andamu

[ update ] I caught an actual glimpse of the Phantom Ice Cream Truck! Pretty bland, a white box with a few little stickers on the back window. When I grew up ice cream trucks were brightly painted with pictures, for maximum kid-attraction. I did manage to identify the tinkly tune this time, though: "Music Box Dancer." :: [ vacation ] Angel Face is SO excited. For the past few days she repeatedly interrupts whatever she's doing to tell us: "Doddamma and Mamma and Peddananna and me and Mamma and Doddamma are going to fly in the plane. We're going to fly to China! (Don't know where she got that bit.) It's big big big plane and we have to sit still and fasten our belts and all my friends are going to come with me (sorry, kid) and we're going to fly fly fly and you and me and Peddananna and Mamma and you - and me - are going to go in the plane!" I showed her her little finger on the left hand is Monday. The ringfinger is Tuesday, and the middle finger is Wednesday. Made a cross on that finger so that she can remember which one. So when she would come and yet again want to know when we are flying, we can play the finger game - seems to work well and helps her to manage this weird concept of time to which grown-ups seem shackled. She was afraid to go to sleep last night - scared she might miss the flight. We had to assure her that (a) we cannot go in the plane if she doesn't sleep, and (b) that she would still need another nap in the morning before we can fly. The flight only leaves around 2 p.m., which is why I am at work this morning. Means I only need to take a half-day today (and saves some hours for emergencies), plus I've finished packing and now don't need to get tense by the last minute scurrying at home. :: [ bugs ] Nini has a sore, scratchy throat and only about 25% voice. She assures me she is feeling fine otherwise - no body aches, no coughing, sneezing and the like. I feel so bad for her, and am trying to care of some of her responsibilities unobtrusively, while keeping at least ten feet away. I don't know why, but I have become a germ magnet all of a sudden. And once a bug gets me, it keeps me down as long as possible. The strangest thing though seems to be the timing. I might start feeling grotty around Wednesday or Thursday, be getting really bad on Friday yet just well enough to scrape through the day, and then sharply deteriorate once I get home. Spend the entire weekend seemingly at death's door until Sunday late afternoon when a slight improvement appears, and by Monday morning I can move around just well enough to go back to work. I am starting to suspect that all viruses and bacteria have signed contracts with my company to be allowed to operate in this area! :: We're taking the laptop along with us to the Bay, and of course the camera. My precious one, as usual, spent at least 5 days shopping around for the best hotel deals, and made sure that they had complimentary high-speed internet...

