California Quotidian

So it's after the autumnal equinox, and here we are in Middle California, on 8^th Avenue, in Menlo Park, a bit east of Middlefield Road. We're eight blocks from Rebecca and Jeremy, and Penelope, now approaching five months old, whom we care for on Rebecca's work days. Menlo Park is on the peninsula, some miles south of San Francisco, Redwood City just north, Palo Alto just south, and Mountain View a bit beyond that. Of course it's all continuous development along 101 and El Camino Real anyway. The weather has been remarkably consistent for the month or more we have been here: lows in the high 50s, highs in the 80s. Clear, mostly, except at night when the clouds roll in from the Pacific. Generally they are gone early in the morning.

Our neighborhood is mostly working class: people mostly appear to go to work every day and come home at night. The homes are all in the $600,000 to $2 million range. Bay area...but astronomical to us. You'd think working stiffs would be house-poor in such a market, but I've counted five 9lls, a Lotus, and numerous Mercedes and BMWs within three blocks. Maybe they're not all working stiffs.

The neighborhood is of that vintage where many of the homes have been subdivided or added-on to. In our case we are in a small attached cottage, 500-600 feet, one bedroom. It's actually larger, seemingly, than the two-bedroom apartment we rented our last year in dear Missoula. There is a great room, sort of, which is our combination office/living room/dining room; a large completely updated (granite, etc.) kitchen; a laundry/storage room with washer and dryer; the aforementioned bedroom; and a walk-though closet, with built-ins; leading to a tiny but updated bath. It's quiet and seemingly secure. The kitchen alone is much larger than our RV! The cottage lacks curb appeal, however, adjoining the right-of-way for the (underground) Hetch Hetchy reservoir pipeline that feeds the peninsula. The pipeline has been rebuilt and enlarged in recent months, but the right-of-way, a 60 ft or so wide swath, remains fenced-in and un-landscaped. The fencing will come down sometime this winter and the swath will be restored to its previous status as parts of peoples' yards.

Furnishing and decorating the cottage has been interesting. Rebecca and Jeremy had some unwanted pieces of furniture (hide-a-bed, easy chair, table and chairs, etc.) which are now here. Other pieces include furniture we had given Rebecca years ago when she moved to California, now also unwanted (bookcases, dresser, library card catalog, etc.). I am sitting at the white desk, bought in Bexley, Ohio, she and Rachel both used as children. The rest has come through the little bit of stuff we brought back from Europe, the very little bit we brought back from Missoula, and then the kindness of strangers, Craigslist, garage and yard sales, and a few perfectly good things people inexplicably leave on the side of the road near the cottage. (Recycling?). Anyhow, the 500 square feet are now fully functional and crammed nearly full, particularly considering the four major items of baby furniture—swing, crib, high chair, Jumparoo—we are also using. The strategy in all this has been to be functional and comfortable for our few months here, but to do so with items that are almost entirely loaned or expendable. We'll be holding a yard sale of our own in the foreseeable future.

As I said, the kitchen is ample, and a variety of things—the availability of all kinds of interesting foods here, our experiences in Europe, Vicki's watching the Food Channel--have led us to more culinary explorations. As a moving-in gift, Rebecca gave me a Groupon for a nearby nursery which I used to establish a container herb garden, which is, at least at the moment, thriving. Basil really is the tomato's best friend.

Our work-day routine starts with Penelope's arrival, always the best part of the day. She is adorable, fun to play with, very easy to care for. We do Bumbo time, tummy time, singing time, book time, Jumparoo time, music time, feeding time, changing time, and, when she begins to fade, walking time around the neighborhood with the stroller. She rarely makes it more than a block or two before succumbing to nap time. Every now and then she goes with us shopping or visiting the library or park or doctor. Her favorite store is the Redwood City Costco #1042 (the largest I have seen), although the REI in Mountain View and any Trader Joe's are also fascinating to her (and me). Two Buck Chuck is alive and well, 8 years on now, probably the nation's greatest loss-leader apart from the rotisserie chicken at Costco. Penelope is a long way from poulet roti and vin rouge, but she enjoys watching.

Our first few weekends have been spent in shopping and setting up the cottage, learning the lay of the land, and also in helping Rebecca and Jeremy clean out their garage to get more storage space. Vicki spent the last five days visiting Marie and Norm in St. Cloud, with a family side-trip to Miami, and a “last” visit to DisneyWorld. (Marie and Norm are moving to Knoxville). I'll be going to San Fran with Rebecca and Jeremy for a symphony concert this weekend, and the next weekend Vicki and I will go camping in Yosemite. And then the next weekend I'll be in dear Missoula for the Humanities Montana Festival of the Book XII.

