Roam With Me! Some of my Firsts in California. Part One.

The older I get the less I like to repeat visits to places I've already seen -- unless I'm showing them to someone dear to me because then I can experience the newness and accompanying excitement through that person. So, it was an opportunity I couldn't pass up when my boyfriend and I were invited to his nephew's wedding to be held in Anaheim on July 7th. I'd never been to California; he'd never been to California -- so everything we were about to do was going to be new for both of us. How wonderful.

So, here are some of the many first-time things we did and saw during our first two days in California.

1. Meal at an In-N-Out. This one is near or perhaps still within the giant beast that is LAX, and it's quite popular because you can watch airplanes come in for landings while eating outside.

While the food was fine, it wasn't anything to write home about. I realize that many people have eaten in an In-N-Out, but we'd only heard of the chain prior to landing in L.A.





I wish I'd captured the gigantic airplane that passed over us from China. How those massive things stay in the air will always astound me. 

A lot of amateur photographers hang out where you see the people in this photo just waiting to capture a shot of the very large planes.






2. View of the Pacific Ocean. While I've seen, flown over and even swum in the Atlantic many times, I'd never been anywhere near the Pacific before, so that first glimpse was magical.

 This was taken from Del Cerro Park in the Palos Verdes Nature Preserve in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. From here we could see Catalina Island. 




We also found this little gem engraved with words from one of the best known Nebraska writers! I'm a little known Nebraska writer myself, so seeing this at an overlook of the Pacific gave me chills: 

This was taken BEFORE the killer hike we went on through a portion of the Portuguese Bend Reserve. Look how happy and naive we were. A few short hours later I pretty much looked like death warmed over, but the views were gorgeous! Me? Not so much. 






3. Meal at House of Blues. I mention another restaurant only because of the amazing piece of artwork on display there. This one is in Anaheim, near where we were staying. It's a massive piece of art comprised totally out of Mardi Gras beads, and it wraps around a tall, thick post at the bar. I was drawn to it even more so because of its Day of the Dead motif since I am a Spanish teacher. It's breathtakingly beautiful.

Look to the bottom of the pillar and you'll see the artist's name: Anna Walton, and you can visit her website at www.annanola.com to see more of her very impressive pieces of Mardi Gras bead art.

If you go to House of Blues, I highly recommend their Bloody Marys and their jambalaya -- I had mine with chicken, but it comes with shrimp, too, if you prefer seafood.









4. Views of the Hollywood sign and L.A. from Griffith Park's observatory.

The zoom on my phone's camera doesn't work the best, so I just stick to taking photos as is; however, the sign is there.

 No photo will ever do L.A. justice because it's just too big to get in one shot. Living where there are fewer people in my entire state than can be found in L.A., it boggles the mind to stare out at this huge city. It's o.k. to visit, but I can't imagine living here.

5. Celebrity sighting. Turns out it was our only celebrity sighting, but we thought it was pretty cool to see one on our first full day in the L.A. area. This was in Burbank in a mall called Burbank Town Center. The celebrity? John Ross Bowie who I know as Barry Kripke from The Big Bang Theory. Honestly, if he hadn't spoken within my hearing, I don't think I would even have noticed him, but once I did, I just had to snap a quick photo to show my kids. I cropped out his own child from this photo, and this time I did attempt to use the zoom on my phone, and as you can see, that then distorts the image a bit, but you can still tell it's him. We were enjoying our ice cream and really not paying attention to anyone walking by when I heard a man's voice that could be no other than Bawwy Kwipke's from The Big Bang. We both looked at each other in astonishment, and I caught a couple shots of him descending the escalator with his kid. Good thing, too, since he was the only celebrity we saw, but considering that I don't pay that much attention to other people, it's possible we walked right past someone else famous and I never even noticed.

6. Treatment as if I were the celebrity at Flappers Comedy Club in Burbank. We received the royal treatment by the owners, Barbara Holliday and Dave Reinitz. I met these two ten years ago at the inaugural Great American Comedy Festival in Norfolk, Nebraska which was created in Johnny Carson's honor. Johnny is a Norfolk High School graduate, and he hosted his long-running show from Burbank. 

I was a member of the committee that got the comedy festival up and running, and I was given the honor to be the host to these two zany, creative people. I kept saying that one day I'd get out to California and see the club they opened. It took me longer than I thought it would to actually do that, but Barbara not only remembered me fondly, she also gave us free tickets to the shows we attended and a celebrity behind-the-scenes tour of every part of the club -- the back entrance, the kitchen, the green room, both comedy rooms, the bar, etc. She also introduced us to her club manager who treated us like royalty. We enjoyed a great meal, some drinks, and definitely some great comedy.

This is the YooHoo Room which has an adorable stage and a smaller, cozy room for the audience. The night we were in attendance, this stage was populated by comedians from or connected in some way to NEBRASKA! Can you believe it? It was a total coincidence.

