Spring Break 2010—Part Une

I’m on a plane now somewhere between College Station and Atlanta, on my way to Fort Benning, Georgia, for Soldier Son’s graduation from Army boot camp. This alone would be a fine spring break, but it turns out to be only the second half of the break that began about this time last week, when I flew to Los Angeles to see the latest lighting project Drama Daughter put together at the Pasadena girls school where she works.

When I left LA yesterday, DD was trying to cope with the fact that I had been in her town for a week but she had hardly made time for me. This wasn’t the first time that I had made a week-long trip of it, but the last couple of times have been broken up by visits to Irvine, where one of my college chums and her wife live. So this was just the first time I had spent so much time at DD’s digs in a while.

But I had planned for that. The reason to book the trip for a full week was to take advantage of cheaper air fares I found by flying on Wednesdays, and since I knew DD would be working much of the time, I had lined up plenty of projects to keep me busy—in fact, I’ve got one on the desktop now that still isn’t done.
Still, I have to say that in my own way, I had plenty of fun with my two weeks. Ultimately, I got a lot more exercise than I usually do, and I enjoyed just being away from home. Here’s how I remember it:


Wednesday
I flew fairly directly from College Station to Houston to Los Angeles (the shortest way I’ve found to make the trip by air), arriving a a time that was horrible for DD or her Prince Charming to pick me up at the airport. I’m a strong proponent of public transportation, though, so I was fine with a chance to check out the system in LA.

I got myself from the baggage pick-up area to the loading zone for the bus with no trouble, and I soon struck up a conversation with a gentleman a few years my senior who was on his way home to Pasadena from a trip to central Texas, including an opportunity to visit one of his former professors from Baylor and a friend who lives in Marble Falls, where my brother lives. Turns out this gentleman worked his way through school picking cotton in the Brazos Valley for a family named Scarmardo, whose kin no doubt were in school with me and my siblings and our kids.

The wait for our shuttle was supposed to have taken about 20 minutes, but instead we waited nearly an hour and then took what seemed to my companion to have been a rather roundabout route to Union Station, where I was to lug my two pieces of baggage onto a train to get closer to DD’s apartment. After I stood in line for a day pass, I discovered I could hop the train for a dollar and a quarter, which I had already sealed into an envelope exactly for that trip. I hauled my gear down to the platform, only to discover that instead of taking the right to the platform, I was supposed to have made a left to buy my ticket.

Several helpful Californians pointed me back up the stairs, a jaunt I wasn’t in a hurry to make with a suitcase I knew weighed 49.5 lb, until one finally pointed me to an elevator that made my life much easier. Up I went, across to ticketing, and back down the escalator to the platform.

Sure enough, a train pulled in a few minutes later, and I hopped on as soon as the other passengers had stepped off. The doors closed behind me, and a man made his way from several cars forward to tell me I wasn’t to board the train until everyone else got off. Since I was the only person I could see for two cars forward and two cars back, I sort of thought I had done that, but apparently my perception wasn’t clear enough. The man disappeared toward the front of the train, the doors opened, and I got off. The doors closed behind me, then almost immediately reopened, and all of the other passengers and I hauled ourselves back on board. The conductor apparently was better satisfied with our performance, and the train lurched forward.

Other than apologizing to about a million other passengers for the bulky suitcase they were tripping over, I had an uneventful ride to the station nearest DD’s apartment, where I dragged myself and my baggage up to the elevator and asked rather generally how to get to the bus. A man who appeared to be in his forties or so, dressed neatly if you discount his ponytail and the bicycle he was rolling along beside him, smiled and said, “Ask me. Whatever you need, just ask.” He led me to another elevator (so I wouldn’t have to balance the bags on the up escalator to ground level), pointed me to the right place to meet my bus, and wished me a good visit to LA.

