Rhonda Bracey: At Random

After doing some laundry, I left Monterey around 10am, stopping in Gilroy to change some of the underwear I bought a few days ago (I got the wrong model!). Then it was back on Highway 101 to Mountain View where I had a lovely lunch with Shelley, one of the Lone Writers group.

Travelling through Silicon Valley is such a thrill for a geek… The 101 goes right past these buildings: Intel, Sun, Yahoo, McAfee, WebEx, and more. Just think, back in 1995 when I drove that route often in a two week period, virtually none of those companies existed, or existed in the same way they do now.

I left Mountain View just on 2pm and was in the hotel in San Francisco just after 3pm. Finally, I have wireless broadband!! So I can catch up on blog posts, upload photos etc. Though I think I’ll be doing most of that tomorrow morning, as I’m waiting for my friend Char (from Boston) to return to the hotel room, then we’ll be out of here to go the the monthly dinner meeting of the Berkeley Chapter of STC.

(Anyone notice a theme with many of the blog post titles for this trip, yet???)

Update: Char and I just returned from the Berkeley Chapter meeting where we both met some lovely people. The dinner was good (home-cooked Thai green chicken curry), and the panel of speakers was good too. A nice feature was for each person to introduce themselves to the group prior to the main part of the meeting starting. That gave me a good sense of who did what, and where. The main meeting was a panel who focused on questions about what they looked for when hiring tech writers. While Linda U kept the panel on topic, some of the discussion roamed into related areas such as outsourcing, contractors, and the like. There were some good questions from the audience, and some interesting comments from the range of panelists. Two of the panelists worked for very large corporations in the Bay Area (Oracle and IBM), while the other two worked for (or had recently worked for) smaller organisations. However, in all cases, they each managed a team of at least five technical writers and associated professionals.

An absolutely gorgeous day today, so I’ve decided to take the scenic route via Highway 1 and the coast…. More later…

We’ve missed doing this drive the last few times as the fog or the rain have meant that it’s not worth it. I think once the road was impassable because of a rock slide.

It took me three hours to get from Paso to Monterey, as I stopped quite often on the trip to take photos! (I’ll upload them later…) It’s a VERY winding road for much of the length of the trip, but you get the most SPECTACULAR views of the ocean and the land sweeping in to it. Oh, and there are spots where Elephant Seals come to sun themselves.

I arrived at David’s mid-afternoon, then popped out with his ex, Lee, for a coffee and a natter (oh, and a detour to a fabulous fabric store…). Later David, Rita, and I went to Heather’s home to celebrate her husband’s birthday and have dinner. Heather is such a lovely person – I first met her when she was about 16 and she was lovely then too! More great food and wine and company…

Rita asked when and how David and I met, and we figured it had been 25 years ago since we met in Tahiti. Wow! 25 years!! So David called one of the Canadian guys who was on the same trip, and we all talked for ages. Greg was blown away to hear from David, and then from me! I haven’t seen Greg for at least 10 years, though I get to see David every year or two when we go to California. What a great blast from the past! Greg still keeps in contact with the other two guys, but told us that another who hung with our group died a couple of years back.

I saw the funniest thing when driving up Highway 101. I passed one of those pickup trucks with the big wheels and raised reasonably high off the ground. Hanging down from the back near the tow hitch was a sack, containing a set of balls! They looked like ram’s or bull’s balls.

Too funny! I laughed out loud, but didn’t have the opportunity to take a photo.

Update (7 April 2008): I’ve since found out that these things have a name—Truck Nutz—and there’s a website dedicated to them where you can buy your own. Go figure. I’m still wondering how my friend Dave had that URL right on the tip of his tongue when I mentioned them at one of our conference dinners…

Yesterday (Sunday, 9th March) I left the Newport Beach area and headed up the 405 to Highway 101 (a.k.a. Ventura Highway). It took about 90 mins to get to Camarillo where the first Factory Outlet mall outside LA is located. The traffic was light (it was the first day of Daylight Saving Time, and I left just after 8:15am), and the weather was fine and dry and sunny after the early morning fog burned off.

I made the Outlet mall in Camarillo just on opening time at 10:00am. Usual stuff – underwear! Some people think I’m mad, but the most comfortable underwear I have ever bought has been in the US, so whenever I come back I stock up on underwear. I can buy the same brands in Australia, but not the particular ‘model numbers’. So now I’m stocked up for another year or two or three!

I grabbed a grilled chicken burger at Wendy’s on the way out of Camarillo. The chicken was nice but the rest was crap. It was small, had those soft sugary hamburger buns so loved by the Americans, and was filled with soggy lettuce and sweet goopy mayo. I forgot to ask them to hold the mayo… The chips that came with it were dry and tasteless and had probably been sitting under the heated lights for too long. And the ‘medium’ Diet Coke was HUGE!