[ flight ] Flying from Portland always present the possibility of stunning views, provided of course that (a) it is reasonably clear (as it is in summer) and (b) it is daytime. We had a few discrete wispy clouds floating across our field of vision, but not obscuring the image of the sequence of bridges across the Willamette. And we needed a sweetener after the hour delay in our flight. Alaska handed out "Air Care Kits," little folders with $5 food vouchers, 10 min. calling cards and $25/1,000 mile flight coupons. Fortunately we had the foresight not to mention that we were delayed to the little one, so we avoided the endless toddler nagging, and we found enough of whimsical interest to keep her occupied until the flight boarded. The clouds became more dense later, so we did not get any spectacular views of the mountains, with the exception of Mt. Hood, my favorite. :: [ Sacramento ] Landing in Sacramento was reminiscent to Fargo in some ways - the patchwork of agricultural land, flat as far as the eye can see. The difference lay in the colors and the shiny straight ruler of the canal, and the irrigation ditches running across the fields. The fields were a softer version of a lime green with a dayglo quality to it. As we descended further, we could see the tiny yellow flowers through the darker green of the leaves, the combination giving the illusion of the unreal color from a distance. :: [ accident ] Despite arriving at the start of rush hour, the traffic was not too bad. There was the usual "jam-packed but moving freely, if well below the limit" stretches and a couple of miles of the "stop-and-start grind your teeth in frustration" type. Ironically, the accident happened after the road cleared up: each vehicle had space enough to maintain a legal following distance (if they were so inclined), and there were even clear stretches randomly interspersed in each of the three ordinary lanes, with larger empty spaces in the HOV lane where we four were traveling. On the whole the traffic was moving along somewhere between the speed limit and about ten miles over, when a car roared past at startling speed, weaving within the three ordinary lanes, stealing following distances, until his progress was blocked ahead. He was followed a moment later by another car, this one even faster, flicking between lanes and forcing spaces where none existed by changing lanes almost blindly, causing cars to swerve and brake to avoid running into him. When both of the vehicles landed in the third lane with no immediate way forward except through the HOV lane (which they both avoided) the first car suddenly slammed on his brakes, causing the second almost to rear-end him; apparently there was a direct engagement between the two, and had been for some distance. When a gap opened up again, off they both were, ducking and crocheting back and forth until the first car was in the third lane, the second in the first lane, and both aimed for the same gap in the center lane and broadsided one another. The second vehicle, damaged, spun out across the road to the right shoulder, and ended up facing the traffic. The first vehicled spun to his left, across the third lane, across the HOV lane, into the concrete barrier, bounced off, spun back, hit the barrier again, and finally came to a rest partly inside the HOV lane. Amazingly, not a single other vehicle was hit (that we could see) in the incident, and Nini saw both drivers grab their cell phones, so they were both alive. I was the next driver in the HOV lane, and had it not been for my relatively sedate pace and the great distance to the driver ahead of me, I might have slammed into that first car that bounced off the barrier. :: [ Sunnyvale/San Jose ] The motel for the first night was a total disappointment. It was poorly maintained and most features worked poorly. The air-conditioner was a window unit that was mounted in a hole in the wall, at the ceiling, and could not manage to make a dent in the hot, dense, stale air that hung inside the room. The bath was blackened in areas where the grime from thousands of dirty feet had been indifferently scrubbed, and the louvre window had a thick layer of dust with clumps stuck in the corners. The armchair smelled like a dirty woolly dog that had been caught in the rain. Their "high speed internet" was a secure wireless connection that had a whole instruction sheet on how to configure the laptop. After 1.5 hours both the Computer Engineer and the Electrical Engineer in our family gave up, and none of the staff knew anything about it: they just pointed helplessly to the instruction sheet. :: The highlight of the evening was seeing the quintessential San Jose sunset - looking east and seeing the hills tinted a dusky pink - to the west all you see is a watery non-descript amber glow. And of course the dinner at Mayuri on El Camino Real with Manas. It was wonderful to catch up again, even though he met us alone, and the food was as good as we remembered. I ended up going back three times for more charu (rasam), the best I have had in a very long time.

Yes, I am indeed messing with the dates. It seems to make more sense to let Friday's activities have Friday's date on their post. In general we had way too much fun, and reached the hotel way too late and tired to give me much time to fine tune a blog. :: We were so happy to leave the icky motel in Sunnyvale. The bed had been so uncomfortable that I got up in pain around midnight, threw the bed spread over the smelly chair and dozed fitfully in that the rest of the night. The "continental" breakfast turned out to be plastic coffee and long-life plastic-wrapped "danish." Dragging our suitcases down the stairs reeking of stale urine, across the cigar stubs littering the lawn and the green pool, we could not get out of there fast enough! :: We tried for a real breakfast at Komala Vilas. As always, the tiffin was great, and the attitude towards customers seemed greatly improved. It was the first time I had green upma - i.e. with a whole lot of cilantro chopped into it, but the result was very fresh and tasty. The sambar was true tiffin sambar, not meals sambar, and the coconut chutney was excellent. Angel Face wolfed down two entire (giant-sized) idli, and drank half of Nini's coffee. Then we did some shopping in India Cash and Carry, and bemoaned the fact that we couldn't take more of the fresh and frozen stuff back with us. And the little one was highly impressed with the fact that we managed to find "koei," her Marmite, or in this case, Vegemite! :: Then we headed South toward Monterey, with a quick detour to see our old duplex in Blossom Hill. We stopped at the Garlic Shop in Gilroy ("The Garlic Capital of the World") so that Nini could have a look at all things garlic, including garlic ice cream, and garlic and honey roasted peanuts. Strange how we change. Where before she would have been raring to try and buy, now she had only a kind of amused interest. I guess garlic really does get out of your system after a while - and she had been with us in our mostly garlic-free home for about ten months now. Not that we are fanatically anti-garlic, but I like it only as subtle flavoring, and all of us strongly dislike the after-effects. There were some horses in a camp on the hill at the exit, and the little one was over the moon, and insisted on some pictures. They were pretty far away, and while she did get her picture, I ended up snapping more of the hill, the gnarled trees, the texture and blue sky. :: Just before the Tourist Information building we pulled off at a little park with a fountain playing over a sculpture, and lots of ducks, geese and gulls. I ended up with tree gum all over my blouse after leaning across a low branch to get closer to some preening ducks. Fortunately the rental van had tinted windows, and since we had checked out of the first motel we had our suitcases with us, so I could do a quick change. Then it was on to Fisherman's Wharf where we played rubber-necking tourists, gaping at everything from the beautiful seaviews to the garden of succulents around the historic buildings. Angel Face had a marvelous time; running up and down, trying out the various benches, getting up close to fountains, climbing on every coin-operated ride, gaping at the displays and just generally reveling in the wonder of being a kid at the seaside. Lunch was at Abelonetti's which seemed to have the most options for vegetarians on offer - mpo was a little disappointed that they did not offer the mango margarita that he had for some reason set his heart on. The food was, well, variable. The pizzas were fine, but the antipasto was regrettable.

