Skippet's Holiday

(Only a month late.)

It is strange, remembering that I couldn’t be bothered packing. I got home from work on the Tuesday night and slumped down in front of the computer as normal. Somehow it seemed highly unlikely that my evening would contain suitcase-packing, a trip to London and a moderate amount of biped (I’ve now given myself thoughts of overdosing on biped. Would it be possible?). But, given sufficient email prodding by Keppet, I did leave home in nearly enough time to catch my train (the ‘nearly’ was covered by picking up a taxi halfway). I arrived into London, Oystered my way to Belsize Park and then remembered that a) I’d only been to biped’s flat twice, b) one of those times I’d been with people and we’d gone by bus anyway and c) the other time was a long time ago (new yooooork). But hey, I found it anyway…wandering the dark streets of London at 11.30pm while towing a suitcase and chatting to my mother on my mobile about Clement Freud (as you do). I arrived, disturbed biped from rewatching the Heroes finale and promptly redirected her into watching a season 1 VM episode. Hurrah. Oh, and I stole her ability to use the internet, which was sad. For Keppet, awaiting Heroes chatter. Heehee.

On Wednesday morning, I made biped late for work. Hurray, achievement. I also ate all her breakfast foodstuffs and set off for Heathrow an already tired but generally happy holidayer. On the flight, I had a window seat. I love window seats. Over the course of the flight, I decided that I need to go for holidays in Iceland and Canada someday. I also watched Venus and Children of Men, as well as a bit of Supernatural, and I listened to music and…I don’t quite know how it all filled 11 hours, but it did. Maybe it was all the photos I took. I arrived into SFO (glorious circle round the Bay, on the only day I saw San Francisco in clear sunshine) with my body clock feeling surprisingly correct, and made my way through immigration in super-quick time. I then looked round the Arrivals area, didn’t see Keppet, and sat down. 15 minutes later, my attention having been caught by every long-dark-haired girl who walked into the area, I realised she had been sitting across the hall from me the whole time. Oops. (I have no excuse; she does, because she was working.) We greeted each other with a total lack of affection and proceeded to the car park. Note for the illumination of others: Keppet has a tricksy habit of testing visitors. She hung back to see if I would recognise the Dream, which I did. She also hung back later to see if I would find chezbob, which I didn’t because I was apparently tired enough to forget that houses have numbers. So I had my first ride in a convertible, down the 280 in sunshine, and we must have chatted, I suppose. Oh…see, this is the reason I wanted to write this account. Despite the fact that you all shared our holiday by proxy (aka flickr), and we kept chatting on the board anyway, and so none of you probably want to hear any more about it, I need an account for me. Us. For the pads were of course not in use and thus there is no written record…and I can’t remember the first afternoon and evening already. Oh, I had toothache. That’s right. And we watched Heroes! I think. Yes, I’m pretty sure. 3 episodes, but not the finale. And we got food from Safeways and there were cherries. And roast chicken. Yes. It’s all in my head somewhere…bear with me while I drag it out, please. The Veronica Mars finale must have been this evening too… anyway, after all the television, Keppet finally decided that it must be time for me to go to bed now when we got to half past one in the morning. She nobly (and very persistently) gave me her bed, using an airbed herself. Isn’t she nice? Anyway. I think that was (finally) the end of Wednesday.

Thursday: we started the holiday as we meant to go on, establishing a morning routine.

Keppet, emerging from room: Would you like a cup of tea?
Me: *mumble*no*turns over in bed*
Keppet, relentlessly awake: Do you want strawberries?
Me: *mumble* yes please
Skippet: *exchanges tales of strange dreams woken up from*
Keppet: *turns tv on and laments there is nothing worth watching, but watches anyway*
Me: *manages to overcome gravity and sit up* *goes off to have shower* *is subtly freaked out by spidey watching me shower* *emerges from shower*
Keppet: Mm, Flying Fox.
Me: *consumes bowl of yummy strawberries left waiting for me*

