Waking up on Thursday I wasn’t sure if my unhappiness was because it was so early or because I knew this was truly the beginning of the end of my around the world adventure. Getting to the airport I think I made the decision that it was indeed the time of day. I flew from Melbourne to Sydney and uneventfully (thank goodness) transferred to the international terminal where I’d get on a nine+ hour flight to Tokyo. My plan, formed before I started the day, was to stay awake as much as possible through Tokyo and then go to sleep as soon as I boarded the nine hour flight from Tokyo to San Francisco. The flight to Tokyo was totally uneventful and I managed to stay awake watching several movies and reading lots of magazines and starting a book. There were some amazing sites to see from the plane along the way. We flew over the Great Barrier Reef, an amazing site to see from the air and shortly after Papua New Guinea we flew over a tiny little island called Butterfly Island. It was truly shaped like butterfly wings with the island and reef making it a beauty in the middle of the ocean. I also had my second glimpse on this trip of Mt. Fuji. Fuji-san, as the Japanese call it, was rising through the clouds that had shrouded Tokyo and its surrounding countryside and the sun was beginning to set behind it as we made our way to Narita Airport.
After landing in Narita I made my way by bus to the transfer terminal and then promptly sat and waited for our flight that was delayed due to the delay of the incoming flight that our plane was making into Narita. We were about an a hour and a half delayed and then we sat waiting in the “redeye gridlock” of the many flights leaving Narita towards the west coast of the US. Similar to leaving New York for Europe…the sky becomes a virtual Autobahn with a very busy on and off ramp at either end. My plan worked and as soon as I’d had a bit of food on the plane I feel asleep quickly. I slept almost the entire way to California. Feeling remarkably refreshed I made my way through customs, answering the question “what were you doing in all of these places?” with my now customary answer of “I’m unemployed and I had a lot of frequent flier miles!” On the other side of customs my mom who’d driven to the city to pick me up greeted me.
As we drove us back to Orinda, at first a little bit nervous realizing I’d have to get re-adjusted to the “right side” of the road. I was also marveling over the fact that roughly twenty-six hours earlier I’d left Melbourne but it was only about five hours later on the same day I’d left. I’d traveled to Asia twice before and it still hard for me to grasp this time difference phenomenon. Once in Orinda I was greeted at the door of my parents’ home by Willa and Scout, my two favorite golden retrievers. The rest of the day was spent catching up with my mom, visiting with my friend Ingrid and then catching up over dinner with my parents. I stayed awake until I couldn’t stand any longer and went to bed and got a good amount of sleep given my internal clock was telling me that I shouldn’t be asleep.
When I woke up Friday I was pretty tired but pleased that I’d managed to start the process of getting myself back on US time. During the day I drove to Marin with Ingrid so we could meet Sarah for lunch at Sam’s in Tiburon. This has long been a meeting place of ours but unfortunately we wouldn’t be eating outside on the deck looking over the San Francisco skyline because California was surprisingly cold! Sarah and her daughter Lily were there when Ingrid and I arrived. We had a great lunch catching up on what was going on with each of us and had the usual un-ending laughing that the three of us have when we get together. Lily probably thought we were a bit ridiculous but given she is only two she managed to entertain herself while the three of us reduced ourselves to high school, or earlier, maturity levels.
Saturday started with a trip to Costco with my mom. I love going to Costco for really one reason…the free samples! While my mom shops I typically wander the store trying all the free food that they are handing out. By the time I leave I’m usually stuffed and have no need for breakfast or lunch. Today Costco was insanely crowded with the pre-holiday crowds getting ready for visitors or trips. The samples weren’t great today but we did manage to put a dent in my parents’ bank account.
Later in the afternoon the three of us took Willa and Scout to “the ridge,” an open parkland area up the street from my parents’ house. This was in anticipation of further cold, rainy weather to come in the next twenty-four hours. Following a nap in the afternoon I woke up so we could order pizza from Pizza Antica in Lafayette. We got a couple of different kinds of pizza from this gourmet pizza spot and ate it at home.
Sunday morning I woke up quite late. After getting dressed and having some breakfast/lunch, given how late I woke up, I jumped in the car with my dad and we headed to Fry’s for some electronics shopping and REI to get some stuff they needed for their car drive on Monday. When we got back we put their new Yakima Skybox on top of my dad’s 4 Runner so they could begin to load up the car. They’d be spending two weeks at their desert house in Borrego Springs, about a ten-hour drive south in California. They were also going to be spending a month here in February so they were bringing lots of stuff down with them. Given all of the stuff that they were taking, including the two dogs, there was no room for me in the car so I’d be flying down to meet them on Tuesday.
