Travels with The Rayman

Well, being cinco de mayo, we felt it was our responsibility to partake in some tequila since we had already bought wild salmon, asparagus and potatoes for dinner.  And our friend Nancy had highly recommended margaritas at Maria’s here in Santa Fe.  So Maria’s it was.

But first, there was laundry to do, emails to check, the paper to read, a walk to take.  Our hosts left a map that showed a trail to downtown  (the plaza) in 15 minutes so we took it.  It included a dried creek bed.  Too cool.  I took some pictures.   I’ll add them at the end of this epistle.

We walked to the plaza and snooped around some of the stores.  Let’s see…we found a shirt for $125 made in China.  Now, what is wrong with that picture.  We found a pig sculpture that hangs on the wall (just the head, really) for $150.  Hand made by a local artist.  After doing that for awhile, we decided to hike back uphill to the house and get the car and go to Maria’s.

Maria’s was a bit disappointing.  They had people in the entry hawking their wares.  But we entered anyway.  Nancy said it was good.  The place was near empty.  We figured on cinco de mayo, the place would be teeming with lift.  Uh, uh.  After engaging the waiter, we settled on a Silver Deluxe and a Horny Toad (that was mine).  Now, margaritas are not cheap when they are made with the finest tequila on the planet.  They ran from $6.00 to $48 a drink.  We settled on $9.00 and $9.50 respectfully.  The chips were too salty (all the more you’ll want to drink, we suspect).  The salsa was hot but probably out of a jar.  We ordered a quesadilla to share (it was 1:30 p.m. and time for lunch).  The quesadilla was just so-so.  The margarita’s were absolutely fabulous!!!!!    The pictures above are of Ray before the margarita, half way through the margarita and after the margarita!!

After lunch I was blitzed.  OMG.  This one drink sent me to the moon!!!  It’s 4:11 p.m. and I’m still blitzed.  Wowie zowie.  Ray swore he wasn’t drunk.  Let’s put it this way.  Someone had to drive home and it wasn’t me.  We stopped on the way and gathered provisions for tomorrow night’s dinner (pork tinga ala Rick Bayless’s website).  Wandering the aisles of Whole Foods has never been more fun.  We got home safe and sound.  But there was dinner for tomorrow to make.  I had everything but Worchester sauce.  So, Ray had to go for that to a nearby market.  While he was gone, I browned the meat and chorizo, sliced the onion, minced the garlic, added the tomatoes and the red potatoes, added the chipotle, the salt etc.  No sign of Ray.  I called him.  No signal.  He finally returned with the Worchester sauce and a tale of woe.  Thank goodness he wasn’t in the local jail.  And all that on a margarita!!  Via la Mexico.

Did you know that Cinco de Mayo was end the Mexican -French war?  I didn’t.  Now I do.  And so do you!!!  Imagine if France would have prevailed?  The cuisine would be fabulous!!  It’s the last time a European army has invaded Mexico.  And when France invaded, Napolean III was still a general.  Wow.

OMG.  My skin is shriveling and I’m short of breath, but I’m in the high desert.  We just arrived in Santa Fe about 6:40 p.m.  What a day.

But I digress.  Yesterday was quite a day and I haven’t stopped long enough to blog.  Good grief.  Well, it all started at 8 a.m. when met Dez, our full blooded Navajo Indian guide for our private tour of Canyon de Chelly (Che).    Very french like, not pronouncing all the letters in the word.  Dez and Ray are pictured above.  Dez was a hoot.  He had all the lines…because he had been leading tours in the Canyon for 24 years.  And never mind that he grew up in the Canyon.  We couldn’t even imagine.  But he was very funny.  Pointed out a phone booth which was really an outhouse.  That kind of humor.  And the highlight was driving up the wash which had water in it.  He explained that the Indian society is matriarch (I knew I liked it) and so if we got stuck, it my job was to push.   Actually, land is handed down on the women’s side of the family.

