It has been awhile since we have had a good road trip. Maybe two years or so. It was long overdue.

Our plans were quite sim­ple,  noth­ing like that time when we drove across the  whole coun­try. Still we were def­i­nitely excited and really look­ing for­ward to it. There was no snick­er­ing at our impend­ing 5 hour trip, lets put it that way. And since it was also going to be a cel­e­bra­tion of Miss B’s birthday…well, things were in a dif­fer­ent dimension.

We piled an impres­sive amount of stuff for a quick 4 day trip. The boot was full. Not only that, but there were things under the back seats and under the front one too. The impor­tant part was that the girls had their own bags „on wheels” and they packed them them­selves with great enthu­si­asm. I miss those times when things like that used to bring fizz in my day.

And we were off. Its a road trip, so be pre­pared for a few…road snaps.

The day was won­der­ful, not a cloud in the sky. Quite promis­ing for us to enjoy one of our favorite beaches in the whole world.

The boy in the back was find­ing his own enter­tain­ment, while I was try­ing to find a spot for my head, so I can get a doze.
I always get sleepy in the car.

Since the school hol­i­days were over and peo­ple had gone back to their jobs and daily lives, the roads were empty.

Except this guy:

4.5 hours and a stop for a snack and to stretch out the old limbs we were off the road and into the bush, on our way to the blue­berry farm.

We love berries. But they are so incred­i­bly, unrea­son­ably expen­sive that we can mostly have them in small quantities.

Unless, that is,

we pick them ourselves.

And this is what we do down here. We pick a huge pile of blue­ber­ries and eat them by the handful.

While some were productive

Others just kept on dig­ging in the dirt and not only that, but throw­ing it in my bucket!

I man­aged to clean it up a bit and fill it nicely with the blue fellas.

We were so fast! It was our fastest pick up ever.

On the way out of the area for pick­ing, it happened.

It did.

I had started to hope it will never happen.

But it did.

I saw my first…

..wild snake.

Just like that, it scur­ried past, in front of us.

Miss Fab was with me, or I would have caused a scene. Ran around like a maniac or some­thing.
But no, I had to be the respon­si­ble par­ent and be calm.

I dont know if that was the rea­son, or just there is noth­ing so freaky about the crea­tures, but I didnt really find it that scary. The snake just passed by, quite quickly. Maybe I didnt have time to react the way I always thought I would. Maybe I was just shocked. Who knows.

Anyway, I sur­vived.  But I am def­i­nitely, absolutely pos­i­tively not inter­ested in repeat­ing the experience.

After we loaded with berries we made our way to the place we rented.

The kids went wild.

Up and down the stairs, care­fully placed all the con­tents of their bags around their room and in the wardrobe and drawers.

The place was nice and spacious.

We relaxed and I whipped up a quick pasta meal.

Which we enjoyed on the out­side table.

Later on a shower and some impres­sively soft sheets ensured a lovely sleep, which pre­pared us for the next day.

(to be continued)

I will fit in here every­thing else I couldnt put in its own cat­e­gory.
(Мr.Blab said it was not very inspired work „just mailed it in”, he said)

_____

Тhis is the out­door mall in Glendale — the „Americana at Brand”

Looked brand spank­ing new and grand.

The shops were all around the park in the mid­dle and there were lit­tle cafes and benches to sit on.

The strange thing is that there were no peo­ple on the grass. Here, in Aussie land,  the grass is free to enjoy area, not sure that applies to fancy out­door malls in LA.

These are bins in Beverly Hills
Huge bins for lots of waste, I guess.

Some ran­dom shots from our dri­ves around the city.

The place is huge. Without a car, I have no idea how one would exist here.

So there are a lot of cars.

And big badly patched up roads

I went to the head­less ducks place, up in the hills:

Not really, but there is this reser­voir bang smack around the way to the Hollywood sign and all the other mad­ness around the place. Its a green oasis, green splat on the GPS that seemed like another world.

Beautiful, peace­ful and green.

The kids would have loved it here.

LA is not all crazy though. There were quite a few places that seemed like a lovely area to live in. Usually when I inquired about them it turned out they were for those spe­cial peo­ple that make lots of money.

Oh, speak­ing of the Hollywood sign, we saw this stun­ning god­dess of a preg­nant woman there and we took a picture.

