Under the Baobab TreeUnder the Baobab Tree: December 2002
Under the Baobab Tree
Sunday, December 22, 2002
LA Update
This is my late report on the trip back from LA on Thursday, plus an update on my day in LA on Wednesday. Update: 1. Apparently the temple with the suspicious red and green lights on Santa Monica Blvd. was the Mormon Temple, not a synagogue. Which explains not only the red and green lights but also the fact that it looked like something out of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
2. I neglected to report that whilst in the Santa Monica Barnes & Noble, I picked up a book called "Gutsy Women," which is a do's and don'ts guide for women traveling alone. I thought it would be inspirational. Instead, it turned out to be depressing -- essentially a guide to how tp lead a paranoid and sheltered life on the road. The tips were things like, "If the concierge says your room number out loud, asked to be transferred to another room." And, "when you first get to your room, prop your door open with your luggage and look in all your closets first before you close the door." Also, "do not hail a cab from in front of the hotel -- call down to the concierge and have them tell you when the cab is there." I couldn't believe it. What would these people think of my tactics? Renting a car from a total stranger, in broad daylight, and toodling around strange towns without a care in world, blackberrying while stopped at traffic lights and on occasion even getting out of the car. Needless to say, I did not buy the book.
Thursday's trip back:
1. I got up at 4:45 a.m. to catch the 8 a.m. flight back to Dulles. At 5 a.m. the Golden Globe nominees were being announced, so all of Los Angeles was awake. It was dark out. The TV told me that the various stars announcing the nominees had all spent the night in a Century City hotel. Do you suppose it was my hotel?
2. Drove to LAX and on the way, I saw the moon setting behind some hills. The moon was very big. I have been told that as the moon sets, it seems to grow bigger because the dust in the atmosphere between us and it distorts the view. The moon seemed very big indeed. It looked like a postcard, behind the mountains with the palm trees silhouetted in front.
I listened to Susan Stamberg on Morning Edition during my 15 minute drive. She was talking about NPR's new Los Angeles production studio.
3. The 8 a.m. flight was full, but I got Premiere treatment and was very happy indeed. Also, it was a 777. The trip was superfast -- only 3.5 hours. The reason was the extra fast jet stream that later that day would case the tornado in Newton, Mississippi. We arrived at Dulles 20 minutes early. As I waited in the gate at LAX, I saw the sun rise over the Hollywood Hills. It was beautiful. For a moment the sun and the moon were both up at the same time, and all you could see between them was a line of red mountains and black plam trees.
4. I listened to the flight deck the whole way across, of course. Three unique things happened this time. First, the Indianapolis controllers temporarily lost an airplane. The plane just dropped out of radio contact for a while. The controllers tried several times to raise the airplane, and finally called the plane's "company," (their word, not mine), to see if the company could reach the pilot. No luck. About 10 minutes later, the plane suddenly came back into radio contact. Everyone sounded befuddled. "What happened? What frequency were you on?" Indianapolis said. "We were on this frequency. We don't know what happened -- everything just went silent" the plane said. The made arrangements about what to do if it happened again.
This whole lost plane episode reminded me of the time I went flying with my brother in a very small plane from Chapel Hill, N.C. to Wilmington, N.C., where we wanted to have lunch in the Cotton Exchange. We got lost on the way back and realized that NC all looks the same from the air -- lots of pine trees everywhere and not much else. We tried to find I-40 but we couldn't tell if the roads we were looking at were I-40, or I-95, or I-85. My brother finally navigated home by heading straight west until we found Jordan Lake, which is pretty big, and then we just flew north for a little while at a very low altitude until we found the tiny Chapel Hill airport. That was the same flight where we had landed at Wilmington on only one wheel and wobbled around on the runway trying to get the other wheel down, as a US Airways plane screamed out of the sky above us. AAAAGHHH! Only later did my brother confess that he'd never actually landed that particular airplane before. But that's another story.
The second unique thing was that the controllers in Albuquerque explained to someone, for some reason, that there is one person in the Albuquerque Center responsible for "blending all the incoming streams for the Phoenix approach." They made it sound very cool. This wasn't entirely news to me -- as Faithful Readers will know by now, when a plane travels across the country, it is handed off from one frequency to another by controllers, who are grouped in geographical "centers," such as the Washington Center, the Indianapolis Center, Kansas City Center, etc. On my westbound flight, the centers we went through were Washington, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Denver (which covers a really large amount of territory), Salt Lake, and Los Angeles. A typical plane goes through about three or four frequencies per center, before being handed off to the next center. On the eastbound flight we went through LA Center (duh), Albuquerque Center, Gallup Center -- then I fell asleep for a while -- Indianapolis, and back to Washington. These centers have nothing to do with airports -- indeed, some of the centers are not even located in an airport. For example, the controllers that bring traffic into England from across the Atlantic call themselves "London Center" but they are physically sitting in a room in Cornwall somewhere.