So that's the quotidian. My next posts will feature “pix not blogged” from China and Nepal.

Top of every day: Penelope arrives

Grandma loves dressing her in some of the

same outfits worn by Stacey, Rebecca, and

Rachel...

"Our" REI, Mountain View

"Our" Google, Googleopolis

GoogleEarth view

Third Anniverary Of Embarcation

Three years ago we departed Missoula in a flurry--no, an avalanche--of activity, packing, storing, donating, selling just about everything we owned that would not fit into a checked bag and a carry-on each. A day later we were in Tokyo, and a day after that we were in Beijing. Our three years of travel have had their respites, sometimes months long. And, not surprisingly, the most important and memorable events of those three years have not been about travel: rather, the engagements and weddings of our daughters and the birth of our grand-daughter. Now we are back into an extended respite, grand-parenting Penelope by day while Rebecca and Jeremy work, in Menlo Park, Middle California. Not a bad place for a respite!

I am not sure what to do with a travel blog when one is not traveling. It is also a retirement blog, certainly, but mostly about our travels. The coming months will bring opportunities for reflection, editing of photos and blog, and website, and planning of our next travels. Some of those things will appear in these posts.

Daddy's girl: Penelope shows Grandma a coding error in

line 14...

Return To Reality

By Monday, all the guests were gone, our dentist and optometrist and doctors' appointments were done, good-byes said to the Sehestedts, and we returned to our storage unit, to finish the latest round of re-sorting, re-packing, and re-organizing. Things change, plans change, needs change. But we left the place in probably the best shape it's been in since August, 2008, when we headed off to Asia.

By Wednesday evening we were back in Sandpoint with Bob and Beth and stayed another day to see Norm and Marie (back from touring Alberta and BC) and to enjoy yet a second of Bob's wonderful filet mignon dinners. Hey, at this point we were no longer dieting for the wedding!

Our thanks as always to the friends and family that hosted us. We always wish we could have stayed longer in Missoula and seen more people. But duty called in California, and we were back in Menlo Park very late Friday night.

In our unit, Hellgate Canyon Storage Center;

home is where your stuff is; plus, it's a gated
community, great views of Mt. Dumbo, and
has water features too

Rachel's Wedding (And Will's)

The big day was Saturday, August 6th, but it was preceded by a variety of dinners, float-trip, baseball game (Will throwing out the first pitch at the Osprey game), pedicures, rehearsal, rehearsal dinner at Fort Missoula, preparations, decorations, and much more. The bride's parents' headquarters was the Babs, near the Hip Strip, although Vicki and I stayed at Dave and Kim's, house- and dog-sitting and addressing a minor flood in the basement. All in all, it was a great week, finishing with our second perfect wedding and reception...due very largely to Rachel, who put all her abundant planning and coordinating skills to work, with some help from a wedding coordinator and numerous family and friends. Vicki, whose involvment from Europe was difficult, nonetheless saved the day with her seamstress work on the wedding gown. And, for the second summer in a row, for us, it was a joyous occasion with family and friends, seeing a wonderful daughter married.

Ceremony at Washington Park, UM campus, beneath the M; I had a front row seat 
and so couldn't get the entire wedding party in the picture...

Wife and Husband

Get-away car

Pre-reception at the Florence

Groom and Bride

Seated, for just a minute, at the dinner

Me in a more spiritual moment (there was an open bar)

Vicki with my sister Carole, Pat and Jim Mitchell,

and Beth McCoy (Bob's wife)

Vicki and I set a personal best for dancing, and but for our

friends the Mitchells, nearly won the anniversary dance; the

partying went on well after the 11PM close and departure of

the elders; Will updated his Facebook page to "married" at
5:30AM

Of course there were professional photographers and many others taking pictures (and video), and I'll post a few more or link to Rachel and Will's site, when they return from their honeymoon.

Road Trip!

After Vicki's rejoining me, we spent a few days moving into and setting up our new temporary quarters, a small one-bedroom "cottage" in Menlo Park, just a few blocks from Rebecca, Jeremy, and Penelope. But then it was time for a road trip, to Missoula, via Sandpoint, for the big occasion of the year...