If you can’t tell, I was a rather pampered guest. Anyway, we went to Draegers to get picnic food. Mm, fig and walnut cheese. Then we drove (every time I say this, it will be Keppet driving. I would have loved to play with the Dream but didn’t trust my driving skills abroad enough to even venture the idea) to Half Moon Bay. En route, I exhibited my superlative navigational skills, finding the road that Keppet wanted without even knowing where we were. At the beach, we said hello to sand, sea and flowers (some at closer range than others), ate the picnic and had cherry-stone-spitting contests (although ‘contest’ might be pushing it). The day began to haze over, and as we drove further north the fog closed in. We didn’t let that bother us, though, and went for hot beverages in a café whose name I have entirely forgotten. It had books. It also had new management who were fantastically disorganised and spent about half an hour trying to work out how to order food in. Then we walked back to the car and I got attacked by a man with a circular saw. Well, no, I didn’t, but apparently I did in Keppet’s mind and it was very amusing. We drove back to the sunshine via La Honda, a wonderfully twisty road through redwood forest, said hello to MR’s French Guy who had arrived during the day, and plunged ourselves safely back into the cool, unsociable darkness of chezbob. We emerged at the promise of a barbecue, proving ourselves highly skilled at distracting the cook so that they dropped asparagus down the grill. Oops. Asparagus and mushrooms and peppers and lamb fillets, all cooked to absolute perfection, and accompanied with wine or ginger beer, depending whether the drinker was on antibiotics or not. Mmm. And then extreme chocolate overload to finish off with. It was an enjoyable and chatty evening, finishing off just before midnight. Keppet and MR went to put the garbage out, and I sat in the yard in the dark patting Slim for a few moments (while MR confided to Kepp that I seemed very opinionated. Hmm. Perhaps I need to work on these “social skills” whereof people speak). Back in chezbob, we decided that the time was perfect for watching the Heroes finale, and so eventually got to bed no earlier than the night before. I wonder if these late nights were my influence on Keppet, or hers on me…probably mine on her given that she seemed to just want to see how long I could stay awake for before I collapsed. And every day it amazed her that I didn’t. *bounces*

Friday: our first proper day out, I guess. We caught the Caltrain into San Francisco and then proceeded to Pier 39, where we found much chocolate. Aboard the Angel Island ferry (yes, the clue to why we visited is in the name), the wind blew across cold from the Golden Gate Bridge, many schoolchildren bounced around excitedly, and I found it rather difficult to walk in straight lines (Keppet stayed resolutely seated). Angel Island itself was thankfully in moderate sunshine, and we found ourselves a bench with a view where we could sit and eat another picnic. The food was good, the company pleasant enough, but the real highlight was when we distracted the wasps by giving them a piece of chicken to themselves. Whatever the orange flavouring stuff was that Safeways had used, it had an incredible effect on wasp physiology, and they flew around in crazy spirals (but kept going back for more. Addicts). We then set off up the North Ridge trail with cameras at the ready. It was a very pleasant trail, narrow and wild enough to be interesting (most people seemed to stick to the wider bicycle tracks), and we wound around and up into the fog until we lost all sense of direction, with only the clanging of fog bells to show that there was still water around us. At the top of the hill, there were many other people and a cold wind, so we spat a few cherry stones and departed. The route down was uneventful, as I recall (except what is a Fire Road and why does one need them?), and we made perfect time back to the ferry port (via a display about how geologists think differently to everyone else). The ferry ride back was even more freezing and miserable, and in the end we had to admit defeat and go inside. However, Keppet’s hand still froze solid clutching her ticket, and then one of her fingers went purple (which lasted a scarily long time). Back on dry land, we went in search of Starbucks and hot beverages, which solved the ticket problem but not the finger one. Our final port of call for the day was the Mechanical Museum, where we didn’t let painful extremities prevent us from spending money for the privilege of hitting our hands against metal hammers, and the like. (There was of course a competitive aspect to this, which may have been the attraction. There was an ice hockey machine that was excellent fun though…like table football but a hundred times more unpredictable. And the Wurlitzer organ made marvellous noises. I wonder how much money I spent in quarters?) It being about 7pm by now, we finally gave up and went back to the train station. I lost my ticket and had to buy another one, promptly getting 14 dollars of change in quarters, and we sat in the waiting room eating cherries (I worked out that a cherry stone fills my ex-tooth hole surprisingly well). We finally got back to chezbob and attempted to thaw out with a judicious application of Angel. This actually worked surprisingly well, since we started with Deep Down, and at a particularly evil line of Wesley’s (possibly the one about taking away Justine’s bucket), Kepp enjoyed a delicious shudder before remembering why you shouldn’t do that when you’ve sat a hot cup of tea on your lap. Heehee. We also probably spent an hour or two editing and uploading photos to flickr…it certainly does eat up a lot of time when you find you’ve somehow managed to take 130 photos in the day. To bed, and as always a little light reading (Fray for me) before lights out.

