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Published: March 28th 2009
Sunday 16th February to Thursday February 26th, 2009 What with our New Zealand road trip adventure of two years ago and now this little weekend excursion up the California coastline you'd be forgiven for assuming that waking up alongside my mother in some crummy old overseas motel room (seperate beds of course) would be beginning to feel like the norm. You wouldn't be far wrong.
There certainly aren't any feelings of unease or awkwardness when my eyes finally open and I glance across to the adjacent bed to see her perched up on her pillows waiting patiently for me to wake and hopefully the feeling is mutual and could go some way to highlighting the uniquely special relationship that is shared between my mother and her youngest child. It is a relationship that makes me very proud and I can't think of too many men of my age who feel as comfortable nor relish being in such prolonged close knit company of their mother as I do. Mummy’s boy ? Maybe, but who cares ?.
After returning to the tweeness of Solvang for a hearty egg based (what else) breakfast in a family run greenhouse we hit the
road and an hour or so later found ourselves once again descending into Santa Barbara. This time, with no need to hunt out lodgings we decided to hang around and spent a couple of hours visiting the towns fabulous old court house before making our way back to Long Beach.
Monday was unfortunately back to the grind for both of us, me to the corporate razzamanaz of eggs, apples and toilet rolls, Marg to the infinitely more important tasks of the purchase and dispatch of postcards and the continuation of the Forth Bridge cleaning job she’d started on my flat and it was Wednesday before I was again able to take a break from the 405 and have a day off.
I woke on what was by now becoming known as the dreaded couch to a lovely sunny morning but before we could head out to tick more ‘to do’s’ off Margy’s wish list I unfortunately had to go through the ordeal of a visit to the dentist, a visit which first highlighted and then delivered like a sledgehammer to the skull the massively expensive scope of the work required in my mush; two crowns, two fillings and
a good scrub to boot making me thankful I’d received the news lying flat on my back. Health Insurance Stateside covers a good percentage of the dentists’ bill but at the conclusion of my treatment I was still going to be presented with an invoice for over a grand !! When I’d sufficiently recovered my senses I collected Marg and we headed to olde worlde Los Angeles.
The Yanks can make you laugh. It’s not unusual to see a sign or plaque erected outside a building or landmark created as recently as the middle of the last century bearing two simple words, ‘Historical Monument’, almost as though they feel it necessary to claim a
history in order to tick all the boxes justifying their self made proclamation of being the world’s number one nation. Of course it’s hard to possess much in the way of historic monuments when you’re less than one hundred and fifty years old as California is but our first port of call, Downtown LA’s Union Rail Station was well deserving of such a tag.
Opened in 1939 and listed as Los Angeles Historical Monument No.101, Union Station is considered by many to be the
Wherever I Lay My Head.
Union Station waiting room.last standing great American Rail Station and neither Marg nor I could argue. From the glistening marble floors to the sumptuous mahogany and tan leather arm chaired seating of the main foyer I was amazed to discover a building of such regality amongst the modern tower block dominated backdrop of Downtown LA.
From there we called in at the famous Forest Lawn Cemetry, a huge hear a pin drop resting place for the rich and famous and home to a huge stained glass replica of Da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’ which gave us a more than welcome respite from the mayhem of LA’s freeway system and where we came across another blatant example of rules for rules sakes. I was returning from a call of nature to the bench in the sunshine where I’d left Marg eating her sandwich when I noticed a uniformed guard approaching her and watched from a distance as they engaged in some short conversation. As he turned and headed back to his vehicle she started putting her unfinished lunch into the bags from where it had just come.
Forest Lawn covers a huge area of parkland and within it's walls contains it’s own
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Margy with the big heart !! road network, fountains, several Chapel’s of Rest and scores of benches for sitting on. Adolf had strutted across to my mother and instructed her that she wasn’t allowed to eat anywhere within the confines of the cemetry making me relieved I wasn’t there to tell him what to do with his rule.
We ended the day by heading further inland to the City of Pasadena, a City within a City. For some reason I was expecting a scruffy, Hispanic dominated slum with perhaps the occasional architectural treat, Tijuana with law and order, but we were instead treated to a spotless, slow paced sleepy town where we spent an hour or so leisurely browsing and where we were both saved from a fate worse than death by the good Lord who led us straight to, almost as if by divine intervention, the rest rooms of The First United Methodist Church in what was heading towards a close to the bone moment of need !!
With Phil away on business I was able to hijack his flat and with it his bed for the next couple of nights to ensure I was fully rested before it was time for our
next adventure and a one hour Friday afternoon flight north to Oakland followed by a short bus ride, a half hour trip on BART (Bay Area Rapid Transport) and a ten minute tram ride found us alighting outside Fisherman’s Wharf’s Radisson Hotel.
San Francisco is one of my favourite cities. Aside from the compact skyscraper dominated Downtown area, tiny for a City of such size it consists of various sleepy neighbourhoods of pastel colored clapper boarded low rise houses constructed over seven steep forty five degree inclined hills. The claustrophobic hustle and bustle of the majority of the world’s Cities show no sign of making an appearance here, almost certainly due to the fact its residents are knackered at having clambered up and over yet another of those bleedin’ hills and it’s almost as if the place is stuck in a time warp of the chilled out flower power era for which it became famous.