The road to the sign itself was closed for some rea­son, but my Host found some sneaky way and I got to see it at least. The trip was worth it and the hills are quite lovely. Still not sure how this sign has become such a sym­bol, as its quite bor­ing, small and absolutely not inter­est­ing at all. If you are com­ing here, do it for the views and the hills them­selves, as the sign will dis­ap­point, in my opinion.

While down there life is like this:

Around Hollywood Blvd looks like this:

..up there its all kind of beautiful.

Even the Valley looks appeal­ing with its smog and all.

I went to „The Comedy Store” where my Host had scared me that the peo­ple on stage will most likely make fun of me at some point. I gladly announce that I am not that inter­est­ing and I was left alone.

We went to „LaVelee” and lis­tened to Lynne Fiddmont, a Jazz chick, while munch­ing on some lovely din­ner snacks and sip­ping a glass of wine. There I heard a song that lasted with me for a long time — All I do.  Seriously it was in my head for days on end. Her ver­sion was slow and jazzie. It not her song, but Stevie Wonder’s. I had never heard it before, even though I am a fan of Stevie. Here is another woman hav­ing a crack at it (now I will have it in my head again. Groovy!):

And this is LA for you.

Or at least how and what I saw of it.

Thanks to Casa de Alberta for the won­der­ful hos­pi­tal­ity.  Will never for­get it.

And then I took my bags and 7 month belly on a plane and back to my continent:

Baseball. I had never seen one of those games before. Really, how many peo­ple out­side of the US have? Not me. I had tried to go watch the Yankees while I was in New York, but they didnt play home the days I was there, so I got des­per­ate and I ended up vis­it­ing the Anaheim Angels in LA.

Here is what a base­ball game looked to me, the com­plete igno­ra­mus on this pop­u­lar activ­ity of the North American and… Japanese cultures.

Parking space was huge. The lot was so big I was sure we will get lost on the way out. People were con­gre­gat­ing from every­where, it seemed.

Entry was rea­son­ably pain­less. Nobody removed my shoes or checked under my tongue for hid­den weapons. Phew!

The sta­dium is huge. To me our seats were per­fect, but obvi­ously that is not so, as they were not the expen­sive kind.

The evening was pleas­ant and the wind was caress­ing my skin just right. I was excited and look­ing for­ward to the game.

There was a bit of walk­ing around like in a daze. Almost dreamlike..

A lot of bending.

and bend­ing

Even offi­cials bend.
Here the pitcher is try­ing to pre­vent the gray dude from steal­ing a base and Number 35 has constipation.

Tra-la-la-la-la…stolen glances and skip­ping in the night light.

The atmos­phere is rather pleasant.

There were no idiots shout­ing or throw­ing around their arms and spit upset at something.

People were just hav­ing a good time.

Kids? It seemed the per­fect spot to bring them for some fun — watch­ing pranc­ing, bend­ing happy men hav­ing fun.

There was some action.

A lot of that:

..that:

..that arm thing. The way that nobody throws a ball:

There were a lot of sta­tis­tics, num­bers, scor­ing aver­ages and what­nots posted on a board, but my Host had lit­tle knowl­edge of them all. I doubt any­one does. Its insane. There were a few bats that met the ball and that is quite exciting.

I even got to see this:

YAY!

Ok, where is the food now?

I loved the food guys.
They walk around and throw food to the peo­ple in their seats.
„I want some”, „Sure!” CHUCK!
FUN!

I con­sumed some beer, a hot­dog and some cracker jacks. All a per­fect com­pan­ion to a very enjoy­able night.

I liked base­ball. I will do it again.

I am not an amuse­ment, theme park kind of gal. They dont do more for me than a fancy mall does — ooh, lovely..thats cute…that costs what?…I think we saw that already…lets go home, aka. com­mer­cial sheep in a pan sur­rounded by greedy wolves. Or like the scene in Finding Nemo where the deep water fish is swing­ing its adorned with light tail to bring the heroes close enough to eat them. But most of all in a world full of  count­less vari­ety of authen­tic expe­ri­ences, spend­ing my time in a fake pro­mo­tional world and giv­ing my money to giant cor­po­ra­tions is not on my list of things I pre­fer doing.

And yet, when my „shoe crit­i­ciz­ing” Host was adamant I had to go to Universal Studios, I just had to, I so had to he was pre­pared to pay for it him­self, I buck­led and agreed to give it a go.