Saturday: back into San Francisco for a walk through the city from the Caltrain station, past places such as Yerba Buena Gardens, where the view looked eerily familiar thanks to pad doodles, heading through to lunch in Chinatown, where there was the first tea (green, obviously) that has ever not made me feel slightly sick. Plus some very nice (and also green) ice cream whose flavour is still eluding me (perhaps pistachio?). We then climbed uphill to the guided walking tour that Keppet had booked (after much email prodding to get me to express any opinion about it). 3 hours of walking round a really very small proportion of the city, from Nob Hill through Chinatown to North Beach, but the guide was entertaining enough and certainly knew enough tidbits of information to share. Also, he said I asked good questions. *preens* We even had some sunshine for an hour or so, and my toothache finally got round to going away and staying gone. Marvellous. We didn’t do anything else in SF that day, because MR was throwing a party and we had to get back and attend (and eat food). Keppet mingled rather more successfully than I, but in the end (perhaps unsurprisingly) it turned out that we both got on better with the small children than the adults anyway. After a scary demonstration of ‘French’ singing, accompanied by guitar, we made good our escape and skipped to Trader Joe’s for more food, skirting the house when we got back and treating ourselves to Vegas and portals instead. Much more enjoyable. It’s kind of funny how we did get into the little routines of meals, tv-watching and the sofa (my side/your side, and cushions marking the boundary)…pretty fast, chezbob felt like home to me too. Which I suppose must have been weirder for Kepp than for me…

Sunday. Ah, Sunday was a lie-in. We’d exhausted ourselves with all that walking around and freezing to death. I caught up on reading the pads before Kepp woke up, and then we sat around watching Dresden Files (another morning routine) for a bit. We had a very nice group brunch with MR and French Guy (all sat outside in the warm sunshine by the swimming pool, of course). Keppet and I had decided on Alviso for our location of the day, which gained us much scorn from MR because nobody in the area goes to Alviso. They even have a saying about it. The town itself is a strange, run-down little place at the very south of the Bay, which was originally an important port for shipping goods between San Francisco and San Jose - but the slough silted up, the railroad came and the town lost all importance, turning into a tiny backwater anachronism only a few miles from the heart of Silicon Valley. The houses are all idiosyncratic (one be-columned old wooden thing, one falling-down ‘Chinese house’ from a few centuries ago, one railway carriage with net curtains…) and look like the scary people have finally found somewhere they can live undisturbed. But what we went for was the salt evaporation ponds, which stretch miles out into the south of the bay and are all manner of pretty colours. (Go to google maps, search for Alviso, swap to satellite view and then zoom in a bit for colour.) We walked along the dykes, with the north wind off the bay pushing us back at every step. The walk was technically rather boring…a dusty trail, with greenish-yellowish water on either side. But it was great for just being so different, and for the way it all seemed in a different universe from the developed, manicured feel of the surrounding area. Also, there were many many seagulls, resulting in many many many photographs. And there was tumblefoam, which was the cutest stuff. Foam built up on the salty water, just as it does in slightly polluted rivers, and the way that the wind was blowing meant that the foam piled up at the edges of dykes. The wind then whipped small pieces of it up and onto the track, where they proceeded to roll across the track, coat themselves in dust and then die an evaporative death. But small herds of the stuff would flurry by on a gust of wind, lending the whole thing a very anthropomorphic feel (a group of three goes by: mummy foam, daddy foam and baby foam). Eventually our batteries wound down, and as we didn’t have a map to show where the most exciting colours might be (answer, not where we were heading), we turned around and retraced our steps having only seen about four salt ponds. They’re bigger than they look, though.