The rolling countryside was green – it’s still officially winter here (spring starts on March 22 or thereabouts). And the drive was fantastic, as always. Once I’m out of the LA area, driving in California is such a delight. Although the speed limit is officially 65mph for most of the time, the actual speed of the traffic varies between 70 and 80mph. But almost everyone is polite and considerate of other drivers – not like in Western Australia where ‘this is MY territory’ seems to be so important to some.

North of Santa Barbara there are many more acres covered in new vines than we saw when we were here only two years ago. And some of the smallish towns have grown a lot – particularly Atascadero, Templeton, and Paso Robles: the ones we know the best.

I landed in Paso (Robles) at John and Suzie’s right on 2pm. They’ve made great inroads on kitchen since we were last here. It’s nearly finished, bar the plumbing, the countertops, and the cupboard and drawer handles. It’s now huge – at least compared to what it was when they bought the place.

Around 3pm, Mark and Sue from Salinas turned up (I’d met Mark in Monterey a couple of years back, but hadn’t met his lovely wife Sue as she in LA at the Jay Leno show that night). We all went down to the local community hall for the Rotary Club’s annual Crab Fest, where we were joined at the table by Joey (female), Keith, and Jim.

Well, I’m not a big crab fan, and let’s just say that my opinion hasn’t changed! The company was good, as was the wine (BYO), but the food was very ordinary for $45 a head. Still, it was for a charitable cause, so I guess that made the price a little more palatable. Jim, Sue, and I went back to John and Suzie’s afterwards. Mark had eaten and run at the Crab Fest as he was flying out to China that night, on business, and had to get to LAX by 9pm.

Lots of laughs, more wine, port, and stickies, and dessert (Boston Cream Pie). Goodbyes were said around 11pm, and I hit the hay.

I thought I’d solved the phone issue two years ago. Not so. (See these posts from 2006: 1, 2)

Short story—the TracPhone I had could not be activated with the new Airtime card I purchased as the SIM is no longer valid. It seems that because the number associated with that SIM got allocated to someone else after expiry, the only solution was to get a new SIM card sent out by the TracPhone people (of course, being on the road and needing a phone now, mailing out a replacement SIM card wasn’t an option!!).

So back to the supermarket to buy ANOTHER phone. It activated very quickly, so now I have a phone. But it’s a pain in the proverbial, this whole phone business.

I believe that my new-ish Australian mobile phone will work in the US, but last I checked it costs about $5 PER CONNECTION (plus international timed call charges) to take or make a call on my Aussie mobile in the US. A US$59.99 phone is cheaper! Though I hate the idea of having to throw the old one away.

Bloody phones… Bloody disposable society.

The Hertz counter at LAX didn’t have a Mazda6 as I’d requested, so I ended up in a Chevrolet something-or-other. I wanted a Mazda6 as that will likely be the next car we get—we currently have two 10-year old Mazdas and are really happy with them, so this was to be an opportunity to take one for a long test drive.

However, on hearing me mention that I was going via San Francisco, the lady at the Hertz counter suggested I try exchanging the car there. Well, I could do one better than that—Orange County (John Wayne) airport which is about 6 miles from where I’m staying in Corona Del Mar! I called the Hertz counter at John Wayne when I arrived at Bill’s, but they didn’t have a Mazda6. The helpful lady suggested I call back the next day. So I called this morning (Saturday) and got one! So down to the airport to do the exchange.

Erin at the Hertz Gold counter was most helpful and polite, unlike the usual treatment you get at LAX. However, Erin did say that Hertz LAX did 2000 rentals just on Monday, so I guess they get a bit frazzled by people wanting something that isn’t available.

… where the big jet engines roar”

… and the Customs and Immigration and baggage situation gets worse by the year.

There are two lines at Immigration—one for US Residents, and one for Visitors. But the Visitors line is filled with two types of Visa holders—the green Visa Waiver scheme people (like Australians, Brits etc.) and the white form people (like the entire plane loads from Korea and Chile who arrived just before we did). The white form people took at least 5 minutes each to process—some, 10 minutes; the green people took less than 2 minutes to process. Why don’t they create a Visa Waiver line and a white form line? It would save a lot of frustration…

And how come baggage comes out randomly? I checked both my bags in at the same time with the same person who put them on the conveyor at the same time, and got the first one quickly (that’s because of the LONG lines at Immigration). Had to wait AGES for the second. Both had “First class” tags on them (not “Business” as I expected), yet came out with the “Economy” bags.

And then there are the unlabelled long lines for the final check by Customs before you’re through. No-one to supervise the line, no-one to tell you you’re in the correct line, no big columns of green and red to indicate ‘nothing to declare’ or ‘something to declare’. As an aside, while I was waiting in the last line before getting out into the ‘fresh’ LA air, there was a woman at the Customs counter whose bags were being searched. She had plates of food wrapped in foil, raw meat wrapped in plastic, other food in plastic containers. What *was* she thinking???

BTW, I think that “Immigration” is the correct name for it—not one person in authority appeared to be a caucasian American. All the officials seemed to be from somewhere else, just based on their physical appearance.