Month: August 2018

Rugby and Sea Lions

In this post, I am in the second stage of the holiday; between San Francisco and Lake Tahoe.  I get to see the Rugby 7’s and quite a bit of the city whilst wandering around the shops with the pups.

The  beautiful copper covered Zoetrope “flat iron” building in North Beach https://www.cafezoetrope.com/introduction

Following an amazing few days in Yosemite, we high tailed it out of the park and away from the smoke as more and more of the area burned.  At the time of writing, some four weeks later, the fire, which is now referred to as ‘the Ferguson fire’ has only just been brought under control and over 94,992 acres burned.   The situation was so bad, the fire actually grew by 8,000 acres in one day alone.  Sadly, parts of the Yosemite national park were also closed for several weeks to tourists according to the National Park Service.  But, at least we got to experience a small part of the park.

The size of the fire, with half dome – the location of our campsite at the 2 o’clock position

After barely time enough to return the hire car and do the laundry, we were into the San Francisco 7’s.  My friend Alan is the rugby fan and not only used to play but can also hold a sensible conversation with other people about tactics and comparing the individual players.  Sadly, it’s all I can do to remember the beer order and transport it back to the stand without spilling it.  This is my first return to watching 7’s rugby having been the subject of a domestic ban following the Hong Kong 7’s some years before.  It wasn’t so much that I had been badly behaved, but some photographs of me looking rather dishevelled had appeared on social media and it was felt that I had better not go again.  I had no serious expectations of avoiding a similar expose this time, but I was in slightly more polite company and I felt that the rugby might feature more largely than the partying.

The matches, which are 7 a side and last for 7 minutes per side are fast and furious and are watched by a surprisingly large number of fans who travel around the world to watch the series.  The San Fran 7’s was held at the AT&T stadium at the home of the San Francisco Giants, the local major league baseball team and their stadium is located right on the bay in the south beach neighbourhood.

Approaching the stadium and feeling very excited.

As you can see, the ball park doesn’t look too bad and during the baseball season the yachties sail right up to the stadium and try to retrieve any balls hit right out of the park and into the bay.

Taking a quiet moment to contemplate how much I love beer on the edge of San Francisco bay 

Having unsuccessfully played ball sports at any level, I am always impressed by anyone who has reasonable hand eye coordination and can chase a ball without falling flat on their face. Don’t get me wrong, I can shoot a running rabbit or a flying pheasant, but can I hit a ball with a stick or catch one whilst on the run? Nope, not a chance.

As you can see, the 7’s is quite well attended…

Rather like at the Hong Kong 7’s, there are a number of characters who all vie for the cameras eye and to end up on the giant screen.  They generally dress up and play up and I was pleased to see that there was a ZZ Top looking cowboy in assless denim chaps.

He got rid of the chaps later and happily danced around just in his denim jocks, becoming more and more sunburned as the day went on.

But not for this cowboy I suspect…

There was hugely muscular bare chested Samoan with long crimped hair and a flower behind his ear, doing a traditional dance every time his team scored and a bare chested man in an avocado suit with his pot belly representing the seed wandering around.  I’ll spare you pictures of them.

The one thing you don’t want to do at the 7’s is fall asleep in the stands.  One  tired and emotional young man, who had been drinking the ‘almost beer’ that some Americans drink and he had a power nap.  Graciously, the crowd had a whip around to find empty beer cups to keep him company.

By the time he woke up, the tower was three times as high and he received a huge cheer from the crowd.

Australia was out pretty quickly unfortunately, but England made it to the finals only to be beaten by New Zealand (33 to 12) clearing the competition out of the way, NZ also won the womens 7’s after beating France.

The next day, the pups took the train back in to the city and I hired bicycles so we could ride up the waterfront and on to Pier 39 to see the Sea Lions loafing around in the sun.  The original intention was to ride up and over the Golden Gate bridge, but we struggled to fit that in with various shopping requirements- there’s a great Levis shop there…  Apparently the Sea Lions  arrived just before an earthquake in the bay area in the late 80’s and have stayed, in fluctuating numbers ever since.  They make a lot of noise and are pretty smelly, but everyone loves them.

No sun screen needed, just throw fish…

Lake Tahoe came next (or thereabouts) and courtesy of our lovely friends, we had somewhere special to stay.  More later.

Jerry.

 

Sorry, not sorry

Recently, Mrs Jerry and I travelled to the US with two of the litter for a holiday.  For me it wasn’t an especially long flight at 17 hours, but aside from being fed up with sitting down at the blunt end of the plane, I knew it would potentially be challenging for the rest of the mob, so I used my many frequent flyer points with Qantas to upgrade us all.  That went down very well and the pups made the most of the very attentive attendants who were happy to run back and forth with drinks, noodles and chocolates as we snoozed.

The best part of a Qantas flight is and has always been the staff and not usually the planes themselves, which on the long haul flights, are often quite tired. The attendant was at pains to point out that although the planes were pretty ‘well worn in’ (see the in flight repair picture below), the engines were in GREAT shape…

Foil wrappers from the meals and their sticky labels holding the patches in place…

We all arrived in pretty good order and contrary to our expectations of being strip searched and genetically tested to makes sure we had no Mexican heritage at the border, we made a smooth transition through immigration and customs to the arrival area.  I noticed that the usual crowd of happy Latino workers who usually ‘bus’ the luggage trolleys and keep everything running smoothly were missing and I mentioned it to one of the ground crew in passing “sorry about that” he said, “we’ve lost a lot of our casual staff recently as they’ve all been deported”. Without having time to ponder that,  our lovely friend Alison (herself a British export) was there, she picked us up and ran us all out to Los Altos, a very nice town in the hills.