[ Thursday, continued ]
Leaving Fisherman's Wharf we got lost in town trying to find the scenic route and little park that mpo and I had visited with friends a few years ago. To my surprise, we did manage to stumble across it again, but by then the clouds had moved in much closer, and a few droplets spiked the wind. The few pictures I managed to grab has a moody quality to them.
Our previous visit had been in spring, and had made for much prettier views, including the dayglo magenta of the succulent flowers covering the entire cliff around the bay.
::
We returned to the Bay via California SR 1, which winds all along the coast for a slow drive but breath taking scenery, all the way up to Half Moon Bay, and then went to I280 to get to South San Francisco where we were to stay the next two nights.
Because the drive was slow and it was getting late, we did not stop anywhere along the way for pictures. Nini managed to snap a couple from the back seat.
::
Our hotel was far better than the one in which we had spent the previous night! The only drawback (there has to be one, of course) was that it had only one bed, a king, and a sleeper couch. Those things are medieval instruments of torture. Our best way around it seemed that Nini would sleep on the couch as a couch, without opening the bed - it was certainly long and comfortable enough for that, which would mean that Angel Face would end up in bed with me and mpo.
My usual complaint about king-size beds is that they are so big that we end up sleeping totally isolated on opposite ends, instead of cuddling frequently but with enough space to call our own on a queen. Add a little one to the bed, however, and even a king becomes too small; she seem to sleep spread-eagled and at odd angles.
At least we all got a decent night's sleep in clean, working surroundings, and the high-speed internet actually worked.
For dinner we drove to San Mateo to Bombay Garden. The food was quite nice for the standard mughlai-type place, even if the "South Indian Coffee" was made with instant powder.

It seemed as if the entire Bay area was covered in bold murals. From the window in our hotel room we could catch a glimpse of a brightly colored one, mostly obscured by fencing and intervening structures. Once we reached the CalTrain station we could see it in its full glory, painted under an overpass in the car park where the shelters are to wait for the train, a shaft of light at a random diagonal angle illuminating the image. :: The CalTrain took us in to San Francisco where we bought day passes for public transport. And then our expedition started. Catching the Muni (light rail) N Judah outbound, we went until 8th Avenue, where we caught the No. 44 Bus, thinking it would drop us close to the Japanese Tea Garden. It did not, instead stopping on the North side of the Golden Gate Park, so we decided to hike back into the park to the garden, where we promptly ran into a major construction project, with only vague indications of which way to get around it. In the mean time it was getting close to noon, and our breakfast, though much better at this hotel, was still very light and I had had no snack in between. My blood sugar plummeted and I started to feel all the signs of an impending crash: the shaking, clamminess, disorientation. Digging for my emergency glucose tablets, I manage to ward off immediate danger, but it told us clearly that we should look for a place to have lunch. Regretfully giving up the Japanese Tea Garden as out of our reach, we stopped for a few minutes to let the poppet work off some excess energy at the massive blue playground structure, before returning to the bus stand. At first we thought we would try to catch a bus going east, back to downtown, but ended up on the same No. 44, going back South of the Park. We trooped into an Indian restaurant advertising a lunch buffet, only to turn around again, since the meager choices were uninspiring. With several others to choose from, we ended inside Park Chow, a trendy restaurant with an interesting menu - all in all a good choice. :: Then back on the Muni, continuing westwards to 19th Avenue, where we went on a proper safari - even ended up going in circles - to find a bus stop for the No. 29. This bus route goes on Lincoln Boulevard along the West coast through the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, where we hoped to get some brilliant views of the bridge. And they were breath-taking! The bus made two unscheduled stops to let off other sightseers, and at the second of these, we decided to get down as well. Amazing views, but since it was an unscheduled stop, we were unsure of whether we would be able to get a bus again. We waited almost an hour for a bus that is supposed to run every 30 mins. and were getting truly desperate when one finally appeared. It turned out that the proper vista point and entrance to the bridge was less than 15 minutes' walk further along - if only we had known! This allowed us views of the bridge from the other angle as well, Alcatraz and all the touristy things like the section of the massive cable that is used in the bridge, and a close up of some of the >27,500 wires that make up that cable! :: Bus No. 28 took us eastwards, back toward town, No. 22 took us South a bit, and No. 1 took us into the heart of China Town. After browsing around a while, and gaping at the intricate details you only notice when looking up at the top levels of the buildings, we came to the conclusion that we were all knackered. We found a completely vegetarian Chinese restaurant for dinner, and then climbed the steps back up to California Avenue to grab the cable car. After all, no visit to San Francisco would be complete without a ride in one of these, right? We ended up going in the wrong direction, but fortunately since we had the daily passes, we just waited it out and rode it all the way back again to the Embarcadero where we wanted to be in the first place. :: The conductor was a jovial fellow who encouraged us to sit on the open benches after the majority of passengers had disembarked, and I clung to Angel Face for dear life after snaking my leg around one of the supports, so scared that she would impulsively lean forward and fall into the road. When we reached the terminus, the conductor invited her to ring the bell, and that absolutely made that little girl's day. At the Embarcadero we had to wait a while for the right Muni, and by the time we reach the Cal Train station, we had missed our train by 4 minutes. So, nothing could be done but settle in for an hour's wait for the next one. :: All in all a long, exhausting day, but a thoroughly satisfying one. We had missed out on two of our main agenda items: the Japanese Tea Gardens (due to the building projects in the park) and the crooked bit of Lombard Street (time constraints given the long waits for buses), but what we did see and experience more than made up for it. It had been my first visit to the Golden Gate bridge despite the fact that we had had visited there before and had even lived in the Bay area for a while, and for Nini the bridge was a particularly powerful and moving sight, one of the entries on her "Must-See before I die"-list.

