California Without a Car Los Angeles & San Francisco—2001
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California Without a Car Los Angeles & San Francisco—2001 [UPDATE: June, 2009—As I gradually go back over my old travelogues, I’ll be leaving the original text intact but adding additional comments in boldfaced enclosed in brackets to expand on what was originally said. I’ll also add some additional scanned photos to enhance the original travelogues.] “For Your Intellectual Entertainment” – the paper airplane sculpture on L.A.’s green line The famous “Hollywood” sign The Redondo Beach pier A red line train in the L.A. subway [The pictures at the start of this travelogue were included in the original version, though I must confess I took none of them. This was right when the internet was coming into its own, and before I had easy access to a scanner or a digital camera. The pictures shown here were the results of image searches for various Los Angeles area landmarks. I must say, though, I did take virtually identical pictures of everything except the subway car. On my old cheap film camera, it would have been all but impossible to take a good picture in an underground station.] [More than many of the trips I’ve taken, this one surprised me and tested my pre-conceived notions. I wasn’t really expecting to like Los Angeles, but it turned out to be one of my favorite places anywhere—a city almost completely different from the stereotypes I’d had of it. I’ve been back to L.A. three times since this trip, and I’d return again tomorrow if I could afford it. I didn’t dislike San Francisco, but it was a place that rather underwhelmed me—and one I have little desire to go back to.] This summer I deserved a vacation. I wouldn’t normally have such an attitude [actually I always feel I deserve a vacation— I just don’t always get one], but I really felt that way after working myself ragged all spring. In addition to my main job at Garrigan (teaching math, plus working with quiz bowl, speech, broadcasting, and student council, among other things), I was working three nights a week at Iowa Lakes Community College. The downside was that I was constantly tired all spring. The good thing, though, was that ILCC pays well, so I was able to put together the money to do pretty much whatever I wanted to this summer. What I decided to do was to go somewhere I’d never been before—the major cities of America’s largest state. I had originally planned a solo trip, but after some discussion Margaret decided to join me for a cross-country adventure. In addition to Los Angeles and San Francisco, our trip would include train rides across the Rocky Mountains and up the California Coast. The fact that we would go by train was largely a bi-product of some unfortunate experiences we had on Amtrak a year ago. Some of you may have read my recollection of traveling out east—when the train left Chicago 3 hours late and just kept getting later en route. We ended up arriving in Boston at 2 in the morning. [Actually we got in at 1am, but it was 2:00 when we got to our motel.] After writing a polite, but pointed, letter to Amtrak, I was issued a travel voucher that covered nearly half of my fare to California. [Margaret could have gotten the same compensation, but she forgot to send her complaint until it was too late.] … And, to jump ahead, this time we had nothing remotely like the unpleasantness we experienced last summer. So we set out to explore the Land of Smog without a car. We took the train to get there and then public transportation around the cities. I am pleased to inform you that it is actually very easy to be carless in California. Indeed, in many ways it was easier, since we didn’t have to worry about negotiating the freeways, hunting for parking, or paying $2 a gallon for gas [which in 2001 was an absurdly high price]. While it has a car-loving reputation, California’s cities have very complete public transportation systems. We were able to get most places by subway or el train, and where the trains didn’t go, local buses connected easily. [Even today I’ll read articles about the “pathetic” transportation options in California. I just laugh. There are places in America with bad transit, but they tend to be in the South and Midwest. California has good transit, and it’s heavily used.] Friday, June 15 Algona, Iowa—Oskaloosa, Iowa by car Today wasn’t really the start of the “real” vacation, but it was when I left home—so I’ll start the tale here. I left Algona at 7:45am. The main view as I drove south on US 169 was of flooding on the Des Moines River. We had a severe winter followed by an extremely wet spring, and the lowlands in the area have been flooded most of year. Most of the fields I passed were brown. Some had never been planted, and the crops in others were just far behind schedule in emerging. It looked more like April or May than mid-June.. [The crops have been late this year as well, which makes things look really barren.] I really hate brown fields. In fact, I wonder about people who rave about how beautiful spring is. I think Iowa looks its ugliest in spring, with just miles of bare ground all over everywhere. Give me the green fields of summer, the golden fields at harvest time, or the white snow cover of winter anytime. I’ll take every other season over spring. I stopped briefly at Hardees in Humboldt for my traditional “good luck” breakfast—a ham, egg, and cheese biscuit. I think of it as “good luck”, because I used to eat biscuits for breakfast before going to speech contests in high school. It wasn’t really a superstition, so much as a pleasant way to start the day. Almost no Hardees serve ham, egg, and cheese biscuits anymore [and these days there are almost no Hardees left—period], but they’ve still got them in Humboldt., and I made a point of gobbling one down this morning. I headed down back roads to Des Moines and stopped briefly for a restroom break at the McDonalds in Pleasantville. Then I made my way down highway 163 to Oskaloosa. They recently finished four-laning 163, and it goes much faster than the old road. When I used to visit my brother Paul, I would always hit the brakes at Des Moines and then crawl on from there. Now it’s clear sailing all the way southward. [Even today I’m amazed at how close Osky is to Des Moines; it used to take FOREVER to get from one to the other.] I bought gas and coffee at the Kwik Shop in Oskaloosa. Gas was $1.479 a gallon—20 cents cheaper than the price in Algona, and the lowest price I’d seen since Easter. Then I made my way through Osky to my brother Steve’s home, where I had a lovely visit through the afternoon. Steve works the night shift at the window factory in Pella (about 17 miles northwest of here), and he left for work at 4pm. At about 6:00, his wife Terry, their children Michelle and Josh, and I went up to Pella to join Steve during his dinner break. We had dinner at the Pizza Ranch in Pella. I don’t think I’ve ever been inside a Pizza Ranch before; I just think of them as the people who supply the concession food at almost all the away games Garrigan plays. The pizza was not my favorite [it never is at the concession stands, either], but it was good and certainly filling, and we had a very pleasant dinner. Steve talked a lot about his job. He was unsure when he went into it how it would compare to teaching, but he’s obviously liking it more and more—especially now that he’s a supervisor. It also pays better than teaching—or at least a whole lot more than my Catholic school salary. After dinner we went back to Oskaloosa. Michelle plays Little League softball, and she had a game tonight. Terry, Josh, and I joined the spectators in the crowd. I’ve seen a lot of high school baseball recently, but Little League softball is a very different game. I’ve never liked softball pitching; to me the underhand motion just looks awkward and jerky. There are also a bunch of odd rules, like not being able to take a lead off base. The smaller base paths change the nature of the game, as do the abilities of the young players who are just learning the game. Middle school girls also act differently as players than high school boys do. Everything is a group thing to young girls. While boys will yell individual encouragement to the pitcher or the person batting, the girls did chants together as a group. Many of them were long and complicated—the sort of thing that our cheerleaders get upset about when the crowd doesn’t join in at basketball games, and they were all accompanied by rhythmic hand claps. The opposing team even did one cheer (which dealt with “r-e-e-e-e-e-e-a-lly stroking” the bat) that I could certainly take as double entendre that was not exactly appropriate for Little Leaguers.