I dragged my gear across the street to the stop he had pointed out to me, arriving about the time DD called to see how my trip was going. I sort of hoped she was in the neighborhood so she could get me the rest of the way home, but I wasn’t willing to wait in the chill night air with all my luggage for the 20 minutes she estimated before she’d be able to get there. Later I decided that 20 minutes might have been the time to finish the job she was doing; I was in her apartment for closer to an hour before she or PC finally got there.

But the fun wasn’t even over yet. When the bus finally got there, the Whoopi Goldberg look-alike driver sort of growled at me that her bus didn’t stop at Hoover St, the closest I could get to DD’s apartment, but she’d drop me at the stop before or after. I hauled the suitcases onto the bus, pulled out my second envelope of change, and the bus launched into the traffic. We whizzed past several blocks to a busy intersection, where the driver barked that I could get off there or at the next one, but she couldn’t stop at Hoover. I was pretty intimidated by the busy corner with my large load that I knew I had to drag uphill anyway, so I declined that stop and took my chances on the next one.

The driver hauled back into the traffic, drove a couple of blocks into a construction zone, and started flailing her arms wildly and saying something I couldn’t hear over the roar of traffic and my own heartbeat as I wondered whether I had made the right decision or not. She squealed to a stop a couple of blocks farther up the road, and I asked how far back I had to walk to Hoover. I could almost have sworn I was looking at Whoopi as she gaped at me and said, “Didn’t you hear me telling you that was Hoover back there?” I tried again to pay her for the short trip, but I was afraid she was going to roll me and my baggage onto the sidewalk, so I cleared out as fast as I could and tried to figure out where I was.

Actually, I was sorry I wasn’t really more familiar with the neighborhood, but grateful for the construction zone; instead of having to cross four lanes of traffic on Beverly Drive in Los Angeles, I only had to cross two. I was near a 7-11 store and a couple of Laundromats, and while I was pretty sure I didn’t know how to get where I was going, I figured I ought to get moving from where I was.
A couple of blocks later, I recognized the Laundromat where Puppers and I had knocked out some washing on my last trip west, and recognizing that I still had my bus money in my hand, I stopped in next door and treated myself to a Coke. I wasn’t thrilled to be in a dive of a convenience store at night, but with Coke in hand, I felt energized enough to haul up the hill to a place where I could park the suitcase and not have to move it for seven days. I knew Richard Simmons would be proud of me for getting my heart rate up a long time before I got to the top of the hill, but I also knew I couldn’t report that I had done it without any warm-up effort at all. Just as well Richard wasn’t really interested in my personal wellbeing.

DD had carefully set the door code to something she was sure I could remember: the date of Texas independence. Which would be better if I didn’t continually mix up independence (1836) with statehood (1845). Or if I could remember that the # goes before the number, not after it. I tried a half-dozen approaches to banging on the numbers before I finally broke down and hit the # key first—about the time I figured out that I could have looked this up in her text message on my cell phone.

Puppers was happy enough to see me, and for once managed to greet me without piddling on the carpet, although she seemed pretty disappointed her Grammy didn’t want to take her for a garden stroll in the dark. Grammy just wanted to sit down somewhere where it was warm. After everybody settled in for the evening, Puppers happily curled up under the blanket with me on the couch, where we slept pretty soundly except for a few seconds when I looked up into PC’s eyes, looking quizzically at me from the adjoining sofa where he seemed to wonder how one of us had gotten there; somehow one of us had missed the memo about his sleepwalking.

Thursday
Thursday was at least interesting as “court day.” When DD took over as apartment manager about a year ago, her first new tenant was a young artist who claimed to make her living as a photographer. She had talked a good line, dad had cosigned the rental agreement, and life seemed pretty good. That lasted until about November, when the artist—who was already becoming something of a nuisance—stopped paying her rent. At first she had had a string of excuses and promises, but ultimately she had become somewhat surly and seemed to think the complex owed her a place to stay.

The complex seemed to think otherwise. At the very least, management had filed for eviction, and Thursday was the chick’s day in court. Since DD had been the one dealing with this problem, she had to show up, just in case the artist did; management seemed to doubt that she would.