Well, actually the highlight was seeing the Anasazi dwellings high up on the canyon walls.  And seeing the horses roaming free.  And seeing the petroglyphs.   And the etchings.  However, what was really interesting was that the Anasazi lived there until 1100 A.D.  Interesting because Mont. St. Michel (in France) was built in 900 A.D.  They were much more sophisticated in Europe.  Also, the Anasazi were only about 4 feet tall.  Ray felt like a giant after hearing that!!

After emerging from the Canyon, we headed to Farmington, NM.  All this traveling was being done on backroads, so to speak.  Beautiful vistas and light traffic made the driving a breeze.  We listened to talk radio re: bin Laden most of the way.  The rest of the day was uneventful.  Except for Monsters and Aliens (a movie) was on TV so we started watching it.  I pooped out about the time that all hell was breaking loose.  Ray watched it til the end.

Up and at them this a.m. early so that we could go to the golf course and eat before we played.  Played golf with two locals who spent a great deal of time in the hazards, the bushes, the water, the sand.  Didn’t find out until the 16th hole that Bernard grew up in Paris, France.  OMG.  I could have been butchering french all around the course if I’d known that sooner.  Being the linguist that I am, I thought he had an Australian accent!!

After finishing up the round, we jumped in the car and hightailed it to Santa Fe (it took four hours to drive).  Did I mention that we rented a cart as the course was up and down a lot, and then we took turns walking every other hole?  So, we finally got some exercise.  The ride to Santa Fe was swell.  Beautiful country and no traffic.  Glided into Santa Fe, found the house, took a shower, had a glass of wine and went to the grocery store for food.

Nothing funny happened today.  Had a great time anyway!!

Now it’s beddy-bye for me.  Have to rest up.  Tomorrow is Cinco de Mayo and we plan to whoop it up!!  Oh, did I mention, I’m keeping an eye out for Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson.  They live here now.  I have a few questions for them!!

Cousin Susie and Larry arrive on the 6th so we’re going to cook them a great meal to celebrate their arrival.  Can’t wait!!

Here we are at Four Corners.  We’re actually standing on the real estate of Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico.  Great way to say you’ve been to four states while actually visiting one or two!!

Here’s a picture of the rock formations we encountered and notice the lack of traffic.  We just can’t convey to you, the reader, how fun it is to get off the Interstate highway.  So much more interesting and the driving is much easier.  No tailgating, no weaving out of traffic, fewer big rigs.  And fewer rest stops which poses its own problems.  But I digress.

Well.  What more can you say.  Osama is killed under Obama.  There is some poetic justice or at least some poetry in that, I suppose.  Finally and final enough.

I write this while sitty in bed in Jerome, Arizona.  A haunted hotel of dubious past is where we chose to spend the night last night.  It is perched high on the side of hill that might overlook the tailings of a copper mine.  And it is a big hangout for bikers.  The picture above is the saloon with our hotel on top!!

When we checked in yesterday, the streets were full of motorcycles and a band that sang out of tune was downstairs at the corner bar (located below our hotel) wailing away.  Oh, dear.  Luckily we had a dinner date with a friend from Paso that I last saw in 1963 who now lives in Cornville.  Had a great evening with her reminding me of everything I had forgotten.  Scary.  Fun.  At the end of the evening, her husband, Craig, asked if we remembered where we were when JFK was assassinated.  We spent some time talking about those type of events.  Then we hugged good bye and Ray and I headed for the car.

A humdinger of a motorcycle!!

When I checked the iphone, I had a notification from HuffPost that Osama was dead.  Wow.  How prescient was that conversation.  We will never forget where we were and what we were doing when it was announced.

So, then we had breakfast at Alice’s Restaurant in Jerome.  It was fabulous.  Look, I’ll show you!!

Charming and wonderful.  We highly recommend it.

Then after breakfast, we checked out and headed for Canyon de Chelly in northern AZ on the Navajo Indian reservation.  We let Glenda, our GPS unit, find our way.  And we drove on two lane roads most of the way.  Beautiful scenery punctuated by very poor neighborhoods and run down properties.  Very sad to think about how the Indians have suffered and continue to do so to this very day in some locations.

