An Interesting Trip
...kinda like the Chinese curse about living in interesting times. We went to California to visit my dad for his 89th birthday, which was last Tuesday. For starters, I thought I had booked a flight for 7:30 am only to find it was for 7:30 pm. Oh well, not that big a deal, though I was sorry to miss a day with my dad. We got into Ontario Airport at 11 pm after a VERY bumpy flight in and out of Denver on the way. Got the rental car and drove to where I thought our motel was. I knew it was the Day’s Inn on Garvey in West Covina. Drove all along South Garvey - no Day’s Inn. Drove all along North Garvey, past the Indigo Courtyard & Suites which is where we stayed last time and I noticed their sign looked odd - kind of obscured. But no Day’s Inn. Went to one of the other motels on Garvey (Best Western) and asked to use their phone book. No Day’s Inn. Did I think to write down the address and phone number? Nooooo… So then I asked the clerk about it - he said there was no Day’s Inn on Garvey. So I asked if I could use their wireless, which he let me do. I looked up the reservation and looked a little closer at the picture of the motel - it was the Indigo! When we went to check in, I learned that they had only become a Day’s Inn the week before. They had a Day’s Inn banner draped over their old sign but at night with the light shining through it you couldn’t see it - just their old sign. At least then I knew why it looked odd. So, around 2 am (which was 4 am to us) we finally got to bed. I’d been up for 24 hours and Kate for 22.
Dad had no idea we were coming and his face just lit up when he saw me the next day! He looked good and is doing as well as can be expected. His speech is still difficult but much better than last time. Once, early on in the visit, right out of the blue he said, “I have a job for you.” I asked what kind of a job and he said, “Paint.” I asked what he wanted me to paint and he said, “The statue.” He has a little jockey statue that I painted up with his “racing silks” a couple of years ago. It had begun to flake rather badly and he wanted me to do it over, so I was happy to do that. Here’s “Omar,” which is what we call him - Omar was the name of the first jockey ever to ride one of Dad’s horses to a win.
One thing we like to do when we go out there is book a night someplace else for some time to ourselves. I found a nice little B&B in LA - Cinema Suites. We went to check in and the owner wasn’t there but she told me where she’d leave the key and it was there, no problem. But there had been a bit of a mix-up on our room - I wanted the ground floor (for Kate’s bad knee) and she had us upstairs. No big deal, I left her a note and we’d sort it out later. We spent the day at the La Brea Tar Pits (Kate really loves the place) and when we got back, everything was fine and we were settled in the ground floor room.
One of the things I was really looking forward to was taking Kate to Trader Vic’s in Beverly Hills. The last time I was there was in 2005 and it was the Trader Vic's I remembered from days gone by - an old school tiki bar and Polynesian (OK, so it's really Chinese) restaurant with valet parking right outside the door. It was also to the best of my knowledge the last place in the country to serve Mandarin pressed duck: a wonderful dining experience that I was really looking forward to sharing with her. When we got to where the entrance used to be, it was blocked off and the sign was gone. We drove around to the Hilton's regular parking, then we had to hunt for the restaurant inside. As it turns out, the Hilton has remodeled what was once a wonderful place into Trader Vic's Lounge - a tiny sports bar (three TVs) with a very minimal tiki theme: only the Trader Vic's drink menu survives, if you can call it that. Fourteen bucks for a Mai Tai made from a bottled mix? I don’t think so - I’m gonna make my own from now on! Food is provided from their new restaurant, Circa 55. We tried their Cosmo Tidbits for Two. OK, if it's for two, why was there three of everything? The crispy prawns were good, the ribs only so-so, the BBQ pork was dry and the crab Rangoon overdone and tasting more of crab flavoring than crab. We decided to pass on dinner and left, which was a mistake on my part - Kate has low blood sugar and knew she was going to be hungry later but didn’t want to go to another restaurant for a full meal. We both suffered something of an attitude attack but once she found out she could raid the kitchen at the B&B (breakfast there is DIY including cooking, which was a new one on me) everything was fine. But I’m definitely going to start carrying some snacks when we travel from now on.
The next day we drove down to Santa Monica - I hadn’t been there in over forty years so it was a treat for us both. The pier is still a carnival, but there is no trace left that I could see of Marineland of the Pacific or Pacific Ocean Park, my two favorite places as a kid - more so even than Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm. Kate waded into the water (which she always does when we visit the ocean)
and did some sketching, including this one of the pier.
Driving around looking for lunch we discovered Cha Cha Chicken, a little Caribbean food place. We had the special - a jerk chicken enchilada, a jerk chicken tostada with fried plantain, black beans & rice and washed down with hibiscus-ginger lemonade - it was great!
Back to Covina for Dad’s birthday. One of the special treats for me was seeing my Uncle John again. He’s not really my uncle; I’ve just always called him that. He and Aunt Lucy (also not really an aunt) divorced when I was a kid and I hadn’t seen him since. Aunt Lucy was Mom’s best friend and always a sort of second mother to me. But in the past few years they’ve made up and do a lot together. I amazed him with some of the stuff I remembered - his dog, Tab (which was my dog Yo-Yo’s brother) and the bike he and Dad put together for me one Christmas.