Laden with a cargo of bar stools and library card catalog

furniture (true; revealing), and a few personal items and

souvenirs from Europe, we drove the Saturn up through

California and across the middle of Oregon, finally hitting I90

in WA and then 95 in Idaho to Sandpoint; 19 hours of driving;

and then, a day later, 200 and I90 to Missoula; that's

Mt. Shasta above, in northern-most CA; all the volcanoes

were similarly snow-draped, even in early August

Return to America

From Boston we divided forces, Vicki heading to Orlando for a few days of sun and fun (and heat and humidity and insects) at Disneyworld with Marie and Norm and Stacey and the boys, I directly to Middle California, where we will be for a few months, helping Rebecca and Jeremy care for Penelope.

On her third month-day, shortly after I arrived

Looking properly skeptical at her mother; she has given Vicki
and me the same look as we learn her ways and try to imagine
that we understand infant cognitive development

A Very Brief Visit To Iceland

Last spring, as we were making plans for the summer and beyond, Vicki found one of her usual screaming deals on airfares from London to the US: Iceland Express. We booked. Then we discovered that Iceland Express is not Iceland Air, and that comments in TripAdvisor and elsewhere on Iceland Express were not uniformly favorable (enforcement of weight limits, surcharges, seat sizes, food pricing, lateness, cancellations, etc). So, for some months, we were not looking forward to the return trip.

Iceland Express turned out to be just fine for us. Pretty much on time, despite weather issues in London, comfortable, and it got us where we wanted to go. It's a budget airline, so everything is for sale; or you can bring your own, as we did (cleaning out the cupboards...sausage from Colmar, pistachios from Gaziantep, cheese from Amsterdam, gingerbread cookies from Aachen, etc). Iceland Express jets you first to Rekjavik, Iceland, in three or so hours, and then, after an hour or less in Rekjavik (enough to visit the duty-free stores and sample Icelandic vodka), five hours to Boston, where we are presently. We give Iceland Express 4 stars; 5 when you factor in the price. Plus our passports now sport Iceland stamps.

First sight of Iceland; had I been sitting on
the port side, I would have seen Surtsey;
but not Iceland

Bombardier view

Mostly pretty barren, with lots of volcanic

features...crater lake

A mini caldera

Approaching Rekjavik

Landing

Taking-off

Temporarily well-behaved volcano

Farewell, Britland

We were in the UK largely through a change in plans. Of course, any reason for being there is good enough. But we had planned on shipping the Grey Wanderer back to the States from Southampton, concluding our European travels. At length, last May, after having already made the flight reservations from London, we couldn't bring ourselves to conclude our European travels, and, especially, our RV mode of travel in Europe. It has been too good to bring to an end. So we put the camper in storage in Amsterdam and have had these four days in familiar London to decompress and reflect before returning Stateside.

The breakfast view from Blenheim Lodge, a B&B in East

Finchley, where we stayed; Roger and Agri are superb hosts

Outside the National Gallery, George

Washington helps us focus our thoughts

Trafalgar Square and, look kids, it's Big Ben!

Lord Nelson

Our Dutch host in Amsterdam had recently returned from

his first visit to the UK, observing that every time an

Englishman learns how to ride a horse, they put up a  statue

of him

Olympic countdown clock; London is only slightly abuzz

about it all; transportation, I think, will be an issue

Departure from Gatwick

Two Days At The National Gallery, 2011

Monday and Tuesday, both days of rain, we took the Tube into town and stayed in the National Gallery, one of our favorite museums. It is not huge--the collection has somewhat over 2,000 items--but nearly everything in the world of European painting from the 13th to the 20th centuries is represented, sometimes very well represented, and the Gallery has its own surpassing masterpieces too. For us it was also a great review of much of what we have seen in Europe in the past two years. Indeed we spent the first three hours in the Medieval/Renaissance wing, looking at the now-familiar Cimabuies, Massacios, Corregios, Leonardos, Domenichinos, Lippis, Renis, Michaelangelos, Botticellis, Rafaels, et al. Getting to see Botticelli's Venus and Mars up close was a special thrill.

One of the things we like about the Gallery is its very effective display of virtually all the paintings. Sadly, in many of the greatest museums, there are issues of glare, glass, shadow, poor placement and lighting, that really dampen the experience. (E.g., the big Botticellis at the Uffizi). On the other hand, the Gallery has a no fotos policy, and, unlike many of the greatest museums, really enforces it, with a vigilant guard for every room. I didn't even try (except once). And the website, although exemplary in many ways, doesn't make it easy to download any items of the collection. The excellent audioguide costs a mere 2.50L for us concessionaires and, not least, the whole thing, like the British Museum, is free and open to the public. Admission and audioguides at the Uffizi or Prado or Louvre would have been $30-$50.