So, here we are.  Tomorrow we take a private tour with an Indian guide for three hours.  It should be spectacular.

Well, the day wasn’t quite done.  We walked over to Garcia’s Restaurant which is within the hotel lobby area.  After perusing the menu, I talked Ray into splitting the fajitas.  We had a server that looked like a linebacker with a moonstone face.  Not sure what her name was.  She was very efficient.  When we ordered a glass of wine, she was sure to tell us it was non-alcoholic.  No booze allowed on the reservation.  We ordered it anyway.  Uhm, chardonnay that tasted like a cross between apple juice and skunk perhaps.  First time Ray has left any wine in his glass.  The second thing was, when she brought the fajitas, they were hot off the grill, spitting and sizzling as she glided across the room to deliver them.  Then the fire alarm went off…howling at about 250 decibels (I’m pretty sure it woke up the people in room 275 who were taking a nap after driving 450 miles to get to this place).    And did I mention the billowing smoke.? That added just the touch that we needed to complete the scene.

But I digress.  All eyes were on us and the smoking cast iron pan of chicken, onions, and peppers.  People kept staring at us (siren still screeching ) until finally, the rear door to the restaurant was flung open and the alarm fell into sudden silence.  Totally embarrassed, Ray sang out, “ Why are you all still here?”.  Laughter erupted.  Then there was a mass exodus (a slight exaggeration, perhaps) as all the oldsters grabbed their jackets and vamanosed!!  We howled.  And then Ray said, “don’t forget to add this to your blog!!”.

Really, you can’t make this stuff up.

Oh, and did I mention yesterday?

When we left Borrego Springs, I hit a dove.  Well, actually, in my own self-defense…the dove hit me.  Looking in the rear view mirror, all I saw was feathers.  Oh, dear.  It was terrible.  I imagined a bird stuck to the front of the car (sort of in a cross shape, guilt, guilt).  But, alas, we pulled over and looked but  the dove was gone…evidently it had flown to birdie heaven.

Rather than backtrack to I-10, we took back roads and got to see the sand dunes just past Brawley.  A must-see in our opinion.  And the road which connects Brawley to Blythe (now there is a descriptive name) has about 100 dips in it.  The only thing lacking were Berma Shave signs.  And cars.  There were hardly any cars so as we took on the dips going faster than we should, a few “yippees” and “oh, my gods” could be shouted in a full-throated sort of manner for full and total enjoyment of the occupants of our car!!

Windy, wild, forlorn.  Makes our dunes look small in comparison.

On Thursday, while the royals were primping no doubt, Ray was laboring away in the garage in Cayucos readying the SUV for the trip to Santa Fe.  He washed, he dried, he shined, he vacuumed.  This was after buying new tires for trip.  The car looked fantastic.  Like new, really.

So, yesterday (Friday)probably after the royals had kissed twice (we didn’t watch), we gathered our belongings into the car and we both jumped in and I said “Well, here we go!” and Ray turned the key and all we got was a ratatatat sound.  Ugh.  In disbelief he kept trying to start the car to no avail.  The battery was dead.

Well, we had to get to Borrego Springs and we would not be deterred for long.    So, after the jumper cables were applied we were off and running.  Except that Ray wanted to find a place that sold batteries so that he could turn off the car and if it didn’t start again, we could buy a new battery.  That’s the cautious side of Rayman.   So we went into San Luis and found a place and turned off the car.  It started right back up…so we fled the scene and headed south toward Borrego Springs.

As we were passing through Santa Maria, I asked if he had packed the Arizona/New Mexico maps.  No he hadn’t.  Neither had I.  We then decided we should stop in Santa Barbara at the AAA office.  That in turn got me to thinking about cupcakes.  Maps, cupcakes.  There is no logical explanation.  Except all this driving around was making me hungry…and we know a great cupcake place off State St.  So cupcakes it was.  I got the chocolate-chocolate.  Ray got the Cosmos complete with a candied lime hanging off it and pink icing.  Should have taken a picture.  Drats.  Before we started up the car again, the cupcakes had disappeared.   YUMMY.