We entered through the Citywalk. A pre­tend city within a city.

This is where don­key ended up:

Its bet­ter than the swamp, I guess…or not.

First we went to the Studio Tour.

You jump on a lit­tle cart wagon with open sides and then starts the tour through the studio.

This was shortly after the fires there and here is a shot of the dam­age down bellow:

We passed some well known vehi­cles.
I some­how doubt that this is an orig­i­nal, but just call me a skep­tic and move on.

Some spe­cial effects with incom­ing cars.

Dr Seuss anybody?

Desperate Housewives were not accessible.

Sets. This was some­thing from some movie, but I can­not remem­ber what.
Anybody?

This was a tiny set we passed though.
I found this inter­est­ing as it really showed some of the ways you can do quite impres­sive spe­cial effects.
The ship was about the length

of my arm.

My favorite were the wild west sets.

Here is one of the spe­cial things you can see while on tour:

Looks all fun and dandy…

And then its not anymore.

Again, one year later I can­not remem­ber the com­men­tary,
but they did say that this set has been used for a few famous flood­ing scenes

There was a plas­tic shark flung at us, in honor of Jaws.
There was an explod­ing truck in an „under­ground” sub­way.
And a few other things.

Then after some walk­ing around we waited a bit to see the Waterworld attraction.

It was a quick per­for­mance with impres­sive jumps, explo­sions and spe­cial effects.

Like the crash­ing in airplane:

But I had a feel­ing some­thing else was cap­tur­ing the atten­tion of pro­por­tion of the public.

Something much less technical.

The orga­niz­ers knew it too, hence the almost non exis­tent skirt and hug­ging top.

We went into the Backdraft pyrotech­nics bonanza.
Following the doors and rails we went through a few pre­sen­ta­tions,
cul­mi­nat­ing in the last hall where we wit­nessed the big fire and wob­bly floor.

We didnt go on any rides, as they were not suit­able for preg­nant spec­i­mens like me, or so it said.

The Jurassic Park didnt exclude me offi­cially, so we lined up.

Just before we got on the ride, a woman comes to me and informs me
that its not a good idea to go on as there is a 25m (84foot) drop at the end of the line.
I look at the cart, look at the padded metal secu­rity straps (which can go above my belly)
and thank her for her con­cern, but I will be fine. She moves away.

Then another per­son comes to warn me, maybe because they are not sure I am com­pre­hend­ing or some­thing.
I assure them that I under­stand what they are say­ing, but I will be fine.

The ride is not that excit­ing at all…until the end.
I was pre­pared, belly under­neath, arms and feet braced…

SWOOOSH, a big olé drop, where your gut hits the inside of your throat! Hahaha.
And you end up in the water.

That WAS fun. And get­ting wet in the sunny hot day was even better.

And no, dont do that at home fel­low preg­nant women

And that was that.
Back up the esca­la­tor and into the world.

Did I hate it?

No.

Would I do it again?

No.

I am still not an amuse­ment, theme park kind of gal.

More than a year later, its time to come back and try and fin­ish up the last few posts from my trip.

It all paused in LA. Not sure if the fact that the city didnt impress me that much or just because it hap­pened to be the last big stop and hence I was tired of writ­ing, but the fact of the mat­ter is that this post has been wait­ing for a long time to be written.

The rea­son I came to LA was because I thought it would be inter­est­ing and because Mr.Blab’s best friend lives here, so I could stay for free, which is not some­thing to be dis­re­garded in any around the world trip. And thank good­ness he was there to keep me com­pany and to drive me around, as the place is huge and pub­lic trans­port is non existent.

I of course put foot on Venice Beach boardwalk.

.

Had lunch at a café there. I believe it was a salad of some kind. Some hippy kind.

The place was inter­est­ing. Mr.Blab used to tell me how they would sit around here and do „peo­ple watch­ing” and I can see how that would be a per­fect place for that. The indi­vid­u­als and devi­a­tions one can find make for a good con­ver­sa­tion starter. There is a lovely relaxed atmos­phere, which is coun­ter­bal­anced by the self involved cool peo­ple who also roam around.

Speaking of beaches, my guide took me to Zuma beach in Malibu.

Then made me climb up a cliff while mak­ing fun of my san­dals. Apparently they were not suit­able for such activities.

He even took a pic­ture of my offend­ing footwear!

Yours truly, after climb­ing sandy cliffs.