After a Friday night spent recharging the batteries watching ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, the movie which forty eight hours later was to clean up at the Oscars and a comfy night in my fifth bed of the week we set out on foot to explore
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Claustrophobic. Sleeping quarters of the USS Pampanito. and spent the whole day walking and walking cramming in a much as of the inner reaches of the City as physically possible.
Submarines, Cable Cars, Bridges, Towers, Crooked Streets and China Towns, we discovered and explored them all allowing ourselves just a short lunchtime pit stop in a small bohemian café in the Little Italy part of town. Whilst flicking through a local ‘What’s On’ paper waiting for my sandwich to arrive my eye was caught by an article advertising a local ‘Roller Derby’ and I immediately recalled how I’d been fascinated as a young boy by the 1975 James Caan movie ‘Rollerball’, a sci fi fantasy tale of a lethal ‘sport’ involving steel balls and roller skates. No doubt equally influenced by the fact that the ad featured pictures of girls dressed in tight shorts, vests, knee length socks and skates I suggested we take a look. What man in his right mind wouldn’t ?.
When we finally arrived back at the hotel it was gone six and as soon as my ass hit the bed I was asleep. When I woke Marg opted, quite understandably, to rest up and to give the rollerball amiss and
so with the promise that I’d only be a couple of hours I set off alone knowing not the foggiest what to expect.
I found the venue, a large waterside warehouse easily enough, paid my admission and entered and immediately noticed that anyone who was anyone on the organizational side of the event, other than the ubiquitous gorilla like security personnel of course, were women. I was handed a home made match programme, bought myself a beer and stood back to survey my surroundings.
The floor in the centre of the building was marked out in an oval shape by roughly laid sticky tape and at either end were row after row of chairs, already almost full to capacity. The programme notes explained how the sport survives on a strong DIY ethic with the whole event organized by enthusiasts for enthusiasts in much the same way a model aircraft club would be and explained that tonight’s match was a local derby grudge match between The Oakland Outlaws and The SF She Devils. Interesting. It also provided a list of the impossible to understand in one read rules which I gave up on after three paragraphs deeming them irrelevant
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Marg havin a 'When Harry Met Sally' moment on the vibrating chair. to my enjoyment and provided pen pictures of the two teams players who boasted such names as Roughhouse Rhonda, Bad Ass Mo’Fo and my particular favourite, Chesty Gillespie.
A further glance around the audience revealed another fact, that the spectators who must by this stage have reached around the five hundred mark consisted of an extremely high percentage of lesbians. San Fran is of course the gay capital of the USA and all around me women held hands, kissed and canoodled waiting for the entertainment in the form of viewing players of their own gender getting down and dirty to begin.
Unfortunately for me the spot I’d chosen to stand in was exactly the same point in the crowd where the girls planned to make their entrance's, one by one to the PA announcement of their name, into the arena and it quickly became apparent nothing, least of all me was going to impede their macho entrance. Consequently, I quickly found myself pressed tightly against the wall on tip toes clutching my beer to my chest as these bruising women with the focused faces of soldiers off to war rumbled past me.
The ‘game’ itself, once it
got underway proved to be a bit of an anti-climax. Sure the girls, or some of them at least were attired as the photo in the advert had suggested but these femme fatales were neither objects of desire nor finely tuned athletes, more like female all in wrestlers, bruising, many of them pierced and tattooed women bearing not the slightest hint of femininity and after twenty minutes of watching them trundle lemming like around the track with the occasional shoulder barge into an opponent sending her crashing to the floor and causing the audience to squeal with appreciation I decided enough was enough and returned to Margy.
Due to it’s Geography San Francisco plays host to a bizarre weather pattern which, irrespective of season inevitably sees the City ten degrees or so cooler than the surrounding areas and this particular Sunday morning it was not only cool but decidedly wet to the point that by the time we’d walked the quarter mile or so to Pier 37 to catch the boat to Alcatraz we were piss wet through.
Despite the miserable greyness of the morning Alcatraz felt almost cosy to me, a lot less intimidating than I’d expected
for a place famed as an inescapable dungeon for incarcerating mass murderers. It may have been the fact that at meal times we were informed, inmates could eat as much as they desired, much like a pioneering version of an all inclusive Butlin's camp or that the pictures of past occupants that lined the walls of the museum more resembled a favourite uncle as opposed to a ruthless serial killer but there was something a lot less intimidating about the place than I’d expected. It appeared even Griff Rhys Jones did a spell of porridge some years ago under the guise of notorious Barker Gang member Kreepy Karpis.
Like true Brits we didn’t allow the weather to dampen our spirits and laughed our way around the island prison before catching the boat back to the mainland and with our journey to the airport still four hours away and the rains still hammering down we found ourselves with no option but to retire to a local hostelry and sample a couple of tipples ensuring we were giggling all the way back to Oakland.
The last three days of Marg’s visit flew by in a whirl of work and dining.
Meals with Phil and the girls on Monday, the neighbours at Marg’s insistence as a peace offering for her outburst at Mark the previous week where she excelled herself and impressed us all with a top quality Cottage Pie on Tuesday and a return to Georges for a last supper for just the two of us on Wednesday and before we knew it it was time for the off.
On Thursday morning en route to work I dropped her at LAX and as she wandered off into the distance recalled how I’d watched her disappearing up the escalator at Auckland two years earlier. Like then we'd had a brilliant time and like then I was going to miss her…… But I couldn’t half wait to get my beloved bed back !!!
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waymo
non-member comment
I bet you've worn the old girl out!