The rest of our drive was predictable until we called our friends Al and Charlie (they live in Borrego Springs).  We called them as we transitioned onto the 10.   Charlie said, “oh, dear, you should have taken the 15 down to Temecula.”  Well, too late for that.  We had chartered our course thru Palm Springs.  Little did we know that it’s faster and easier to go “that other way”.  So, recriminations started and culminated in …well, I’ll be discreet.  It wasn’t as pretty as it should have been.

So, while traveling way out of way (around our elbow to get to our thumb), Ray announced we had a quarter of a tank of gas.  So, we decided to stop at an Indian reservation gas station.  The price was right…however, the none of the pumps was open.  So that was an inconvenient detour.  The second place we stopped was open and had gas.  And they were across from the Salton Sea…So, Ray gave them $20 and left me with the pump.  I ran it up to $10 and promptly stopped filling.  Then I remember that he had said $20.  So I tried to restart it and that didn’t work.  Ray went in (it was that kind of place that you had to pay cash to the cashier inside) and was just going to get his change.  However, that necessitated finding a supervisor, getting a form filled out…OMG…so we just got the pump restarted.

We arrived in Borrego Springs.  Did I mention that it was out of the way.  A desert oasis miles and miles from anything.  A community of 2500 people with a private country club, an Ocotillo Cafe, and lots of streets with few cars.  Quiet and alone.  We liked it…off the beaten path.  Al and Char had invited 4 other people for dinner and lucky for us we got there in time to partake.   Mixed grill, fresh salad (lettuce from the garden), risotto with fresh home-grown chard…and plenty of wine and merriment…good for the digestives!!!

Their bicycling friends are at the table with us in the picture above.  From the left, Wayne, Al, Louise, Louise, John, Charlie (yes, she is a she), Marsha and Rayman!!

After dinner and frivolity we hit the floor.  Well, not quite.  They had a futon that was at least 3 inches thick and it sat on a tile floor.  What a hoot struggling up to visit the necessary room in the middle of the night.  Equally a hoot to struggle to get “out of bed” or “off the floor” in the a.m.  Where’s that Advil?

The next morning they had to pack their RV for a trip so we checked out the town and the state park.  Quite an interesting part of CA…and the stars at night were spectacular!!!  No trouble seeing the Milky Way.

 

I am distressed.  Not digressed.  Distressed.  I just finished my manifesto about the weekend, and I lost it.  It disappeared into cyberspace.  I’m beside myself.  All that wine and cupcakes to get the mood just right…and poof.  Gone.  Good thing the windows don’t open in this joint because I might be pitching the computer out of  them.  But I digress.

I’m not going to try to recreate my creation.  I’ll take a new tact.  When I started the first epistle, it was the the at the start of the Super Bowl.  Now there are 33 seconds left before the Black Eyed Peas.

I’m going to start by being informative.  This goes against my nature, but that’s the way it is when I’m thrown for a loop.  Portland is wonderful.  Beautiful.  Well- planned.  As an example, it only takes 40 minutes to ride on the light rail from the baggage claim area of the airport to downtown Portland, just a few steps from our hotel?  All for $2.35/pp.  Fabulous.  It’s a small city but highly efficient.  It seems designed to get you out of your car.  I visited with a man in a wheelchair that has lived near the river downtown for 24 years.  He can ride the rail system free to the market for groceries and back without any need of assistance.  Very cool.

So, now the adventure begins.  We are here to help Ryan celebrate his 31st birthday (yesterday) and it was not without “interesting” situations.  Let me see where to begin?  We are currently at the Embassy Suites on the 5th floor in a corner suite that has magnificent views of, count them, two parking garages.  We got this suite because Ryan was going to spend the weekend with us.  And the plan went something like this.  We would fly to Portland, drive to Corvallis (Ry lives there) and spend the evening together.  Then we would caravan to Portland and spend Saturday, Ry’s birthday, touring the city with my cousin Susie’s daughter, Ali, who lives in Portland.  What could possibly go wrong?  Well, if you have read any of my earlier posts, you know the answer is plenty.  Starting with this blog.  But I digress.