Within seconds and totally unbidden, she laid into President Trump and his behaviour (according to the media, he’d been disrespectful to HM) during the recent UK visit.  That really wasn’t necessary of course, because I know all about having embarrassing ‘uncles’ and aside from the scale of the presidential problem and the small issue with control of thermonuclear weapons being in the hands of a narcissist, surely things couldn’t be that bad?

Our plans for the long-awaited holiday included several days partying and shopping in Los Altos, then driving out to Yosemite national park, hiking around to see the sights, popping over to Lake Tahoe and then slipping back into the San Francisco to watch the rugby 7’s.  I can’t play to save myself, but I am fairly proficient at the apres ski, so to speak.   We then had a week down at resort outside Tucson, Arizona to dry out – “It’s a dry heat, so they say…”.  I’m going to break the various phases down in a couple of posts,  as it would be a bit tedious to describe it all in one hit.

After an ‘interesting’ drive; with me being tired, slightly hung over and driving on the wrong side of the road, we arrived at the visitor centre at the park entrance.  Amongst all the signage warning against feeding the wildlife we discovered that there were significant forest fires burning at the Southern end of the park and that because of road closures, we wouldn’t be able to reach our booked and paid for accommodation outside of the park without an extra four hour drive.  The wonderfully helpful gentleman in the park office went above and beyond the call of duty to suggest alternatives and after battling with an awful central booking service phone line, he managed to get us into a ‘glamping’ site within the park, thereby avoiding us sleeping in the car and probably being eaten by Yogi. The visitor centre helpfully screens a video showing a very large bear smashing its way into a car and trashing the inside in its hunt for food.  It actually looks over its shoulder at the camera with a wry expression that very clearly says’ f**k you, I’m a bear, what are you gonna do about it?’

Part of half dome.  The part we could actually see…

Checking into the tented village at ‘half dome village’ in Yosemite was a reasonably painless experience, although all the signs about locking your food away from the bears were fairly sobering.  Apparently several people a year are either eaten by bears, washed away by the swollen rivers in spring or they fall off cliffs – probably while taking selfies.  The person checking us in gave us a safety brief and upon deducing that we were originally from the UK was also considerate enough to offer another apology about the smoke and state that she ‘hadn’t voted for him’ upon our departure to the tent.  She didn’t say why, but we did hear the term “Trump dumpster fires” mentioned.  I smiled dutifully then, but I couldn’t quite figure out how the 45th President had found the time to toss matches around in rubbish bins, but I now understand that it’s a term generally used to describe his chaotic administration.  

A very sleek and pretty Coyote passed us in the car park and I noted quite a few “not my president” bumper stickers on the ridiculously large gas guzzlers parked there.  The kids complained that I hadn’t hired one of those with a “Duke’s of Hazard” horn, which would have been much more fun.  I just can’t win. 

With Ms Jerry Jnr being asthmatic and suffering from a sore throat and a tight chest, It didn’t take too long to find out how much the forest fires elsewhere in the park were going to impact our visit and it was obvious that many of the best sights were going to be at least partially obscured.  Not so we would have noticed if you look below.

Mirror lake, with a hint of haze – more like a flooded meadow outside of the spring melt.

After having watched the youngest pup do back flips on camera for a while we made a run to ditch an armful of rubbish that had been thoughtlessly scattered around the pristine meadow in its proper place – the bear proof bins, some 200 meters away.  Rubbish, especially plastic water bottles are a problem for a number of reasons.  Back at the tent, we sealed anything that could be considered edible by a bear (food, soap, shampoo etc.) into the steel footlockers outside and tried to get to sleep in the ‘posh tents’ which was challenging due to the various crying babies and groups partying late into the night around us, but at least we didn’t have bears trying to get into the tent, so that was good. 

The movement of tourists is well-managed within the park and there are shuttle buses to get from point to point.  Aside from several different kinds of Squirrels that were everywhere, cryptically staring at the people and hoping that they’d drop lunch on the floor, we passed a healthy and not at all shy pair of deer grazing in a meadow before trekking out to Bridal Veil falls.

The lower part of the falls with the kids ‘pool’ hidden from view

It’s a bit of a tourist trap, with hundreds of Grockles* milling around taking pouty pictures with the falls in the background, but besides the smokey haze it was absolutely spectacular.  It was also fun for the kids who disappeared up the rocks and towards the deep and very cold pool at the bottom of the falls.  The youngest pup who is seriously into parkour filmed himself  leaping between huge boulders and into the pool at the bottom. After they had been gone over two hours, I was despatched to find and bring them back.

*Grockles = a slightly derogatory English west country word for tourists

We were running out of time to get back to San Francisco and more liver abuse, so I dutifully did so, surprising them with my carefully hidden ability to climb despite two bung hips.  I had visions of making like Forest Gump in the ‘run Forest run” scene when his calipers explode into the air, only my metalwork would be bursting through the skin.  Why is that kids think that parents have never climbed a tree or done anything remotely adventurous and are shocked when they see them doing something active?  Upon reflection, I’m pretty sure I thought the same thing about my parents, so I’d better not say anything… 

Driving out of the park, we actually saw Yogi, or at least his big brother.  Apparently Grizzly Bears no longer live in California, but there are plenty of large Brown Bears in the park and he was mooching around in a meadow.  Even from a couple of hundred metres away, he looked huge and not at all concerned about anything.  Seeing him capped the experience for us and Yosemite really lived up to its reputation.  I could have spent a week there, avoiding bears and tourists, just hiking the various trails.  But, back to Los Altos and the San Francisco 7’s.