Foolish Questions

I got a new iPhone 4S last week because, as fate would have it, my original contract with AT&T expired, just this month. And I just happened to be in an Apple store when I discovered that said contract had expired. And I also just happened to have some cash left over from my allowance. And the iPhone 4S has Siri which I just had to have. Pretty much a perfect storm of serendipity (or would that be Sirindipity?) So, even though I spent the last two years cursing AT&T at every possible opportunity, praying to the Great Old Ones for even one paltry bar, and attempting, unsuccessfully, to sacrifice virgins to Shoggoth (heh, joke was on me – Shoggoth doesn’t want virgins, it’s perfectly happy with some shrimp) for the vanishingly small chance of completing a call without it dropping, I re-upped for a couple more years. With AT&T, again, which I decided really stands for Aggravated Torment and Torture.

Now I have Siri. She talks to me, and answers all my questions, even the silly and inane ones. And she does it without once telling me to go look it up myself. This is better than Mom! Well, not really, as Siri hasn’t the ability to tuck oneself in, nor fold oneself’s laundry, but then my Mom didn’t do that either, at least not after the age of ten when laundry and bed tuckage became our own responsibility.

Siri is but one step in the direction of the technologically enhanced civilization that I was promised all during my childhood, the one where I folded my own laundry and tucked myself in at night. I still don’t own a flying car, nor a jetpack, there aren’t any orbital colonies or Moon bases, and I don’t have a robo-chef in my house yet. But I finally have an automated personal assistant that replies to my queries and better yet, takes dictation. So questions that have vexed me, and other great thinkers throughout history can now be answered. Such as where the nearest Starbucks is located, and what time the next showing of Transformers Nine: We Blow The Holy Bejesus Out Of Shreveport, will be at the local mega-multi-cineplex.

Or let’s use a hypothetical situation such as when I’m standing in the Safeway, and cannot remember if the hair color Mary wanted was Medium Chestnut Brown, or Medium Reddish Brown, and nor whether she has Normal, Oily, Dry, or Chemically Treated Hair(?). I could just whip out the iPhone, access the phone dialing program and input our own home phone number, a numerical sequence which after six years of living at the same address, I’m reasonably sure I remember. Or I can call Mary with the assistance of Siri using only voice commands like, “Call my wife,” followed by “Call Mary. Not Merry, call Mary! No, damn it – not callmary, call Mary Waring. Call Mary Waring on her office phone! Call Mary Waring on her office phone right now or we’ll see if an iPhone can fly! Can you fly, Siri?”

So maybe there are a few bugs left. And in light of that, when the first flying cars do eventually come on the market, I may wait till version 2.0 goes on sale.

Back on the road, again. Surprisingly, driving east to west across the middle of California is really no more scenic than driving west to east. Who’d a thunk it? Today’s trip would see us departing the wonders of Yosemite and arriving at the brand new wonders of Big Sur. Between us, Mary and I have lived in California for a period that can be counted in decades, if you want to count it like that, which I don’t. So suffice it to say, we’d been around the Cal block a few good times, and yet neither of us had ever been to Big Sur. And after perusing the prices, I can see why.

If you’re not driving either up or down the coast to Big Sur, you’ve really missed out. On the Pacific Highway, the scenery is pretty spectacular in a heart-stopping kind of way. Along the coast, the highway is subject to frequent landslides, incredibly sharp curves, and of course the biggest scourge of all – other people. Who think nothing of skidding to a halt so they can take a quick picture of a rock in the ocean, because when do you ever see something like that, right? Well, we didn’t do that drive, at least not until the last twenty miles or so. No, our drive was mostly though another big band of industrial agricultural land, so pretty much deadly, deadly boring. Though we did get a chance to go through Gilroy, Garlic Capital of the World, so we have that. No garlic festival today, so no garlic ice cream. I am a sad panda, for many, many, more reasons than a lack of garlic ice cream.