Wednesday morning when we got up, I discovered that our Netbook had shot craps. Oh well, a minor inconvenience - there’s nothing on it that isn’t backed up on one of our laptops. (I took it into Office Depot today and found that it had “lost” the hard drive. I think we’re still covered under the extended service agreement but I won’t know for sure until Monday.) Anyway, I had booked an afternoon flight so I got to spend the morning with Dad out by the fish pond.
Kate kept her distance because she had developed a doozy of a chest cold. I told her I thought she was too sick to travel, to which she replied, “BET ME! Just get me HOME!” No question, being sick away from home is much worse than at home.
The flight back was uneventful and after going the wrong way on I-29 (north when I should have gone south, something I seem to do every other trip), we finally made it home.
Poor Kate still hasn’t shaken that cold.
Dad had no idea we were coming and his face just lit up when he saw me the next day! He looked good and is doing as well as can be expected. His speech is still difficult but much better than last time. Once, early on in the visit, right out of the blue he said, “I have a job for you.” I asked what kind of a job and he said, “Paint.” I asked what he wanted me to paint and he said, “The statue.” He has a little jockey statue that I painted up with his “racing silks” a couple of years ago. It had begun to flake rather badly and he wanted me to do it over, so I was happy to do that. Here’s “Omar,” which is what we call him - Omar was the name of the first jockey ever to ride one of Dad’s horses to a win.
One thing we like to do when we go out there is book a night someplace else for some time to ourselves. I found a nice little B&B in LA - Cinema Suites. We went to check in and the owner wasn’t there but she told me where she’d leave the key and it was there, no problem. But there had been a bit of a mix-up on our room - I wanted the ground floor (for Kate’s bad knee) and she had us upstairs. No big deal, I left her a note and we’d sort it out later. We spent the day at the La Brea Tar Pits (Kate really loves the place) and when we got back, everything was fine and we were settled in the ground floor room.
One of the things I was really looking forward to was taking Kate to Trader Vic’s in Beverly Hills. The last time I was there was in 2005 and it was the Trader Vic's I remembered from days gone by - an old school tiki bar and Polynesian (OK, so it's really Chinese) restaurant with valet parking right outside the door. It was also to the best of my knowledge the last place in the country to serve Mandarin pressed duck: a wonderful dining experience that I was really looking forward to sharing with her. When we got to where the entrance used to be, it was blocked off and the sign was gone. We drove around to the Hilton's regular parking, then we had to hunt for the restaurant inside. As it turns out, the Hilton has remodeled what was once a wonderful place into Trader Vic's Lounge - a tiny sports bar (three TVs) with a very minimal tiki theme: only the Trader Vic's drink menu survives, if you can call it that. Fourteen bucks for a Mai Tai made from a bottled mix? I don’t think so - I’m gonna make my own from now on! Food is provided from their new restaurant, Circa 55. We tried their Cosmo Tidbits for Two. OK, if it's for two, why was there three of everything? The crispy prawns were good, the ribs only so-so, the BBQ pork was dry and the crab Rangoon overdone and tasting more of crab flavoring than crab. We decided to pass on dinner and left, which was a mistake on my part - Kate has low blood sugar and knew she was going to be hungry later but didn’t want to go to another restaurant for a full meal. We both suffered something of an attitude attack but once she found out she could raid the kitchen at the B&B (breakfast there is DIY including cooking, which was a new one on me) everything was fine. But I’m definitely going to start carrying some snacks when we travel from now on.
The next day we drove down to Santa Monica - I hadn’t been there in over forty years so it was a treat for us both. The pier is still a carnival, but there is no trace left that I could see of Marineland of the Pacific or Pacific Ocean Park, my two favorite places as a kid - more so even than Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm. Kate waded into the water (which she always does when we visit the ocean)
and did some sketching, including this one of the pier.
Driving around looking for lunch we discovered Cha Cha Chicken, a little Caribbean food place. We had the special - a jerk chicken enchilada, a jerk chicken tostada with fried plantain, black beans & rice and washed down with hibiscus-ginger lemonade - it was great!
Back to Covina for Dad’s birthday. One of the special treats for me was seeing my Uncle John again. He’s not really my uncle; I’ve just always called him that. He and Aunt Lucy (also not really an aunt) divorced when I was a kid and I hadn’t seen him since. Aunt Lucy was Mom’s best friend and always a sort of second mother to me. But in the past few years they’ve made up and do a lot together. I amazed him with some of the stuff I remembered - his dog, Tab (which was my dog Yo-Yo’s brother) and the bike he and Dad put together for me one Christmas.
Wednesday morning when we got up, I discovered that our Netbook had shot craps. Oh well, a minor inconvenience - there’s nothing on it that isn’t backed up on one of our laptops. (I took it into Office Depot today and found that it had “lost” the hard drive. I think we’re still covered under the extended service agreement but I won’t know for sure until Monday.) Anyway, I had booked an afternoon flight so I got to spend the morning with Dad out by the fish pond.
Kate kept her distance because she had developed a doozy of a chest cold. I told her I thought she was too sick to travel, to which she replied, “BET ME! Just get me HOME!” No question, being sick away from home is much worse than at home.
The flight back was uneventful and after going the wrong way on I-29 (north when I should have gone south, something I seem to do every other trip), we finally made it home.
Poor Kate still hasn’t shaken that cold.