December 2009

Guess where we are!

Some months the subjects I write about don’t lend themselves to too many pictures. This is not one of them. Below, you will find a plethora of pics as this is a big ‘show and tell’ month.

"The Rock". Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay.

Lombard Street: The crookedest street in the world

California native wildlife

When I left off last, we had just arrived in Felton (south of San Francisco) having arrived from the spectacular Big Sur coastline (home to Timothy Leary’s Esalen Institute where you can go to explore your “unrealized human capacities that lie beyond the imagination”. Hey, this is California!)

Back in Europe?
No, this is San Francisco's
Palace of Fine Arts

California Redwood trees

Burned out interior of Redwood tree.
Some are big enough that we have driven our car right through

We walked through the giant Redwoods in Big Basin, spent a day in Carmel with a lunch stop at Clint Eastwood’s restaurant “The Hogs Breath Inn”. Spending a couple of days in San Francisco revisiting old haunts on the Presidio where I spent 3 years as an MP (Military Police), we headed south and drove by our old theater in Buelton (the theater was built specifically for the stage show I performed there for a couple of years in the mid 90’s)

Patrolling the Presidio in 1976

Clint Eastwood's 'Hog's Breath Inn"

For our second week, we stayed in Newport Beach in a lovely cottage where I am writing this sitting at the desk in our bedroom on the second floor facing the crashing waves of the sea. We were joined for the week by our daughter Kami who does ‘set dressing’ for the movie industry, while she was on a break from a TV show she has been working on for the past couple of months.

California surfers

She is particularly difficult to get to visit as she is often working 12-14 hours a day on set and we plan our arrival and departure to Los Angeles as much as 11 months ahead while her schedule is determined as little as a week in advance.

Kami with us in Newport Beach

We also drove out to Hemet where my mother lives and brought her back to ‘our place’ for a few days. Kami had been planning Thanksgiving dinner for some time and cooked up a storm for days in preparation. We were also joined by a couple of her friends for dinner.

"Our" home in Newport Beach.
Janice and Kami on upper
bedroom deck

Newport Beach is a real upscale beachfront community with multimillion dollar homes facing the Pacific Ocean on one side and a large bay where they can dock their yachts at their private docks on the other. Having had our fill of life in the fast lane, we turned our rented car in and flew to Paris.

Bonjour mes amis

French dinner parties, where the wine
and laughter flow in equal amounts.
Well, almost equal amounts.

Having had an uneventful flight over, we rented a car and drove the 6 hours across France to our house. As always, we spent the first week on sleeping pills getting our bodies back into the zone, as in the ‘time zone’. Still, in the first 10 days we re-stocked the house, put our Christmas tree up, had 2 dinner parties and were invited to two others. There is a real sense of having to ‘catch up’ on the social scene when we arrive.

Chateau on Island in
background at nearby beach.

Just to get the season off right, I cut a hole in the tile floor by our front door and recessed a commercial entry carpet to stop us all from walking in with wet shoes. It is often wet here during the winter and since our front door does not have a threshold it always caught on the floor mat.

First cut a hole in the floor...


Next, dig it out,
lay some cement,
frame it in stainless steel
add commercial floor mat
and TA-DA!

Within minutes of our second dinner guest’s departure, we began one of the principal projects planned during our stay here by smashing a 4 'X 10' (1.3M X 3.20M) hole in our dining room wall. It's a recessed area actually, where I will install some twisted, gnarly and warped beams to enhance the old world look of our dining room area. I know, I know... you just have to be here to appreciate this kind of stuff. Just reserve judgment until you see the finished product, OK?

Cobbler making wooden shoes

Speaking of old world, we dropped in on a cobbler who was making wooden shoes. I know I have mentioned that we are in the back hinterlands of beyond in France, with some homes in our village still having dirt floors. This is old world France, the real deal. It is quite a juxtaposition that we can have high speed trains, DSL internet and... neighbors with dirt floors. I was not BULL...eh...'fooling' you.

Finally, just so I don’t get bored, I started hand forging a set of fireplace doors to take back to the Island. I will make sure it falls just below 50 pounds (23 K) so that I can fly it back with us in May. I am here to tell you that this is one miserable place to be if you’re lazy! We have several more projects to do in the next few months and need to get cracking as we have friends visiting from Canada later during our stay and we will be traveling around the continent for a month in the Spring ourselves.

Au revoir.