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We moved into our new cabin today – now with significantly less skunk. The rooms in the main lodge are fine, but the cabins are a little bigger. We did notice though that at the humidity in the cabins seem to be quite high – all our clothes feel like they’re a little bit damp. No matter, the great outdoors beckons, along with fresh air and vigorous exercise.

For the next three days, I hiked here and there and round about Yosemite Valley admiring the views, scaring the wildlife and trying not to step in the horse manure. I promised Mary I would not try and hike up Half Dome or anything even remotely dangerous. So I kept to the valley floor, where in many places the trails are paved, or at least they were back in the days when people took long nature walks in three-piece suits and long skirts. Unfortunately, the valley floor trails are also where the horsies hang out, so you have to watch where you step

Meal options in the Valley are kind of limited. We did breakfast and dinner several times each in the main dining room of the lodge, primarily because it didn’t require driving anywhere. The main dining room is quite magnificent in a baronial hall kind of way, and as we come to expect from National Park eateries, the food is fair to middling, with one or two standout items. Perhaps we’re just food snobs, though I prefer the term, epicures. I think in the case of places like Anwahnee Lodge, and the El Tovar in the Grand Canyon, the high prices are only justifiable due to the location and historical ambiance. We did mix things up and ate once at Yosemite Lodge, which wasn’t nearly as impressive a lodge, nor a dining room, for that matter, and the food was around the same quality, though a bit cheaper. There is a fairly comprehensive grocery store in the valley, so it is pretty easy to put together a picnic lunch, as we did, to take with you and consume while you admire the scenery.

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Road Trip, at last! Granted not an epic road trip, like many eons ago when I was but a youth, days when I could drive straight through from Ohio to New Orleans in one magnificently insane eighteen hour long expedition. And that was back before there was a Starbucks on every corner, before Red Bull gave you wings, when the only caffeine you were able to score was from pots of dark, black, bubbling crude in truck stops. The kind of stuff that would simultaneously sear your throat lining while corroding a hole through the lower intestine. The caffeine only played a small part in keeping you awake – it was mainly the pain that kept you going.

Anyway, those days are far behind me, is most of gastrointestinal system. Now we drive in comfort, granted that comfort is a sedan, although we did plump for the retractable hard top. October in central California and all, so we figured to take advantage of the sun and the smog. It’s already snowed three times back home in Colorado, so why not one last glorious sacrifice of skin cells to the Sun Gods?

As an aficionado of the road trip I have to say the drive across the state from Napa to Yosemite Valley, is for lack of a better term, boring. Very boring. Also somewhat tedious, a bit dull, with however, a small serving of monotony to help keep things from getting interesting. Our journey along smaller state highways, with at least one diversion along gravel farm roads, meant that we missed out on the big city lights of Stockton and Modesto. Something else I guess I’ll have to add to the bucket list.

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Another day. More wine. Another driver. Interestingly enough, most of the drivers we’ve met on this trip, seem to be transnational imports. Yesterday’s driver was a French émigré. Our taxi driver last night was originally from Russia. Today’s driver was, disappointingly, an American. Damn Americans, always hanging around in their own country, taking jobs from interesting immigrants.

Of all the stories our friendly drivers have told us though, it’s the American’s that wins, hands-down. In conversations with him we learned about a cheese called casu marzu. Now I love cheese. I love cheese in all its manifold and diverse glory, runny cheeses, hard cheeses, smelly cheeses. As a matter of fact, I was reasonably sure that there wasn’t a cheese on the planet that I wouldn’t at least try, if only to say – yep, I ate that. Until now.

Casu marzu is a sheep’s milk cheese from Sardinia, and why our driver knew all about it I cannot say. He didn’t seem to be of Sardinian extraction, though since I’ve never knowingly met anyone from Sardinia, how would I know. Anyway, this cheese is deliberately (and here I’m pretty sure there has to be some international proscription against this, much like the Geneva Convention) infected with the eggs of the cheese fly. Did you know there was a cheese fly? I didn’t, and I can safely say I could have gone through life in blissful ignorance of this factoid. The eggs hatch into adorable little cheese-fly larvae, also know as maggots. Hundreds and hundreds of maggots that then start to eat their way through the cheese, the byproducts of said consumption, helping to break down the fats in the cheese making it really runny. And the odor, did I mention the ripe, putrescent odor?