On Monday, it was Memorial Day, so of course we chose to avoid the crowds and screaming children by…going to Santa Cruz. Hey, we never claimed to have common sense. We got stuck in traffic on the highways, and we certainly got to know the back of the Boardwalk quite well as we sat in traffic behind it too. Eventually, however, we made it down to the pier on foot, and went for lunch. I had the most fantastic seafood sauce on spaghetti (I think avocado, mango and champagne were also involved), which may have ruined my enjoyment of normal prawns forever. Sooo good. We then wandered along the beach and boardwalk, enjoying the sights of sea lions, small children playing, volleyballers, toffee apples, ghost rides, Dippin’ Dots stalls, fake plastic people and big plastic log flumes that spilled water on us as we walked underneath. And…I think that was pretty much all we did in Santa Cruz. We strolled back to the car along the riverside, looking at the pretty Californian poppies and talking of something or other. Probably tv. There was certainly an evening – and it might have been this one, who can tell – where we found yet another way to compare and contrast all tv shows. Never let it be said that 30 months of emailing will exhaust a topic… after dinner, as I was finally off the antibiotics, we wandered into town and had cocktails at the BBC (I am not sure I appreciate faux-British places abroad. I think my brain just rebels at the idea that anyone would want them…), which involved rather more silliness than perhaps two alcoholic drinks each warranted. But you can’t give us straws and cherry stems and expect us to resist the urge to have a mini missile war… we then headed home and obviated the need for more alcohol by watching Spin The Bottle (with and without commentary) – we giggled ourselves quite silly. High-brow humour indeed.

Tuesday was a family day out. Well, sort of. We were driven to Monterey by the French Guy (MR was going to drive, but trapped a nerve in her arm which made her hand go blue. Keppet’s finger promptly retired in a huff at being upstaged). Keppet and I rode in the back of the car, and if you were wondering where the title for Keppet’s blog entry came from, you can thank MR. En route, we avoided the garlic capital of the world, but instead travelled through field after field of artichokes (which made me wonder where Pratchett got the idea for the Sto Plains and their cabbages from). Incidentally, it was theme of discussion this day the way that an awful lot of things in America seem to be ‘the best in the world’ or ‘world-famous’ or ‘internationally renowned.’ It just amuses me that a country so self-sufficient and disdainful of the rest of the world should need to comfort itself in such a way…anyway. Possibly it’s just one of those Things. On the Monterey peninsula, we drove around 17-mile-drive, amusing ourselves with the way that large amounts of money ≠large amounts of taste when building houses. Truly, there were some horrible ones. There were also great views of the pacific, and many not-squirrels who were total posers. We returned to Monterey desperate for lunch, and had some rather poor quality food in a restaurant that made Keppet feel seasick (because the water in the harbour kept moving. How dare it?). After that, as flickr regulars might have noticed, we went to the aquarium. And as Keppet so rightly said, who needs special effects when there are jellyfish in the world? We rushed around trying to see as many different things as possible during our hour there, but it was impossible to resist the attraction of the jellyfish for long. Big floaty white ones, transclucent glowy trailing ones, little blue blobs, almost invisible tiny string ones and so many more. *transfixed even in memory* But all too soon we had to move on. To finish the day off, we went to Carmel, and had a pleasant wander down its streets enjoying the feeling of affluence (it doesn’t happen to me often) before consuming warm and chocolatey things in a café. And then it was back in the car to go home – by which time I’d had enough of socialising and retreated into mp3 player solitude, leaving such tasks as polite conversation to Keppet. I’m a great guest. In the evening: more food, more photo editing, more Angel, probably some more soft fruit dipped in melted dark chocolate. Why change a great combination?