Sunday evening my parents and I headed over to Bob and Carolyn Mill’s house for a holiday glass of wine. Bob and Carolyn are friends of the family that my parents met through the dog walking crowd on the ridge. They’d spent Christmas in New York with us one year. We had more than one glass of wine and spent the early part of the evening catching up and laughing with them. Following dinner at home everyone headed to bed since the drive for my parents would begin at around 8 in the morning.
Monday morning my parents and the dogs headed off to the desert and I stayed behind. I got dressed and ready fairly early so I could go pick up Ingrid and then go to the Apple Store in Berkeley. My computer had bent, an issue with the now discarded broken back-pack, and the disc drive was not working properly. At the Apple Store they told me to come in the next day for an appointment and Ingrid and I left to drive up to Sonoma where we’d be meeting Sarah for a holiday lunch. We arrived in Sonoma way earlier than we’d anticipated and much before Sarah we would be getting there so Ingrid and I poked around the shops on the Square and waited for Sarah to come down from her house in Glen Ellen. We had a great lunch at the Girl and the Fig and again spent most of it laughing with and at each other. Sarah had not brought Lily to lunch today and I am sure Lily was perfectly happy to be with her dad instead of the three of us lunatics.
Ingrid and I drove back through Napa to get to Orinda. I wanted to pick up my pictures from my underwater camera that I’d used at the Great Barrier Reef and stop at home for a few minutes. Then I’d go back into Oakland to Ingrid’s apartment as we’d decided to go to dinner and a movie. The drive was rainy and cold, but even so the wine country was always a beautiful drive. Once in Oakland we tossed out the movie idea, opting instead to order food from PF Chang’s and lounge around watching some American television that I’d not seen in a month. I got home late and did some laundry, not going to bed until about one in the morning.
Waking up Tuesday was not fun as I’d stayed up way to late last night. I had to get up early so I could go to my appointment at the Apple Store. I finished up a few of the items off of the “to-do” list left by my parents and then raced over to make my 8:15 appointment. I was sorely disappointed when I learned it was not something that could be fixed quickly but rather would probably take about five days and about $500. Not good. I decided it would wait until I got back to New York since the majority of the computer was functioning just fine. I went and got some breakfast and coffee on Piedmont Avenue and then met Ingrid so she could drive me back to Orinda to drop off the car and then take me to the airport. We had a bit of extra time so we, again, lounged around Ingrid’s apartment. I convinced Ingrid to drive me to the San Francisco airport by suggesting we could go to In ‘N Out Burger on the way. A winning proposition for me to get a ride to the airport and lunch at In ‘N Out.
After eating my Double Double we made it to the airport where there were lots of people given the number of flights that had been delayed or canceled due to the bad weather hitting the Midwest. Thankfully my flight to Palm Springs was only ten minutes delayed and would not be taking me to the freezing cold…or so I thought. The short flight was uneventful and when I got off the plane I walked through the airport to the luggage area. In Palm Springs a part of this walk is outside…it is a desert that is usually quite warm and pleasant. This gave me a taste of the weather to come. It was cold! My parents and the dogs were there to pick me up after their afternoon of shopping in Palm Springs. We made the drive to Borrego Springs, about an hour and a half. Borrego is not fancy or developed like Palm Springs. It is about ninety miles to the east of San Diego and resides in San Diego County. Most people don’t know Borrego but those that do might know it for a Cindy Crawford Pepsi commercial filmed at a gas station in the nineties (all men in their teens or twenties will remember this one), or for being a stop on the ill-fated trip by Christopher McCandless who was made famous by the book, and subsequent movie, Into the Wild by John Krakauer. For us it is a family getaway…my grandmother had been coming here since her childhood. My Grandmother’s dad, my Great-Grandfather, Clinton Abbott was one of the founders of the Anza Borrego State Park and the Director of the San Diego Natural History Museum. My grandparents, along with my mom and her two brothers used to camp in Borrego while the three kids were growing up. My grandparents ultimately bought a house here and the extended family began spending a lot of time here. For my brother and me if Christmas wasn’t spent in Orinda it was either at my grandparents’ house in La Jolla or their desert getaway. When I was relatively young my parents had bought the house next door and our extended family has been gathering at the base of Tub Canyon ever since.
We got to Coyote Corners, the name my parents have dubbed their desert escape, at around 8:15 at night. The wind was howling off of the mountains that the house backs up against. It was pitch black so I couldn’t see much of anything. We had dinner and ate some fudge from the local fudge store, legendary to all who know Borrego Springs. We tried to get to bed early knowing that the dogs would wake us early since the house is tiny and they would be ready to get up much earlier than the rest of us.