She did. And she claimed that she had a lawyer, which meant either the two lawyers had to negotiate an agreement or the case had to go to court. DD had left me at home for the morning to work on one of my projects, but she took the noon break to come and get me and take me to the court house; the artist had asked not only for an extra month to vacate the apartment, but also for a couple of grand to tide her over as she looked for a new one. Since she already owed the complex more than that, management wasn’t willing to negotiate.

By the time I got there after lunch, DD had already had her eyes opened as to how important every mark she made on the paperwork really was, but she was about to pop over the gall the artist was showing in demanding that the complex take care of her.

Since I was working on a project that didn’t require a net connection, I planned to sit in the hall and work on my laptop for as long as I had a battery while DD and the lawyers put their case before the judge. The management rep had gone to his office to get the official record of payments to try to strengthen the case to get the artist out post haste, but the judge had called the case to court before he got back. I shoved my laptop off on DD, raced out of the building, snagged the paper, and ran it back upstairs while the management guy parked his car. Since the judge didn’t actually get to the courtroom for another 15 or 20 minutes, my “heroics” were something less than significant, but I had fun with my "mini-hero" time, anyway.

When the trial finally ended late in the afternoon, DD was furious with the judge, the lawyer, and the artist. The judge had granted the artist 35 days to vacate the apartment (I heard something about a requirement for her to pay something, but apparently not four months of back rent), the lawyer had made some brainiac statement about this being a “case of economic hardship,” when in fact it was a baldfaced case of a grifter trying to take the complex for everything she could get, and the artist for lying right and left about how pitiful she was. (PC went upstairs later in the evening to check on another problem and spotted her bailing out of a taxi with her arms loaded with shopping bags—not exactly symptomatic of a penniless darling with no way to survive). And DD was pretty sure that her aspirations to add law school to her future would not include civil cases like this one.

Friday
Friday was play day. DD got up and off to work in the morning, and I stayed home to work on my projects. After a while, I took a break and walked Puppers around the neighborhood. I found the busy intersection where I could have gotten off the bus, and I decided that it would have been a good stop if I’d had less luggage. The hike would have been steeper uphill, but it would have been shorter, and that’s probably a plus. (With my 50-lb bag and computer loot, I’m thinking the route I took was at least close to the best option, after all.)

Puppers and I found ourselves on about a hometown block of a busy street without a sidewalk, but the road is wide enough that I felt safe, and I found a walwayk to an old gate that looks like a lovely place for a secret garden to hide. I also have a mental note to check out the parking lot to the hospital near the apartment: Does the walkway from the hotel nearby go to the hospital lot? A puzzlement, to be sure.

DD picked me up late in the afternoon to take me to the play, which was its usual frustrating experience: the set designer always does an outstanding job, and this set was no exception; the design was impeccable, and the lighting DD added gave it just the right atmosphere. The acting, however, left a lot to be desired. The director has a right idea that the plays shouldn’t consume the lives of girls in a general-studies high school, so leaving it short of perfection is not a big deal.

He has the wrong idea about too many other things, though: every play, regardless the story line (which is likely as not to be at least odd for an all-girl high school), is always laden with slapstick, lines are “reinterpreted” for reasons unknown, and much of what is said turns out to be somewhat intelligible. The same set and the same lighting on a college campus could have been incredible. With this cast and directing, not so much.

Saturday
Saturday was another play day, but this time I didn’t really feel a need to sit in the theater again because I’d already seen it once. I hauled along my laptop and put in more time on my projects, which was really quite fine with me. Besides, the acoustics in the control room were better for me than in the theater, and I managed to hear lines that had completely escaped me the day before.
Afterward, we went to a party at one of the kids’ friends’ house, and I got to meet—and laugh with—several of them, a couple of whom I had heard about before but had never seen. One of the housemates kept refilling a bowl of homemade hummus, and as I was leaving I stopped and asked her how it was made. DD got a chuckle out of her quaint way of describing it: “the equivalent of a can of garbanzo beans,” preferably already pureed, “about an espresso cup” each of tahini and lemon juice—monitor the lemon juice so you don’t put in too much—a couple of cloves of garlic and a little salt to taste.