On Wednesday, MR had to go back to work, so we took charge of French Guy and drove him to San Francisco. This required me to sit in the back of the Dream and, since we couldn’t get the hood to stay up, I had pretty nearly got hypothermia by the time we got to Golden Gate Park. Thai seafood noodle soup on Haight warmed me up, though, and then we felt ready for the business of the day – hiring bicycles for (the original plan) a wander round Golden Gate Park and perhaps some of the coastal area. We hired bicycles alright. That bit went to plan. Then we cycled west through Golden Gate Park, failing to notice just how much ease of downhill cycling we were enjoying. This was possibly because our bike chains kept falling off. (I was particularly fond of Keppet’s approach to a jammed chain: *chain falls off with wonderful crunching sound; bike stops and Keppet tries not to fall off* *gets back on bike and tries to force pedals forwards* *chain is now even more jammed* *Keppet looks at it angrily and stands waiting for assistance from companions*.) Anyway, the park was pleasant enough, and when we reached the sea at Ocean Beach we turned right and climbed up past the Cliff House and the remains of old swimming baths which must have been fantastic in their heyday. We then tried cycling a footpath (I really should learn this lesson) to stay with the coast around the Lincoln Park area, whereupon I promptly fell off and gained another reason to say ‘porcupine’ in the form of an ouchy knee. Shortly after this the path said it wasn’t suitable for bicycles anyway, so we had to turn and head up to the Legion of Honour building. At least from there it was a very enjoyable downhill back into the residential areas…although San Fran is very good at teaching you that ‘what goes down must come up’ rule. Next port of call was the military area of Presidio, which had the regimental cemetery and the ordered barracks that to Keppet looked east-coasty and to me looked oddly reminiscent of Sandhurst (but fewer people with rifles). On, always on, to Golden Gate Bridge, and a cup of tea for Keppet. (I had a cookie.) We had begun to die ever so slightly by this point, but revived ourselves a little by taking many photos (me using Kepp’s camera due to my own idiocy in leaving my memory card behind). It is just as well the weather was cool this day, or I think we would have expired completely. Especially as after the bridge came 1) the nice flat toddle along to the marina but then 2) the climb back up and over the hills to get back to Golden Gate Park. Not fun. Really not fun. Our little group of three, which until this point had stuck together rather well in cycling ability, splintered apart as the gradients removed any desire to allow for other people’s troubles. For some unknown reason at this point, I ended up with Keppet’s map and she with mine. Some specialised version of ‘anything you can do’? But on the plus side, I saw a private driveway which was like a miniature Lombard Street – hugely twisty just to allow cars to get in and out down the slope. It was then far further back to the bike shop than we felt like it possibly could be, even downhill, and we were starting to get worried that we wouldn’t get there before it shut. But we did. And then we found a nearby café on Haight (in semi-hippy style; run-down surroundings with Mac-toting customers)…and we were so exhausted that Keppet and I could even collapse onto each other on a sofa without needing cushions to separate us. Okay, the tale of this day is getting very long: the remainder of it, however, is simple. After a short fight with the Dream’s roof (it won), I navigated us out of San Francisco with style (as if I could have done it any other way) and back to the blessed sunshine of Menlo Park, back to warmth and food and Angel and sleep. Wonderful.

Thursday was…well, I guess it was a bit of a wasted day in many ways. Is it my fault that I’m pathetic? I don’t know. The only planned activity of the day was a tour of SLAC. Which was all fine and well (and I met the fabled x’ina who is still pronounced exeena in my head, I just can’t help it) except that somewhere between the bright sunshine and the dark gloom of complicated physics, I got a splitting headache – which turned into a need to throw up rather faster than even I was expecting. So we abandoned the possibility of going to see Stanford Campus in the afternoon, and instead I forced us home so that I could lie in the cool dark peace of chezbob, swallow painkillers and attempt to sleep it out. Which, thankfully, worked, and by the time Keppet was bored of sitting outside reading her Dresden Files book, I was just about able to giggle again. Which was nice, as this was the only evening I cooked dinner – and getting food to suit both our tastes is harder than you’d think it should be. I did however get chatted up by bag-packers at the supermarket, which…was slightly creepy. Ah well. We had curry, and we had fruit and chocolate, and we had Angel saying Toodles and Faith calling Wes a boy hostage. Hee.