Wednesday morning I woke up as the sun started to enter the large picture window in the living room. It looks out on the mountains in the distance and is always a great view to see first thing in the morning. What was not great was Scout whining from her kennel and the fact that it was only 6 AM. Thankfully my parents woke up to take the dogs out and I rolled back over and slept another two hours, with only a few interruptions from the dogs trying to get my attention. After dragging myself out of bed I decided to take a long walk. Since I’d hurt my foot in Dubai I’d not really done much exercise so I set off to burn off the fudge and other sugary items I’d been eating for the holidays! There are two ways to arrive at Coyote Corners, both on dirt roads. The long way takes two miles one way until you reach the paved road. A four-mile walk would do me good. The way back would be tougher since it is an uphill that appears much more gradual than it actually is. Walking felt great. The weather was a bit colder than I’d expected but the vistas were unobstructed. I spent a good deal of the walk thinking about the desert and the numerous visits over the course of my life. I began to think how I’d tried to describe the desert to many people but always felt like my description wasn’t adequate. I decided I would try to write down a description in my blog to see if I could capture what the desert means to me.
- I often feel that the desert is misunderstood. My perception is that most people think of the desert either like the Sahara with sand dunes and no sign of life or like Palm Springs with its Hollywood glitter and country clubs. Borrego is neither of those two images. There is no Bob Hope or Dinah Shore Drive like Palm Springs. There are no Hollywood celebrities, though a co-star of Lucille Ball, Gale Gordon, used to be our neighbor driving his white Rolls Royce, which Lucy had given him as a gift, up and down the dirt road to Tub Canyon. There aren’t nearly as many golf courses as Palm Springs but we have our share of them...it is, after all the desert of Southern California. Borrego is full of life, animals and plants alike, not just a large sand dune. When I am not there and picture the desert I envision the wide open spaces that are covered with cactus of various types, ocotillo and in a spring after a rainy winter so many colored flowers that you can’t see the sand any longer. And yes there are palm trees. Living amongst the rocks, sand and vegetation are an abundance of animals from tarantulas to coyote, rattlesnakes to roadrunners and jackrabbits to big horn sheep. The terrain of Borrego Spings is as varied as its wild life. There are dunes, canyons, rocks, salt flats and huge mountains that make a semi-circle around the area. Often I think people see it as a bleak and dry place but the beauty of it is in the forces of nature that have created it.
- Borrego is about family. I have many memories with my grandparents, my parents, my brother, aunts, uncles and cousins. We spent many holidays, birthdays, weddings and just lazy days in Borrego with Grandma Dottie, Grandpa Hal, Uncle John, Margie, Uncle Bill, Sue, Matt, Naomi, Adrian, Aunt Jane, Marv, Aunt Lois and many other relatives. We hiked, napped, off-roaded, ate a lot of big meals, laughed a lot, told lots of stories, read lots of books, played lots of cards and discovered many of the wonders of the deserts together.
- Borrego is where I learned many important things. I learned about nature and how to enjoy the quiet of a hike. I learned to avoid rattlesnakes, to appreciate birds such as the roadrunner and how to howl like a coyote (though my brother Mark is the master of this). I learned what a chuckwalla is…a lizard that can flatten itself in between rocks making it virtually impossible to pull out. This is where I learned to ride a bike (it is easier falling on sand than concrete) after my parents tricked me, on the 10 hour drive from Orinda, into thinking the bike hanging on the front of the car was for my grandfather instead of me for Christmas. This is where I learned to play poker with my grandfather teaching me, Mark and my cousin Matt how to keep our poker face during a game of 5 card draw under the Palo Verde tree in front of my grandparents’ house. This is where I learned to put my imagination to use climbing rocks since we had no television (still don’t) to keep us inside. This is where I learned lots of bad behavior from Mark and Matt. This is where I learned how not to drive when Mark and Matt took me on a ride in my grandfather’s vintage Nissan Patrol before either of them was sixteen (they had permission and my grandmother was there)! This is where I learned to drive off-road in a 4X4…I think I scared my Uncle John and Uncle Bill nearly to tears learning that skill. This is where I learned to look down before I sat to eat a picnic lunch on a hike…there is a lot of cactus in the desert!
