, and the tour guide was entertaining enough.

One of the places we went was to the Mendenhal Glacier- and it might be hard to tell, but mostly the ice is blue. There is some chemical/physical reason why, but I wasn't paying that close attention.

Juneau was our first stop on the Alaska cruise. We got to Juneau after one day of cruising up into the inside passage [look it up on a map-the Inside Passage is just one teensy bit of the state of Alaska]. We also got to watch the salmon running upstream to spawn -which was amazing. They swim all the way from the ocean back to the stream where they were "born" to lay and fertilise eggs and then they die. The smell is pretty strong and amazing. The guide told us that they spawn within a couple of inches of their own beginning. How many of us can claim that, I ask you?

While we were at the glacier, we also saw a little bear, but he/she scampered away before the lens click of the camera, so you will just have to believe me. I was hoping that we would see more wildlife than we did, but they all must have been down at the streams waiting for the salmon to do their thing and then pounce on them.

One of our cruising days we went out to Hubbard Glacier, and the ship hovered by the glacier so we could all have a look. It was pouring with rain that day, so you can hardly tell the difference between the sky, the glacier and the sea, but it was pretty spectacular.....all blue and white ice and very cold. A native person from the area came onto the ship and told us about his culture and language group, which was interesting. You can just see the blue of the glacier in this photo. When we were "hovering" the glacier did this thing called calfing, which means a little avalanche happens and part of the glacier breaks away and falls into the ocean. The noise is deafening and a little scarey.

Like the other ship I was on, I pretty much ate myself silly. There was lots of pretty good food and it was so tempting to just dive in...so I did. Some of the entertainment was pretty good...there was a magic show that was fun and a comedian that made me laugh. Our cabin attendant was really funny, and he folded towels in the shapes of animals and left them on our beds etc. This is the one he left for us on the last night.



Now I am back on dry land- floating down the west coast of the US. Had a lovely visit with the Hoglunds, who I met on the Trans-Siberian tour in Seattle [well, Kent Washington to be precise]. Then spent 4 hours waiting for the Amtrak train to take me to Oregon [they are rumoured to be going broke-I wonder why?].

More later from the land of the free......
Genie