We rented a car.  And it was only $11 a day.  Great.  We picked up our hot red Corolla and headed out of the Portland airport toward Corvallis.  We brought our new Garmin for extra special help.  Only problem was we couldn’t figure out how to use it.  I was driving.  Ray was in charge of the Garmin (a tactical error).  First the garmin which henceforth I shall refer to by her first name, Glenda, would only recognize CA.  We were in OR.  It took a few, “what the hell is wrong” and “why doesn’t this damn thing work” expressions of frustration before we figured it out.  Then the unit didn’t recognize the address of the Holiday Inn Express that we were inputting.  So, I pulled over at the first rest stop (there are lots of rest stops in OR with running hot water) and we figured things out.  Then on to Corvallis.  Everything was great!!  The next day was Ryan’s birthday and we were excited to be there with him.

Let me get sidetracked here.  I left it to Ray to arrange everything with Ryan re: the tactics of the weekend.  Which he did via texting (Ry’s favorite way to stay in touch).  Two men communicating with electronic devices.  With no estrogen involved.  Possible problems.  But what?

On Saturday after breakfast, we caravanned to Portland.  That was becuz Ryan had to get back home on Monday and we were flying out from Portland.  Makes sense.  We tried to do an early check in but our room wasn’t ready yet.  So they stored our stuff and we spent several hours walking around downtown on our guided tour.  Ali did a great job.  We had a very fun time.

See how dry we are as we pose with cupcakes?

It starts to drizzle.  We remain unfazed.

Our walk was interesting and informative and we looked like drowned rats before we made it back to the car for our drive to the restaurant.  That’s when things took a turn.  Ry and Ray were sitting at the bar ordering when Ry said he could only have one drink.  What?  It was his birthday.  Ry said he had to drive back home to Corvallis.  What?  That’s a 2 hour drive.  It was 7:00 p.m.  OMG.  Obviously the text mode of communication between two men comes up short.  Just an observation.  So after dinner, Ryan drove home, Ali went to a “light” party where everyone wears white…and Ray and I dragged ourselves back to the hotel to hit the hay….in the suite for three that overlooked the parking lots.

This shot was taken toward the end of the walk before dinner.

Today, we decided to take our $11/day car back to the airport.  Which we did.  That had it’s moments.  With the aid of Glenda, I managed to miss her instructions and she took us back to where we started.  So, we had to “remind” her of our destination that somehow I managed to get right this time.  We turned our $11/day car and paid $68 for 2 days.  What?  But it was cheaper not to keep her as the downtown parking would be $28 tonight.

We took the light rail back to downtown which was easy.  Buying the tickets from the machine was not.  But hey, we figured it out with an extra trip to the Information Booth.  Shades of Paris without the francais.

There’s one other thing.  I arranged for my cousin Susie to take us to the airport on the front end.  She lives in Sunnyvale.  She misplaced my email and called.  I told her our flight was at 1:20 p.m. and we would arrive around 10:30 a.m. so we could visit before going to the airport.  She and her husband, Larry, planned to drop us off and go see their kids in San Francisco for dinner.  Great.  She fed us lunch (yummy and unexpected) and we visited and then hopped in the car to sally forth.  She mentioned that we had time to go the scenic route.  Great!!  About 15 minutes into the trip, I said, “where are you taking us?”.  She said, “to the airport.”  “Where?’, I asked as we speeded north.  “San Francisco”, she replied.  EEEEEEEEKKKKKKKK.  We were flying out of San Jose.

She turned us around and we headed back toward San Jose.  About 15 more minutes went by and I asked, “are we there yet?”.

Postscript.  We made the flight.  Susie and Larry’s dinner in the city, however, was cancelled.

At this point it is the end of the 3rd quarter.  Ray is cursing at the announcers.  And I’ve been saving this masterpiece every 10 minutes.

An observation with occasional questions.  Sort of like Sex and the City without the sex.