 This is Dave preparing for the open mic auditions which they do every so often. We were able to watch a large group of wanna-be comedians do their three minute tryout sets while we ate supper. Then we attended part of the Nebraska comics show in the YooHoo Room before returning to this main room for a show entirely of female comedians who had just completed a long course teaching them how to do stand-up comedy. They were all very good, and I nearly peed my pants laughing. Maybe someday I'll give stand-up a try again, and if I do, I'll go back to Flappers. It's a great club.

7. Uber rides. No photos of those except for this view of traffic on the the I-5:    I lost count of how many rides we ended up taking during our time in the L.A. area and then in San Francisco, but it was better than renting a car and attempting to navigate ourselves around the mass that is L.A. and beyond. We were initially nervous to try travel by Uber, but once we did the first one, it was simple after that. Our only problems occurred when the very first driver we had didn't speak English or even Spanish at any sort of communicable level (all the others spoke English very well or were natives of the U.S.), and when there was a glitch or a misconnection once when we desperately needed a ride and couldn't get the app to process the credit card -- meanwhile, our phone batteries were fast being drained, so I was a bit of a basket case for about fifteen minutes or so, but that's part of travel, and we survived.

To be continued . . . 

Roam With Me! Mall of America and Science Museum of Minnesota

I've long wanted to visit the Mall of America, but I just never made the time for it; however, with malls dying out right and left across the nation, I figured I'd better see it while I still could. I made a trip of it with my daughter for her birthday, and we included a day at the Science Museum of Minnesota, too, because she's a future paleontologist.

                         

On the drive up through the far northwestern corner of Iowa and into lower Minnesota, we encountered a lot of flooded land, and there were places where the water was almost to Highway 60, so I knew we'd have to find an alternate route home since we drove through rain all the way to Bloomington and there was more rain in the forecast. 

We stayed at the Hyatt Regency and immediately learned that it, along with most of the area hotels, had a shuttle service to the Mall of America and to the airport which is virtually next to it. So, we took advantage of the shuttle service and found it to be very useful. 

If you haven't been to the Mall of America, it stands four stories high with two hotels connected to it. As a whole, the mall is thriving. The only store going out of business was a Harley-Davidson apparel store, which disappointed me since I own a H-D motorcycle, but aside from that, the other stores were open, and there were a lot of people visiting each day we were there. Granted many of them were likely there for the amusement park in the middle of the mall, the numerous restaurants or the movie theater, but I saw a lot of people shopping as well. Barnes and Noble, one of my favorite stores naturally, was one of the busiest and was the only store in which we had to wait in line for any length of time, but we came away with three more books for me and one for her -- "The Origin of Species" obviously. 

During our three visits to the mall, we ate at Wahlburgers, Bubba Gump Shrimp, Hard Rock Cafe, and Rainforest Cafe. Each experience was unique, but I probably preferred Wahlburgers -- perhaps because it was the newest, but mostly because I'm a fan of Donnie on Blue Bloods and Mark in The Italian Job. We learned that this was their 27th restaurant in their franchise and that they had opened it on May 22, 2018, so we just missed seeing them by a few weeks -- ha ha. 

I don't do much shopping online. I'm old-school in many ways: I prefer actual books to electronic ones, I prefer writing notes in actual notebooks over taking them on a laptop, and I absolutely must try on clothes and shoes before I buy them, so I am continually dismayed by the number of stores going bankrupt and out of business. Even in a mall the size of the Mall of America, I had a hard time finding clothes that fit me well, but I did finally find the perfect store and attendant for me. 

My daughter, who is young and thin, had a much easier time finding things that fit her, but that was as it should be since we went their for her birthday. She came away with a very nice pair of shoes, a jacket, some shirts and a light-up glass from Bubba Gump Shrimp -- she had wanted to eat there on her birthday even though we don't eat seafood! 

If you were to ask her about her favorite experience at the mall, though, it would be the two movies we saw there. The first was Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. As I mentioned above, she plans to be a paleontologist, so she loves everything about dinosaurs and animals that lived long ago -- she's currently interning at an active dig site, so she's getting valuable hands-on learning that will serve her well. She (and I) especially liked the movie theater for its recliner seats. While she enjoyed the entire movie, I spent a good deal of it covering my eyes every time a certain evil genetically created dinosaur was eating people. Ugh. We also watched Incredibles 2 -- I never had to look away during that movie! (In the photo below, we arrived early; the theater did fill up, but it wasn't packed.)

We drove to downtown Saint Paul to visit the Science Museum of Minnesota. I picked a Saturday when I wouldn't have to deal with the traffic of many people going to work, and that was a wise decision since I missed the tiny entrance to the parking garage -- twice! If you enter off Kellogg Street, which is where the main entrance to the museum is, and you miss the parking garage entrance, you have to go around a few blocks bordered by one-streets to get back to it. Then if you miss it a second time, as I did, flip a U-ie even though there is a sign telling you not to. You can do this on a Saturday when there isn't much traffic. Ha ha.