The beach is huge. It was a work day so I am guess­ing that is why it was so quiet and peaceful.

When we came back down we chat­ted with the secu­rity guard who was watch­ing over the parked trail­ers.
We didnt get to see the shoot­ing of a movie, but we saw the change rooms…from outside.

More beach.

We were com­ing back from Zuma beach when we passed this area and I had to stop to take a pic­ture of these houses.
You dont get much more beach front than that.

Staying with a local who makes fun of your shoes has its ben­e­fits.
He knew all the cool local places for food.

The first night we went to his favorite authen­tic Mexican restau­rant Las Hadas which I enjoyed a lot all the way to the hot pep­pers and cool beer. It aint no Taco Bell dear read­ers. It was big plates of soft meat and condi­ments that were absolute bliss for this glutton.

Then he knows which diner to take you so you can expe­ri­ence the real deal and a lot of old peo­ple sip­ping cof­fee silently.

So you can eat a big olé plate of breakfast.

Followed by a big olé plate of waf­fles with cream and maple syrup.

Yum.

Or a lit­tle sneaky Chinese place.

That also make a killer won­ton soup.

Yummmey.

And you can be dri­ven to the mar­kets for a cup of coffee.

Walk around.

Admiring  the cre­ative display.

And of course eat­ing. This time some south­ern food. Spicy Jambalaya and potatoes.

Since I did other things than eat as well…next we go to a base­ball game.

To be continued…

The day after the rally we jumped the bus again and went to the city cen­ter to meet with a friend of mine.

Canberra is not an excit­ing place by any stretch of the imag­i­na­tion. In fact, I cried the day I arrived all those years ago. I did. I sat on the floor of my hotel room and cried, won­der­ing what the hell am I doing in this god for­saken place at the end of the world. Still, the cen­ter has had this nice feel to it since then, as it is basi­cally enclosed by build­ings and free of cars and full of lit­tle shops, cafes and what­nots. Small, but friendly and mel­low like.

So we got off the bus at the inter­change and that part looked a bit more put together. It didnt have the old feel of being the night toi­let area for var­i­ous drunk indi­vid­u­als. Then we entered Garema Place (the pedes­trian area) and I thought some­thing must have hap­pened. Something wrong. The place was dead. Yes, it was Tuesday, but it was almost lunch time and peo­ple still had to eat. Where were all the peo­ple! Then I walked and I saw all the FOR LEASE signs on old favorites.

Something was not right. I walked fur­ther and a bit fur­ther, but the area was ghost town. Then at the end I entered the shop­ping mall kind of a place to try and fig­ure out where the book store was that I was meet­ing my friend. And there was my answer. The Canberra Centre had grown, grown, grown into this huge mono­lithic, never end­ing town of its own.  It had expanded from its orig­i­nal size to about 5–7 times the size, sprawled down the length of the street into what used to be park­ing areas, both indoor and out­door. Once you enter it, you dont have to show your nose out­side at all. Just walk up and down through one of its fancy floors and buy to your heart’s desire.

This is just one street over from Garema Place. From the FOR LEASE signs that sit lone­somely on dusty win­dows rem­i­nisc­ing for the times that were, the times that have passed and will never come back.

The old Sammies Kitchen we used to order from, when I would pick Mr.Blab from work and do a run in pick up from, was now a fancy restau­rant with hur­ried wait­resses that didnt want to accom­mo­date me and Caramel Popcorn.

It was not a place I knew or wanted to know.

That day my lit­tle man showed for sure that he is get­ting under the weather and started look­ing more tired and cough­ing a more vio­lent cough. He refused to sleep at all in the bed, so he was strapped on me for the whole night, while I tried to do laun­dry and eat. It was a rough night.