We were still there at two past the morning, when everybody took a break to set their watches forward, except for me, who finally gave up on trying tocalculate what time it was where I was because my watch was still two hours ahead on Texas time. This way, I got to set it backward one hour to get to the “new” California time, where it stayed until Wednesday, when I set it forward two more hours to catch up with the new Texas time, and today, when I pushed it ahead another hour to get myself on track to be on Georgia time.

Sunday
Sunday DD and PC challenged me to a round of Frisbee golf. I’m no Frisbee golfer—or any other golfer for that matter—and I’m not one to go out and play when staying at home seems so warm and cozy (and I can always find work to do). But I’m willing to go along when somebody gets behind and pushes me, so off to golf I went. DD hooked me up at first with probably her best disc, which I was no good at throwing. We had practiced a little on the neighborhood soccer field last summer when she was home, but somehow playing among the trees on the hills in a place called Elysian Park in Los Angeles changed the game remarkably. I was horrified at the idea of having to chase my disc down the side of a mountain (which in a couple of places looked mostly like a cliff to me), so I was relieved when she switched the discs and I developed a throwing style that limited me to really, really short tosses, but they went fairly straight and flat and didn’t roll down the hill so much.

I also got to where I could eyeball the general spot where they landed and stumble upon them with reasonable accuracy, unlike a parasite we picked up on the first hole and couldn’t figure out how to lose. When we first came up, I was pretty sure he was playing with a group in front of us, but when they moved on, he lingered behind. DD and PC suggested several times that he go ahead and play ahead of us, and when he lost track of his discs a time or two, we told him we were moving on and he could catch up. He somehow managed to catch up with us almost immediately every time—no way he was going to take a hint.

DD and PC had made plans with another couple to go to Alice in Wonderland that evening. We somehow managed to mix up on the connections with them, but the three of us piled into the Mini and took off to the show. I was startled by the cost of tickets since flicks are cheap back home, but I was surprised to see that large drinks and popcorn both came in giant tubs (for a proportional price, which I found reasonable under the circumstances), and both earned free refills. I probably got all the Coke I needed for a month in one of those buckets, but I’m going to have to go to rehab somewhere to break this habit, I think.

Monday
Monday was pretty much on-my-own day, so worked for a while in the morning, then took off with Puppers in search of lunch. DD and PC had lost the little container that stored sandwich bags for picking up Puppers’ poop, so I ducked into a couple of little ripoff joints in search of a suitable replacement. I found a container of something that called itself some sort of “replacement grippers” or something that looked like little plastic replacement cleats. I don’t think the real bag holders from the pet store cost much more than the $5 price tag on these things, so I was surely not willing to pay it, although I really liked the sturdy little plastic container with its screw-on top that could hang easily from a hook. I also knew I was in a ripoff store, so I asked what they wanted for it. Cleats and all, I walked out for a dollar.

Puppers and I were aimed toward a Winchell’s where we knew they served tasty sandwiches (I had had bacon and eggs on a croissant there on Sunday), but I was a little skittish about leaving her outside while I went in to order, and the Tommy’s Original Hamburgers was only about half as far from the apartment, had two walk-up windows, and would let me have all the Coke I could fit in my cup. I decided I could have lived without the chili, but then I wouldn’t have had the “original Tommy’s” experience, so I grinned and bore it. We found a back way back to the apartment, interrupted only briefly when another little dog ran out into an intersection to say hello. DD and PC seemed delighted to have a replacement bag holder that has potential to be even better than the previous one.