The museum is right next to the Mississippi River, and it has grand views overlooking the river. 

The museum is a very hands-on museum with all kinds of learning activities and interactive scientific things. I'm not into science at all, but even I enjoyed it. At one station, I attempted to write my name in such a way that it would appear correctly in a mirror. This was to simulate how much brain power it takes for small children to first learn how to write. Personally, I remember learning to write as being much easier than trying to write my name on that block so that it would appear normal in the mirror! 

The paleontology section was pretty nice, and there were a number of things on display that were originally found in Nebraska. As scientists learn more about ancient life, the information about that life changes, so my daughter was a bit disgusted to see one of the placards still referred to dinosaurs as reptiles. However, the displays were set up well, and the other information was educational and interesting.

Aside from the great hands-on activities and the paleontological stuff, the museum has a tug boat on one of its decks, a GIANT astronaut and a room full of Legos that you can use to build things while admiring the scale models of important buildings from around the world formed completely out of Legos!

This was just a short trip to these two places in honor of my daughter's birthday, but they both were worth the time we spent at them. Hopefully, just as real books have not died off even though they were predicted to do so with the advent of e-readers, I would like to see malls and real stores see a comeback once the current craze and surge of online shopping dies down. If that happens, then the Mall of America will be there for many more years. I'd like to return someday to visit more of the stores I simply didn't have time to get to on this trip and maybe to ride the zip-line across the amusement park. Ha ha -- no way will that one ever happen!

Read With Me! Outtakes from Eight Years of Reading and Recording

At the beginning of 2010 I started to record the books I read in a large multicolored striped journal I bought at Barnes and Noble. I had grumbled once to my librarian friend that I often forgot the names of books I'd read, and there were even times I'd find myself halfway through reading a book only to realize I'd read it before and forgotten. (I hate to waste my reading time rereading something I didn't intend to reread!) She suggested I keep a reading journal, and I felt like a great big dummy for not thinking of doing so earlier.

Thus, for the past seven and a half years I've been recording the titles and authors of the books I read. I also give each a rating out of five stars, and I write down a few thoughts about each book. I just recorded book number 313, and I have about six more books which I'm currently reading that I'll add to my record soon.

Since this is the winter that just won't die, my motorcycle riding has been non-existent so far, and my roaming hasn't yet begun either -- however, I do have trips to Minnesota, South Dakota and California planned for my summer break, so I'll write about those at a later time -- but I have been able to read a lot while I've been cooped up inside. So even though I hate the snow and the cold weather, it does allow me ample reading time, so I'm grateful for that.

Allow me to share a few of my favorites along with comments I made in my reading journal from those 313 books.

1. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.
    "Loved it! Makes me want to visit the island of Guernsey. The characters were people I wish I could get to know in real life." ***** 

2.  Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
     "Olive is both intolerable and completely understandable -- a good person with a grouchy exterior. An aging woman who isn't ready to age (like someone else I know)." ****

3.  The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson
     "I am so sad that the author died. I would love to read more of his stuff. This trilogy was fantastic but at times confusing because of the sheer number of characters." ****

4.  La Bella Lingua by Dianne Hales
     "I bought this book while in Italy. It's about the Italian language and has a lot of wonderful information about Italy's history and culture. Reading it while I was in Italy, I learned that Machiavelli is buried in Santa Croce in Florence, so I went there while I was in Florence. I would have missed that if not for this book."  ****

5.  The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
     "There aren't enough stars for how good this book is! One of the best books I've ever read! This was the second time I've read it, and I plan to reread it a few more times. I loved that Death is the narrator, and I love his narrative voice." *********************, etc.

6.  The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
      "I probably wouldn't have picked this up if I hadn't first seen part of the movie because I'd heard really bad things about the movie version, but after seeing it myself I understood that the story, despite the sex, was a great story because it is all about how illiteracy condemns us while literacy and education set us free. The ending was disappointing, however."  ***

7.  The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
    "This novel definitely is right up my alley of interests. Imagine a Cemetery of Forgotten Books! I'd be at that place every day! Set in Barcelona, and since I've been there, I could picture it and feel it. This novel really spoke to my deep-seated love of literature and the need to preserve books. I was sad it had to end."