Botticelli's Venus and Mars

And, of course, there are half a dozen of the most famous

Turners, including The Fighting Temeraire, regarded by

Britons, according to the BBC, as the nation's most

important painting

Renoir's Gladiolus, a favorite of Vicki's

Return To The British Museum, Again

Our first full day in London, after the B&B breakfast of scones and clotted cream and other goodies, we set forth for another return visit to the British Museum, still our overall favorite here. Our real purpose was to look at all the things--vases, reliefs, metopes, marbles, busts, statues, entire temples--that were strangely missing when we visited Turkey and Greece last fall. Indeed we found many and were gratified to know we had "been there" and could well imagine how the removed object might have looked. I do hope the Brits someday will give a few of the Elgin Marbles back to the Greeks. France, as I recall, gave theirs back on the occasion of the most recent Athens Olympics. But I doubt France ever will give the Mona Lisa back to Italy.

It was the height of the the high season, a Sunday, and a rainy day in London as well, so the Museum was more mobbed than we have ever seen it. It's still always a pleasure and a bit of a thrill. In addition to looking for favorites and random exploration, we did tours on the Enlightenment Room--the first items the Museum collected, now together in what used to be the British Library--as well as on early Medieval artifacts.

The Nereid Temple from Xanthos

Reliefs from the Tomb of Kybernis, King of Xanthus

Stupid satyr tricks... (do not try this at home, kids)

Elgin Marbles

Mob scene at the Rosetta Stone

An old friend, the Queen of Lewis Chess

And always much new to learn; here a display on the survival

of glass-making in Europe after the fall of the western Roman

empire

It was the height of the the high season, a Sunday, and a rainy day in London as well, so the Museum was more mobbed than we have ever seen it. It's still always a pleasure and a bit of a thrill. In addition to looking for favorites and random exploration, we did tours on the Enlightenment Room--the first items the Museum collected, now together in what used to be the British Library--as well as on early Medieval artifacts.

Amsterdam

We don't have much to show for our nearly five days in Amsterdam. We were there principally to put the Grey Wanderer in storage before our return to the States, to get it ready for storage, effect a variety of repairs, give it a good cleaning, and to sort through things and pack, with one eye on the coming year in California and the other on returning to Europe in 2012. Three days of sheets of rain didn't help with our sightseeing program either.

We'll do Amsterdam more properly, especially the Rijksmuseum, one of our favorites, when we're back in June of 2012. We EasyJet'd to Britland on Saturday afternoon, the16th, carefully weighing in both checked and unchecked baggage so as to avoid the various surcharges. It was a mercifully short 45 minute flight. From Gatwick we took the National Express bus into town (5.50L for us seniors) and then the Underground to our B&B in East Finchley, north of the city. The bus ride took 90 minutes, but was comfortable and a great opportunity to visually re-acquaint ourselves with beloved Britland, leaving the driving to someone else. Our stay here will be relatively short, with no opportunity to re-visit Beastleigh Dorking on-the-Bum or other favorite country sites.

We stayed at a place called Droompark Sparnwoude,

outside Amsterdam, beyond the port; apparently a state or

national park, there were several campgrounds, very

popular, not so many campers, but many, many static

trailers and rental units; they honored our ACSI card which

made the cost relatively reasonable; and good bus service

into the city

But our first two days were spent not in camping or cleaning,

but in having some work done: the BBQ regulator (something

we never and never have used) failed, causing a serious

propane leak; we finally had it removed and the line capped at

a Volvo truck center in Amsterdam, the third referral

And then there was the partial failure of the Go Charge

dual battery charger, which took another day to analyze,

and (partially) work around; sheesh! the thing is two months

old and probably hadn't two weeks of usage

So, anyway, we appear to be in Holland (this

is from Friday, the one day it didn't rain)

And took the bus into Amsterdam, not to see anything in

particular, but just to walk around and do the ambience thing

A major part of which is drinking in the streets

and the consequent effluence, relieved, as it

were, by these strategically but not discreetly
located outdoor pissoirs

A street scene or two

Two

Vicki in line for the world-famous "vegetarian" pommes frites

at VleminckX (since 1887); they were decadently good,

especially with the curry sauce