But I digress. The controllers in the center handle transit traffic generally, and then there are different controllers that handle approach, departure, and ground traffic at particular airports. So the ground controller gets you from your gate to the end of the runway. Then the departure controllers get you ready for take off and keeps you until something like 15,000 feet, and then they pass you off to the first center on your heading. And the same process works in reverse, although it seems that one contacts, say, Dulles approach, about 10 minutes before you land and a lot more than 15,000 feet off the ground. So the only really new thing I learned from this Phoenix person was that the last frequency in the last center before you are handed off to the approach team to land are busy "blending the streams," in other words, positioning a whole bunch of planes coming in from a whole bunch of different frequencies coming from a whole bunch of different directions and getting them lined up to land. Which reminds me, if you ever get the chance, it is really fun to listen to the departure controllers lining up planes to take off, because you can look out your window and see the other planes the controllers are talking too.
I learned some new lingo about that, too -- e.g., if a controller is telling a United plane to wait for another United plane to pass and then follow it down the taxi way, the controller will say "Wait for company traffic and follow." The phrase "company" when used like that appears to mean "let that plane that is owned by the same company that you owns you to go first." So LAX departure told a little plane near us to "wait for the company heavy (that was us) and follow -- hold for takeoff to let heavy wake subside." Big planes create big wakes that can be dangerous for little planes. I think listening to the ground and departure controllers is the most interesting part of all.
The third unique thing on this flight was that a controller in Gallup got all confused and forgot who he'd told to do what. I thought for a moment he might be drunk. He actually called out to a couple of flights and asked the pilots to tell him what his last instructions to them were. He called out to another flight and asked if he'd already told them to descend to flight level 31, etc. It was embarassing. I wouldn't be surprised if the guy was fired. It's kind of hard to hide that kind of screw up, when probably hundreds of planes can hear you, not to mention droves of discerning United passengers glued to the flight deck. I got back to Dulles, got in my car, turned on All Things Considered, and found that Susan Stamberg was still on NPR talking about the new Los Angeles production studio.
"Today in LA" is the name of the morning newscast here. It's supposed to rhyme.
The day today in LA began with the sun rising over the Hollywood Hills, which I can see from my hotel room. My boss and I had breakfast (melon and cottage cheeses, also very LA) and then we headed over to the Beverly Hills Courthouse for our hearing. As many of you know, the Beverly Hills court has a rule against "bizarre dress." You can't wear anything "bizarre" or else they get mad. Being a woman, this caused no end of stress. Would East Coast attire be considered bizarre? Which is more bizarre, a pants suit (verboten in DC courts) or a skirt suit (so very not LA). I decided to dress like Joan Crawford in her most intimidating and professional moments, except I concluded I should not wear a hat. So I wore a black fitted suit with white embroidery on the cuffs and lapels, a black pencil skirt (below the knee) black stockings and very 1940's looking black suede pumps. I already have black hair and white skin, so it was perfect.
The only other women lawyers I saw in the couthouse were similarly attired (one was going for the Greta Garbo look, and one for Bette Davis, but the idea was the same), so I was QUITE pleased with myself. My boss didn't quite understand, but that's okay.
The hearing was a veritable Who's Who of corporate Hollywood lawyering. The procedural history of our case is very complicated, and we have been effectively consolidated with a bunch of other cases that involve virtually every network-affiliated television station in the United States. So lawyers for NBC, ABC, Universal Studios, Disney, etc., were all there, as well as lawyers for a number of media agencies and advertisers. Our local counsel spent most of the hearing huddled over my chair pointing out all the famous Hollywood insiders. Most of it went over my head.
After the hearing, my boss and I tried somewhat fruitlessly to get a cab back from the courthouse. Beverly Hills is not a big taxi part of town.
We stood out on the street in the sun for a while, looking at the fig trees and the blue sky, and the white Beverly Hills buildings. To our shock, a Beverly Hills motocycle policeman drove up and asked if we'd like him to call a cab for us. ! We said, "yeah!" So he talks into his shoulder the way cops do, and then he told us to walk up to a certain intersection. He followed us and said the cab com[any was going to call him back and tell him the ETA. We said, "Gee thanks!" The cop said -- "no problem, I told the cab company what you look like and what you're wearing, so just stay here and someone will be by shortly." I could not resist, of course, and asked the cop how he described us. I was wondering if he'd said "Joan Crawford and some tall guy." But he apparently all he said was that we were "a caucasian male and a caucasian female, in dark suits, outside the courthouse." That was accurate but disappointing.
On the way back to the hotel, my boss convinced me I was nuts to fly home on the redeye. He said I should stay the night because the hotel isn't THAT expensive and he said I could, anyway. So then we went and sat in the spa garden of the hotel, called back to DC to report about our Hollywood court appearance, and while sitting looking at the jacarandas and the palms and the sea figs and the giant sea pea plants, I decided he was right and went inside to make arrangements for staying over.