Here’s another fun little fact. Cheese fly larvae, or maggots can leap up to six inches when they are disturbed, like when someone slices into their reeking, seeping cheesy home. So casu marzu, as well as being a top ten entry into the Guinness Book of Things Human Beings Were Never Meant to Eat, also gets credit for the first and only cheese (that I know of, or that I ever want to know of) for which the use of eye protection is recommended while consuming. Did I mention that apparently, in Sardinia, the only place on the planet that actually contains people willing to eat this atrocity, casu marzu is illegal? So even if you are clinically insane enough to actually want to eat this cheese, you have to break the law to do so. Now, if you don’t mind, I have to go and give my brain a good harsh scrub with a steel wire brush, some bleach and a healthy dollop of sulfuric acid.

Two days of sampling wines and I appear to have reached my personal limit. They all start to blend together around that point, and the only thing that really stuck out at the end of the day was that we drank sparkling California wine produced by Tattinger that was actually quite good. Not that the other wines weren’t good – they were fine indeed.

A quiet evening tonight, since on the morrow we’ll make the drive across the state from the valleys of California wine country to the mighty Sierras. A day in the dry Central Valley heat is just what we need to dry out our wine sodden cells.

Refreshed, after a good nights sleep aided and abetted by a surfeit of mussels and wine, I awakened ready to face an arduous day of wine tasting. Make that a half-day, because we planned on sleeping in (see mussels and wine, above), and because Mary planned on getting a deep tissue massage, which frankly, sounds more painful than a completely voluntary experience for which you pay should be. So I pottered about reading newspapers and drinking coffee, building up a caffeine bulwark against the day ahead.

Then we went a-drinking, but in a socially approved manner because we hired a car service to transport our slightly inebriated carcasses from one winery to another. This is something I recommend highly unless you have a family member who 1) doesn’t like wine or 2) doesn’t drink at all and yet agreed to come along on a trip to Napa, which personally, I would find highly suspicious. Most of us are not lucky enough to have inexplicable yet abstemious relatives to bring along as the designated driver so we find it’s safest to contract out this exacting task. On the other hand, if you want to pay a visit the Napa Police Department drunk tank go right ahead, I’m sure the experience will be interesting and the denizens engaging.

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It’s that time of the year, again! The Annual Autumnal Road Trip Spectacular Extravaganza and Fish Fry! Though this year, sadly, just like the last several years, cholesterol levels have resulted in the cancellation of the piscatorial frying part of the Extravaganza. For this year’s version of the vaunted road trip or as the French call it Le Road Trip, we planned on going a little farther afield then in years past. Ostensibly we’d start in Colorado Springs, but then we’d immediately fly to San Francisco. From there we planned on a couple of days in Napa, swilling vino. Sorry, conducting sophisticated wine tastings. Then off to Yosemite National Park for some semi-rustic outdoor nature communing. Then a couple of days, that will seem like years, among the people who invented self actualization, some thousand or so years after the Buddhists, in Big Sur.

We arrived in SF early in the morning, giving us plenty of time for the oh, so inevitable breakdown of Skytrain (When You Absolutely, Positively Don’t Need To Get There In Time), the terminal monorail system. Eventually we acquired our rental car and proceeded downtown, the radio tuned to some jazzy classics, cause that’s how you roll in San Francisco.

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So, it may have come to some people’s attention that I have been remiss of late in updating my blog. In my defense I have to say that I have no defense. Except, well, my pet parakeet died. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. Tragically.