Merry Christmas! I woke up today and remembered it is Christmas. With snow covering the tops of the Santa Rosa Mountains we were almost having a white Christmas in the desert! Last night my parents had prepared breakfast so it was ready to put in the oven. We were having Strada and fruit for breakfast and after we’d open presents. Most of the presents that my parents got from me were from Dubai, Thailand, Singapore and Australia making it fun to describe where I’d found these items. I was thrilled to have received some great gifts including a Kindle so I can read books, magazines and the newspaper electronically. This would be great for travel, not having to get out of bed in the morning to collect the newspaper and for the subway (when I get a job again). This gift was a combination from my parents and Sophia, Antonio, Isabella and Alex. What a great gift! After we opened up all of our presents and made some Christmas calls to family and friends we decided to take a walk up Tub Canyon. It was cold, windy and a bit of rain was sprinkling down but we headed up the canyon that our family had walked up many times, including many Christmas Day walks. This canyon lies at just to the east of our house and runs up into the mountains. We enjoyed the walk and burned off a bit of the strada and fudge we’d ingested throughout the day. We made a stop at the cave in the canyon. This cave has been a routine stop on our walks since I can remember. It has a car door on the front of it and someone actually used to live in it (before we ever knew about it). As usual we walked quietly to the doors to peek in and see if anyone had taken up residence. As usual it was still abandoned. After an afternoon nap we had Christmas dinner consisting of steak, cous cous, and broccoli. We were a bit more traditional after Christmas and had an apple pie from a bakery in one of the neighboring towns. It was amazing we were able to barbeque the steaks as the wind had picked up and was blowing fifty miles an hour steadily past the house. It had gotten freezing cold and I built a fire in the fireplace to keep us warm, doing such a good job everyone complained how hot it got inside the house.
This morning, Friday, I woke up and spent the majority of the morning lying on my bed with the dogs (they aren’t supposed to be there but it is Christmas week). I read while they snored. When I finally dragged myself out of bed I was only up for a short bit before I decided that a morning nap was in order. After my nap and some lunch we set off to hike in Blair Valley and see some Indian morteros and pictographs. Blair Valley is in the southern portion of Anza Borrego State Park and the drive was probably half and hour or more. The end of the drive to the trail is about five miles down a dirt road. When we got to the trail to walk out to the pictographs there was a no dogs sign so we realized we weren’t going to be doing that hike. After getting out of the car we weren’t that upset that our plans were foiled as it was freezing cold to the point of me wanting gloves on my hands. We walked around the head of the trail for a bit and then we got back in the car and drove down the road to the trail to the Indian morteros. We walked a short distance to get to the morteros where the Kumeyaay Indians had used the natural rocks to grind seeds into meal that they would eat leaving holes in the rocks from years of use. We found a ton of them in this area. It was amazing to think that these Indians had existed here and endured the cold that we were feeling today and the heat of the summers. There was a small pictograph on the side of one of the boulders and we encountered some other hikers that showed us pictures they’d take of the pictographs we’d not been able to walk to. Unbelievable that these drawings on the sides of boulders have stayed visible for hundreds of years. After our hike it was time to stop at the fudge store and replenish our stash so we could have some sugar to get us through the rest of the day. We had a great dinner of BBQ salmon tonight and then I watched a movie (on my computer since there is no TV) as I fell asleep in front of the fire.
Saturday started as usual in the desert…the sun waking me up through the windows. Today was my last day here. We’d be leaving this afternoon for Palm Springs to do some brief shopping, have some dinner and then I’d get on the plane back to San Francisco where I’d be spending New Year’s Eve. My parents would be coming back to the Bay Area in another week.
We took the dogs out for a walk around the “neighborhood.” The neighborhood is pretty spread out. There are three houses close together but the rest are pretty spread out in the area. We walked along the dirt road and saw lots of quail and jackrabbits. Thankfully the dogs were oblivious to the jackrabbits or they might have taken off after them. After our walk we headed into town and over to see some sculptures that had been put up. Dennis Avery, heir to the Avery Dennison that makes Avery Labels, has a home in Borrego Springs and bought a ton of land in Borrego. He recently commissioned an exhibit by an artist to build metal sculptures of different animals (http://www.galletameadows.com/news04262008.php). There are elephants, camels, eagles, horses and others. It is pretty strange to see these huge sculptures popping up in the middle of otherwise undeveloped desert land. I’d thought I wouldn’t see any camels after Dubai or elephants after Thailand but strangely I saw them both here in California. After driving around looking at the different sculptures that are spread out over a pretty large area we went back into town and did some shopping. My afternoon consisted of lunch and a nap. After dragging myself off of the couch we packed up and left for Palm Springs. The drive was nice as the wind of the previous couple of days had made the sky totally clear. We had a few errands in Palm Springs and then off to the airport where I caught my flight back to San Francisco. Ingrid picked me up at the airport in San Francisco and we went back to her neighborhood to have a drink. Christmas in the desert had been great. Now I was glad to be back in the Bay Area to see other family and friends.