Do we really need all these electronic gadgets?  I mean consider this.  We brought with us our MacBook so I could blog.  That required a cord for charging the computer.  Then we brought 2 iphones and one charging cord.  Add to that our Garmin, Glenda, with power cord.  Let’s see.  Then there’s the digital camera and it’s power cord followed by the Kindle and, you guessed it, its power cord.  Oh, and how could I forget the portable waterpik and its cord.  And with all this or because of all this we still managed to screw things up.  But I digress.

I mean, how did we ever do it?  Are all these  really necessary?  I mean, just how much does all this “stuff” weigh?  And when you factor in the chiropractor for a sore back because we lugged it on the plane…oh, I almost forgot, I also brought my noise canceling headphones which I consider vital because they also cancel out turbulence.

So what do you think?  I think I need an ipad!!!

Well.  Let’s see.  What could possibly go wrong?  We were in high spirits and looking forward to our trip home.  With all honesty though, we were all a bit skittish about flying good old (old being the operative word) Sky King back to Oakland via San Antonio.  But, hey, what the chances that things could get mucked up?

Our bus trip to the airport took about 90 minutes so Ray and I busied ourselves reading all the spanish signs along the road to improve our spanish skills.  When we arrived at the airport, we went to the counter and got our seat assignments.   Then we wandered through the airport.  The Cancun airport is a modern facility with all kinds of shopping and restaurants including Bubba Gump’s Shrimp (or something like that).   Then we heard that the plane was going to be late, maybe.

After much “research” we discovered that the same plane from Oakland that caused us to be 6 or so hours late because the strut was broken from the exciting landing in San Antonio, was broken down in San Antonio again.  Yes, they were  transporting the next golf group from Oakland and had something go wrong.  Now, I’m a bit of white knuckle flier anyway, but this did not sound good.  I mean, the group that was waiting for us in Cancun when we arrived at almost midnight, also had trouble with their plane in San Antonio.  So, obviously the third time was not a charm.  And we were entrusting our lives with this airline on the same plane??  At this point we were contemplating finding another flight (read non-Sky King) to get back.  Then we were informed that Sky King was sending another plane from Miami to Cancun just for us.  Oh, JOY.  So we decided, “what the hell”.

Well, I’m happy to report that we are on the last leg of the trip flying high in the sky literally toward Oakland, having just left San Antonio after filling up.  Only problem is that because the plane left from Florida rather hurriedly, there were no alcoholic beverages on board.  WHAT?  This is shocking.  So what to do?  Well, we took drugs.  Valium relaxed us enough to endure the punishment we were receiving.

So, bottom line…do not ever fly Sky King unless your life lacks a sense of adventure boarding on desperate.  And then, even then, reconsider.

WE MADE IT!!!  Home in one piece.  A postscript.  Having downed 1/2 of an ambien, I was pretty much out of it when we arrived in Oakland.  Ray had to wake me up so that I could bring my seat to it’s upright position.  I wandered in a blur to the carousel to get the bags and then I slept all the way to King City with one exception of wakefulness when we came to a dead stop on the freeway somewhere (Salinas?) because of a bunch of CHP’s racing by (wreck?).  Richard, the driver extraordinaire, backed up and took an off ramp we had just passed that got us off the freeway and around the trouble so that we could ziggy back on the freeway and arrive in King City at about 1:45 a.m.  Yes, that is not a typo.

I woke up just long enough to throw myself into bed after enjoying a brownie and kaluha and milk (read dinner).

Life is good!!!  And the morning is beautiful in Cayucos today, Friday the 28th.

A few more pictures for your viewing enjoyment.

The beach at the resort

Ruth and Tom

Paul and Robin

Moi and mere!!

Richard and Pat (they won $$$$)

Bryan and Michel

Richard and Karen

The Iguana

The enigma!!

And the organizer of the dinners aka the herder of cats.  Taken at Hahn winery near Soledad, CA yesterday.  Well, we needed to do some wine tasting to celebrate our safe arrival back home.  And if that reason doesn’t work, there plenty of others I could come up with!!!

Adios, Amigos!!