As Friday was our last full day, we had planned an Excursion. After finding out that there was a Mount Tam (short for Tamalpais, but still), we really had no other option but to go in search of a River on it. It’s north of San Francisco, across the Golden Gate Bridge, so once more we dove into the cold grey gloom of an overcast Bay Area day, which damped the spirits and even needed lights on as the fog closed in on highway 1…until we drove up the wonderfully twisty mountain road and suddenly popped out of the fog, upwards. Marvellous. Who’d have thought such a thing was possible, eh? We found a car park, utilised a drop toilet, gazed a bit helplessly at a rather dreadful map and finally gave up on understanding it – and Keppet once again proved her worth by just walking up to some random mountain bikers and asking them what they thought was a good way to walk. I never do things like that. And so we set off down the Cataract Trail (there had to be a river that way, really), and had 4 hours of very pleasant walking through meadows and beside streams (and down millions of steps…and then back up them again) in dappled sunlight. Gorgeous. There were many sunbathing lizards, food by the Alpine Lake (finally finishing off the funny fig-flavoured (wow, Fs unite) cheese we had bought on day 1), a good helping of unconsciousness from Harry Dresden, a few circling birdies which we decided were eagles (they had no say in the matter themselves), waterfalls almost ad nauseam, the occasional group of half-naked men lying in the middle of the trail, fallen trees, sunny meadows and the inevitable disappointment of popping out of the almost-wilderness back onto a road. To find that we had left the headlights on and killed the batttery. Oops. Keppet in a stress is something I tend to back away from, fast, so I kind of left her to stop a passing car and ask for help all by herself, only managing to hover unhelpfully while jump leads were being fitted. And then once the engine was started I suddenly abandoned her and ran away up a nearby hillock because I’d just realised there was a panoramic view of fog-top. Yeah, I’m really useful to have around. As it was our final evening, once back in Menlo Park we went out for dinner and decided on a French restaurant, which did rather good food (and misspelled banannas). It also had many mirrors, so guess one of our topics of conversation. Pleasant food, pleasant company, returning to chezbob and relocating to MR’s house (they had gone to Yosemite so we were house- and cat-sitting) to pleasantly round off the holiday with Orpheus. I suddenly want to entitle this whole piece ‘Like I did mushrooms and got eaten by a bear’ except that it would be wholly inappropriate. Curse the lure of an amusing title.

Saturday. Sniff. I finally got round to writing postcards, and we caught the Caltrain into SF. This was a quiet journey, enlivened only by the occasional prod to reassure ourselves the other person was still around. In SF, I abandoned Keppet (with my suitcase: SF appears to have no left luggage places) in Yerba Buena Gardens while I went shopping around Union Square (I needed sweets for work and had also run out of clean knickers. Hmm). After having lunch in yet another rather excellent Thai place, I abandoned her yet again in Starbucks while I ran round Chinatown like a maniac, spending all my remaining money (which was quite a lot) and detouring to see the cable car museum…which all meant that by the time I got back to Starbucks I was a) late b) carrying a ton more stuff and c) really needing to catch the train out to the airport straight away. And so a quick walk back to Market and a hurried farewell (with a half-hug) before Keppet scooted off to see Day Watch and I exhaustedly absorbed my final sights and sounds of California before my flight home.

And that…that was it. Seven and a half pages of it, composing in Word as I currently am. It still feels like I haven’t done it anywhere near justice, though. But…you were pretty much all there with us through Flickr (I haven’t added photos to this for that reason…also there are way too many) and so I hope that any readers who made it this far enjoyed having the gaps filled in. As for us…well, we’ll just have to try to hang on to the memories of all the things I haven’t mentioned.

Bored now?