Great news! My precious one had been walking up and down all across San Francisco, and had no pain. Well, he was tired, and had some aching muscles, but none of the pain in the calves or the buttocks that was a result of the occluded arteries prior to his angioplasties and the stents. This is the first real proof we've had that the procedures had been worth it. :: We decided to take El Camino Real instead of the highway down the Bay, so that Nini could see all the different communities and the way their characters change as we move southwards. Of all the sights we saw, the most unexpected and delightful was a very orthodox looking church with multiple onion domes, the main entire gold-leafed, and the smaller ones painted an azure blue with gold stars sprinkled all over. Some fast turns and crossed fingers brought us back to the spot so that we could snap some pictures - however we could not see any indication of the name or denomination of the church. The image of the incongruous domes glistening in the morning sun among the mundane houses and apartments will remain with us for a long time. :: Our El Camino trip ended at Mayuri and the Sabzi Masala by New India Bazar next door. The lunch buffet was the perfect way to say good bye to the desi milieu of the Bay, and we stocked up on a last few pieces of Indian and British/South African groceries. The best part was finding the beautifully fresh vegetables, and at bargain prices too. This meant a week back at home with fresh authentic food! :: It makes perfect sense of course to put up the maps of where we'd been and what we've done at the END of our trip. Actually it is because I haven't had the time to create them before now, but better late than never, right? It is not possible to put the maps up large enough here to see the detail, but clicking on them should open them nice and big in a new window.

I almost forgot.
We reached the airport in Sacramento well in advance of the flight. No matter where we sat down to wait - the seating area, the restaurant - we were surrounded by flies: Big, black, tenacious and extremely annoying.
At the restaurant there was a sign advertising that it was a Wi-Fi hotspot. So, out came my Wi-Fi adapter. It turned out that it was not free, and we did not think we'd be using it long enough to justify the $ 6.95 or whatever.
What made me laugh - almost helplessly - was the name of the network that popped up while I am desperately waving away the clouds of flies: "flysacramento"
::
We had rented a minivan, a blue Chevy as it turned out. Miss Muppet was seriously concerned throughout the trip however, endlessly asking, "What happened to our white van?"
Our explanations that it is waiting for us in the parking lot would appease her for a little while, but the next time we get in the van, the questions would start up again.
It must be tough to be around four years old, when you have very little control over what happens in your world; when the only thing you can do is keep a very clear picture of where everything is in your world, and what everything and everyone's role is in it.