Tuesday
Tuesday got off to a really early start—4 a.m, in fact, when I woke up to feel the whole apartment shaking. I had experienced buildings shaking before; I grew up just a few houses from a railroad track, and I knew houses near it often rattled a bit as trains rumbled by. And I’d been in small buildings when large trucks pulled up nearby. But DD’s neighborhood doesn’t have any trains, few big trucks roll by her hill, and her apartment has 21 units made primarily of concrete and cinder blocks. I thought at one time that I heard a picture slide off the wall, and I knew no vehicle could have rattled the building that hard: I had experienced my first earthquake. I found out a few hours later that the quake was centered about 12 miles from Los Angeles and had been rated at 4.4.

Later in the day, Puppers and I got even more adventurous. I had seen commercials for a taco salad at DD’s favorite Mexican food place, and I determined we could hike to one in a little over a mile in either of two directions. I figured that a city as focused on the outdoors as LA would have a way for me to order without going in, so off we went. At one time I thought maybe we had already gone too far, but we finally got to Alvarado Street and turned right, just a couple of blocks from our destination.

I watched the traffic roll through the store for several minutes and decided I just didn’t have the heart to leave Puppers outside while I went in to order. I crossed the street to stroll through a dollar store and try to garner more courage, but that never came. A couple of street vendors tried to get me to buy fresh mango or papya, but as good as it looked, I knew it wouldn’t handle my hunger. A block or so in another direction, I found a taco wagon where I could buy any of several Mexican dishes, so I went for the veggie chalupa. Turned out to be a good choice—not as big as a salad, but definitely tasty and fewer calories.

We picked a different route back to the apartment, passing MacArthur Park and a neat church on our way back to Hoover. Hoover cuts Beverly at an angle, and several other streets angle off it back to Beverly, too. I chose one rather at random in search of the 7-Eleven where I was hoping to restock my Coke supply at the house, and was tickled that I picked the right one. Carrying two big Cokes up the hill wasn’t too much fun, but not nearly as painful as hauling the luggage, and at the top of the hill was a nice warm bath and a project to finish: not only had I read a paper that needed to go back to its authors, but DD had pulled out a stack of jam pants that needed to be taken up. Her old sewing machine isn’t in great shape, but I managed to find the marks we had made the night before and follow the dotted lines to make them meet her specifications.

That job took the rest of the afternoon and some of the evening, but DD had promised me dinner out to celebrate an early Mother’s Day. (She set me up with my first cell phone several years ago and has always paid the phone bills, so as far as I’m concerned, she never, ever owes me a Mother’s Day gift.) She was determined that we needed to do this, and she had a coupon for a really good restaurant, so we all dressed up and off we went.

The dinner was more than I could have hoped for: she ordered a salmon plate with the best salmon I’ve ever eaten, but I didn’t think it held a candle to my tilapia. From there, we went to a bar named Edison’s that looked like terrific fun, but it was closed for some reason. The alternate back-up plan was a rooftop bar at The Standard hotel, where the décor is crazy modern (DD called some of the seating “mushroom waterbeds,” which is a pretty good description) and features a swimming pool, right there on the roof.

DD had told me the rule is that women can swim there naked, but men have to wear suits. As I walked down one side of the roof to try to get a better look at another building, a middle-aged fat guy dropped his drawers and flashed the city—less than elegant, but one of the funniest things I think I’ve ever seen. I’m pretty sure he didn’t expect me to be there, but his face suggested he was too far gone to undo what he had done—ir, for that matter, to recognize it. If he hadn't so much reminded me of a couple of people out of my past, it might not have been so funny, but he did, and it was.

Wednesday
Wednesday was going-home day. I went to work with DD, where I set up her brother’s hard drive to copy some files from hers, and she finished work in time to trim my hair for me before we had to leave. We found a spot in Pasadena to get some really tasty fish tacos (who knew I’d actually like them?) before heading for the airport, then got me to the airport just in time to potty before I boarded the plane. I was tired of projects by that time, so I used the flight home to catch up on crossword puzzles.

Once home, I dumped stuff out of my suitcase and rifled through the one I had prepacked for Georgia, then slept somewhat fitfully in expectation of getting on the road again.

So it’s already Thursday, I’ve made it to Georgia, and Part Deux has already begun. But more on that later.