8.  The Hours  by Michael Cunningham
     "The author has artfully stolen the important details from Virginia Woolf's novel, Mrs. Dalloway, as well as from her own life and made her a character in his novel. The three stories of the three days in the three women's lives are so intricately and expertly interwoven. I couldn't put this down." *****

9.  Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
     "Soooooo good. I picked it up last night and finished it this afternoon. What a great character Jacob is."  *****

10.  The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy
     "A saga indeed! Very long. Very good. I read it, though, in fits and starts -- often very engrossed in it and other times not. How life's cycle goes on and we all end up in the tomb -- felt both sorry and also unsympathetic to Soames (he only wanted to be loved yet he was unlovable)." ****

11.  Silas Marner by George Eliot
      "Eliot has such a command of the language. Good fortune comes to those who wait and are most deserving of it. Really good, really sweet and really deep." ****

12.  Roots by Alex Haley
     "Really interesting how Haley was able to trace his lineage due to the fact that those few words Kunta taught his daughter were passed down through the ages. Words really do have power." *****

13.  Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier
    "Not quite how I expected it to be but very philosophical and full of thoughts that are so well expressed including this little gem -- 'There were the people who read and there were the others. Whether you were a reader or a non-reader -- it was quickly noted. There was no greater distinction between people.' " ***

14.  The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe
        "Mary Anne read the endings of books first just as I do! I feel so vindicated. Contains a great index of all the books they read or mentioned. I like this quote: 'We all have a lot more to read than we can read and a lot more to do than we can do.' " ****

15.  Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
     "Reincarnation. Cloning. Technology run amok and society's collapse and new beginnings? Historical fiction. Science fiction. All sorts of stories told in varying ways -- through a journal, through letters, through an interview, through first person narratives. A very strange read. A very good read. A very long read." ****

16.  The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
    "A true thinker's read. Loved it. I want to reread it and underline and highlight all the profound thoughts and comments." (note: I have since done that very thing) *****

17.  People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
     "Amazing! So good! The people who make and use and touch a book die off, but the book remains and, through it, so does the story of their lives." *****

18.  Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts
    "Such a good description of a library and a self-educated smart young woman who rises above the horrible life she could have had and who has a great impact on others. Always have loved the movie version, too." *****

19.  All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
      "The stories of one German boy and one blind French girl during World War II are told in alternating chapters until their lives meet up and he saves her. Soooooo good. Won the Pulitzer. I can see why." *****

20.   The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb
     "Chaos to order -- the theme interweaving stories from the Civil War, Hurricane Katrina, Columbine shootings and others into one cohesive, introspective novel. What a great author he is. A very long book but well worth the time." *****

Ride with me to clear your mind!

There's nothing like a long motorcycle ride to clear your mind of burdens. As the road opens before you, your mind also opens and lets out the bad energy to allow the good energy to flow in with the wind rushing past you.

When you're feeling particularly despondent and stressed as I was after dropping my youngest off for her first year of college, no ordinary motorcycle ride will do. No, it must be a long one on a beautiful day. Fortunately for me, Saturday was just that.

We headed south to visit my son. To get to him, we take highway 281 which runs along the edge of the Nebraska Sandhills. The highway is in good shape, and it doesn't get much traffic since it runs through sparsely populated towns that are set far apart.

As we rode, I kept thinking about the expanse of the land that stretched off all around me, comparing that to my trip to Manhattan earlier this summer. Manhattan is wonderful, but it covers an area roughly 13 miles long and 2 and a half miles wide, which makes it not quite 23 square miles. The Nebraska Sandhills are 19,300 square miles!! 

On my Saturday ride, I traversed 13 mile stretch after 13 mile stretch without seeing a single person (other than my boyfriend on his bike behind mine), a single house, a single vehicle, or even a single cow. And I was only on the very edge of the hills -- the rest reach across the state for over 250 more miles.

That open and uncluttered space was what I needed to release the sadness I'd been feeling. Out with the bad, in with the good -- as some old saying goes.

We rode along with only the roar of our bikes as company, the road leading us down its seemingly endless path. The hills rolled beside us, and they were resplendent with wild yellow sunflowers in bloom everywhere.

As I crested one low hill, my eyes momentarily deceived me, and I thought I was approaching the ocean, but then I realized it was a field of alfalfa all abloom with its bluish-purplish flowers. As the plants swayed in the breeze, it certainly created the illusion of waves lapping gently at the shore.

I kept thinking, too, as I really looked out over the land, that if it weren't for the highway cutting through the hills and the line of utility poles occasionally running alongside it, I could very well be seeing this land the way the Native Americans once saw it -- virtually untouched.

I'm not usually a big fan of the Nebraska Sandhills simply because they are such a lonely place; however, just as a rainy day or a Christmas snowfall can be comforting, so can these hills to a mom who has just watched her last child leave home. The hills and their gentle simplicity along with their everlasting quality gave me peace of mind that all would be fine.

So, I rode for hours that day, stopping to see my son and have lunch with him. He's starting his first year as a P.E. teacher and head coach. My daughter is starting her first year as a college student. I'm starting my first year without them. It's hard, but I'll keep rolling -- on and on, like those Sandhills.