Now I don’t want people getting the wrong idea that I’m the kind of person who has a pet parakeet – you know, one of ‘those’ people. Actually, I’m not sure where in the gamut of pet owners, parakeet owners lie. Like at one end of the range are people who have a goldfish and at the other end there are the people who own a kraken. Or a Chihuahua. Casting it a bit more narrowly I believe that parakeet owners lie somewhere between cat ladies and those people that own several dozen exotic (exotic = animals that will pull your arm off and play with it like a beloved squeaky toy till they get tired of that and eat it). I fail to understand the kind of emotional need people have to own an animal that considers you a tasty snack. Why not go and throw yourself underneath a Zamboni? The results are much the same and look at all the money you’ll save on pet food.

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So I caught a few minutes of the new Pan Am show on ABC. I give the show a solid – meh. I did like the uniforms the then-stewardesses wore. I know, I know, I’m a caveman, ooga, ooga. And the terminals looked spiffy, amazing what computer graphics can do. I did notice though that there were a few details that seem to have been ever so slightly gently swept behind the curtain.

Like back in the early Sixties, well, you’d only be flying if you were in the top five or ten percent of the income bracket. No $29 specials to Vegas for a wild weekend of debauchery, or $175 flights home to the family for spring break. Or like the fact that everybody, and I mean everybody smoked. Constantly. In the air, on the ground, in the toilets (take a look, in some of the older aircraft you can still find the ashtrays in the restrooms). There was no In Flight Entertainment system unless you meant a chess set, or assembling a jigsaw puzzle. This video from the ancient past, reveals some of the secrets of this near mythical time.

Of course, everyone gets lobster, or steak, or lobster and steak. I wonder if the little girl in the video also got lobster with her meal? Probably a Rob Roy and a Chesterfield, too. It was the Fifties after all.

Wonderful as all that sounds though I kind of like the present age of flying with lie-flat beds in first and often in business class. With honest to god sheets and a duvet. The food’s not great, but it’s not bad, in the front of the plane anyway. Even in the back they have snack packs, which when you get right down to it are an acceptable substitute to the old grey mystery meat that’s been heated and reheated till it has long past any resemblance to an actual food product. I can pick from several dozen movies or TV shows on many airlines, even in coach. And no matter where I sit, I am free, free forever, from the stench of unfiltered cigarettes.

Of course, it’s a rare person nowadays who dresses as nice as they do in the video or on the TV show. Still, an eight hour flight in a jacket and a tie (even a bow tie, and bow ties are cool), doesn’t seem all that elegant and charming.  So I guess I’ll stick with my horrible 21^st century flying, looking back wistfully and longingly to those golden days of yesteryear when men wore uncomfortable clothes all the time, the women were there to serve the men martinis and steaks, and they all puffed away constantly on cancer sticks.

It’s the fall, which means it’s time we pack up our stuff and get back out on the road. Because the snow is coming soon, so soon. But first, there’s the leaves, the pretty, pretty leaves, a-turning colors and illuminating the mountainsides. Well, that’s the case here in the Rockies, you people out in Southern California will have the usual fall foliage season which consists of the leaves slowly turning brown, and finally falling off the trees around February. That is one aspect of life on the Left Coast I don’t miss.

We ran on up to Vail early this week to stay in our favorite ski lodge at the breathtakingly low, low prices of a ski-town in the off-season. It’s our favorite time to visit ski-towns, since the prices they charge once it starts snowing are insane. Along the way we admired the aspens in full fall plumage. I nailed it schedule-wise, as the aspens up around Vail were at the peak of their golden gloriousness. I might have mentioned that I nailed it to Mary a few too many times, as long about Tuesday she pretty much just started tuning me out. More so than normal, that is. Still if anyone asks, I nailed it.

Overall, we had a thoroughly pleasant and relaxing trip. We found a dairy along the way that sold goat cheese, which turned out to be pretty good. So score. There was also a farmer’s market selling green tomatoes. I love green tomatoes. Absolutely love them, sliced and fried in butter, and served on white bread with mayo. It’s the epitome of red-neck cooking, or if we’re going to be refined about it, country cuisine. I’ve got enough tomatoes to do lunches till next week. Then it’s back to salads and dry toast to drop enough weight to get into my travelling pants before the real touring season kicks in.