The next morn­ing I decided to drive to our old neigh­bor­hood and just visit. Waste a day and get out of the sick house. As the car that I was so gen­er­ously given was run­ning on gas, some­thing I have never used before, I asked the sta­tion assis­tant to fill it up for me, which she did gra­ciously. Then we were on our way. Half way on the high­way I notice that the fuel gauge has gone down one third. And it kept on going…and going…half way…Panic raises in me, I admit. I imag­ine myself stuck on the high­way with a sick lit­tle one and empty car with who knows what issue, try­ing to fig­ure it all out. Still going down..what the hell is going on…and the car is not mine…shit…STOP IT!..still going down…there are whim­pers form the back seat, fol­lowed by a cry. I look back to reas­sure him and there is my baby, with tears in his eyes, boogers flow­ing down his mouth, sad puppy dog eyes and a bloody nose. Pull to the side and run around pick him up and look for any­thing to wipe him down. Thankfully I had taken a bib for some rea­son in my bag. He relaxes a bit and the blood sub­sides. I am look­ing for a scratch or any­thing to give me a con­ve­nient expla­na­tion for the inci­dent. No, such luck. Just one of those things. I think about my predica­ment. My friend had told me some­thing about after 200km to switch the tanks to petrol. So I did that and the fuel gauge stayed the same. Looked around and decided that the stu­pid thing doesnt work, so they prob­a­bly cal­cu­late how many km they can do on a cer­tain amount of gas and then switch if needed. I knew I put gas in, so I pushed on, hop­ing my think­ing was right.

It was another cold day. Life here had changed as well. It has been just over 3 years and life has moved on so much. We walked around and grabbed a lunch and sat down. This was my area. It was a place I had spent a lot of time. It was where Mr.Blab and I met and smooched around the cor­ner many a times. And yet, its like it never was. Stories are lost in this pro­gres­sive world of devel­op­ment and change. The human aspect of the his­tory of the place is non exis­tent. There are no roots to speak of. Its because sto­ries are car­ried by peo­ple. My story is car­ried by the peo­ple I know, those that have shared theirs with me and vice versa. The area is over­run by multi­na­tional out­lets that are not con­cerned with me, or you, or that lovely per­son over there. The peo­ple that work in them change more often than any other busi­ness. Maria serves cof­fee today, Tom is on duty tomor­row and so on. No long term con­nec­tion can be made. No story to be kept, to be saved and retold later.

I was watch­ing this world around me and it all looked so cold, so empty, so…sad. So fake and wrong.

I was going to stop at the mar­ket to visit a shop that was run by a lovely fam­ily back than and see if I can reclaim some of my past, but my poor lit­tle bug fell asleep as we got in the car, so I just drove by. The shop was there, so maybe next time. If there is one.

The evening and night were hard. Popcorn was lumpy and clingy and my heart was break­ing for him. There truly is noth­ing like hav­ing a sick child. The quiet whim­per­ing, the con­tent look of the lit­tle moist eyes, even though he has every right to be pan­ick­ing and ask­ing me for answers as to whats going on. So again, I ate my din­ner on the floor of the kitchen, so he can be next to me while I scoffed the food and the car­pet in the liv­ing room was a lovely light color that would not have appre­ci­ated my tomato sauce, I am sure. Sleep at night was not hap­pen­ing and we spent it up and down and down and up.

The day we were leav­ing was sunny. Not just sunny, but with­out a cloud, not even one, in the sky. Was that cel­e­bra­tory acknowl­edg­ment for our depar­ture? It sure felt like it in my sleep deprived, exhausted brain. The rest is his­tory — flight one with sick child and numer­ous boogers wiped on my black top, scarf used for the rest as my tis­sues were too out of reach, bought a cof­fee at Melbourne and a beau­ti­ful look­ing crois­sant, which turned out to be over microwaved and I choked on the pow­dered sugar, while Popcorn spilled my cof­fee on the air­port floor. Then a flight to here, which took for­ever and I had to spend most of it on my feet, as the lit­tle one was not happy on the seat and the amount of boogers on my top had started to make some inter­est­ing pat­terns glis­ten­ing under the dim light­ing, cough­ing was hor­ren­dous and he was not eat­ing much, not even breast­feeds, which just raised my worry level even higher. As a cherry on the top, the weather back home was yuck, so we had some good mea­sure of tur­bu­lence and this really doesnt make me happy, as I am not the best of plane trav­el­ers. But drop­ping through hole after hole in the sky, sharp turns that whiz through dark gray clouds while hold­ing an exhausted sad look­ing almost one year old is as fun as I can take before ask­ing for a freakin break. I could have cried croc­o­dile tears at this point, I was feel­ing so sorry for myself.

And then we landed and I saw the top of Mr.Blab’s head through the crowd and then the girls with huge grins on their faces and the happy moist eyes of Miss Fab and life was good again in an instant, no longer than that. And the rain didnt mat­ter and the angry clouds could not cast a shadow on me. I was home, where I belonged. And it felt so good.