The afternoon was spent meeting with an expert. Our location was the top of a high rise in Century City. Our views were north up the Hollywood Hills, over the LA Country Club grounds, and down to the ocean. They sky was crystal clear. The view was extremely distracting. We could see the office where Ronald Reagan still has an office. High up above were dozens of traffic helicopeters, and jumbo jets from LAX that were dwarfed by the geography and looked like they were just inching across the sky. There is something soporific about watching jumbo jets come in across the Pacific ocean. I could've sat there watching them for hours. I recall the same feeling watching planes from our office in San Francisco.
After the end of the work day, I got in my rental car and drove down to Santa Monica to see the sunset and sit on the beach. I love Santa Monica. Amazingly, I found a parking spot one block from the ocean, on Wilshire Blvd., at a meter spot and the meter was already fully paid! If that isn't a sign that staying an extra night was the right thing to do.... My ultimate destination was the Third Street Promenade, a walking street in Santa Monica two blocks off the ocean. Everytime I've been in LA I've ended up on the Third Street Promenade. I love it. There are big stores like Pottery Barn and Banana Republic, but there are also about three independent bookstores, a Barnes & Noble, a whole bunch of places to eat, and at least three movie theatres. Movies are serious business here, and every theatre had lines around the block tonight. Part of it was the premier of Two Towers. But part of it was just LA movie culture. There are movies showing here that I've never even heard of before, and that I bet a million bucks will never make it to DC. My best LA movie moment was seeing Elizabeth with Cate Blanchett right here on the Third Street Promenade in 1998. I had come to town to go the opera with my best friend on Valentine's Day, because she'd recently split with her husband (a TV guy, as it happens) and didn't feel like going to the opera with him since he was on the outs, after all. We went to a matinee in a fancy Santa Monica movie house and ate LOTS of popcorn. It was fabulous. Cate Blanchett is my hero. After the movie we strolled on the beach and dabbled our toes in the ocean. Oh, and the opera was pretty good, too.
Tonight the Promenade was also decked out for Xmas. Under the jacarandas and the palm trees were Xmas carolers, a bagpipe person, a few pantomimes, a bunch of guitarists, and all kinds of Xmas decorations. The bagpipe person was playing Xmas carols, which you could hear EVERYWHERE, even inside the top floor of the Barnes & Noble. Bagpipe Xmas carols under jacaranda trees and palms is kind of weird, I thought. The promenade reminded me that perhaps one of hte reasons I prefer LA to SF is that there is more energy in LA -- probaby beacuse there are just so many more people. Something is ALWAYS going on here, and people are out an about pretty late into the evening. For example, the hotel staff have turned the entry way of my hotel into an ice skating rink. Isn't that enterprising? The advertising signs all say, "Mittens? I don't think so. Sunscreen? Definitely!" Anyway, the whole atmosphere on the Promenade was very festive, and busy, and small-townlike, with people Xmas shopping after work and kids on their way to Xmas pageants, etc. It was fun.
The weirdest thing I saw today was the Los Angeles Temple -- which is a very grand synogoue high on a hill above the Santa Monica Boulevard built in a very modern architectural style, surrounded by those extremely tall skinny palm trees and not much else. Just that image is jarring enough -- it's like something out of Raiders of the Lost Ark. But then, if you looked closely, you saw that someone had decorated all the trees on the temple property with red and green lights. Red and green are for Christmas. How do you suppose the rabbi feels about that? A final note about palm trees. They are VERY tall, and they lean, and all the palm trees on a given road will tend to lean the same way. They appear to lean towards the ocean. They are the giraffes of the tree world.
My second attempt to get to LA was successful. I flew across the country with a bunch of grumpy tourists returning from Paris. They all complained about how they hadn't seen the sun once the whole time they were in France, how there were too many plane flights to get there, too many hotels, etc. The flight was late leaving Dulles because there was some maintenance problem with the aircraft leaving Paris. So I slept on the flight whilst listening to the flight deck, as usual, on Channel 9 . Our call sign for this trip was United 947 Heavy. The result was a kind of hallucinatory trip. In my sleep, my brain converted the voices of the pilots and controllers and I thought the were saying things they weren't. You know, that feeling when you wake up to the news or fall asleep to the TV and you're so groggy you don't hear properly? E.g., while were in Minneapolis air space, I'm sure I heard someone report in and say, "Minneapolis Center, Rosemary died in the back bedroom." I thought of a spartan, clean, upstairs back bedroom with a white lace bedspread out on the windy Minnesota plain. Later, I heard someone say, "Who wants a Texas ice cream?" Odd. Finally, Los Angeles Center told our pilot, United 947, "United 947 Heavy -- don't talk to Hector." That one may have been somewhat accurate, because it turns out that Hector is a beacon just east of Big Bear on the way into LA. There were others, but I can't remember them. I also heard the hectic process of "vectoring" planes into the LA Basin. Due to weather, we all had to slow down whilst still over Utah somewhere, and fly in funny directions for a while until the controllers told us to speed up again. The controllers said that LA had reduced it's acceptance rate so we had to stack up out there over the Grand Canyon and line up for the long approach into LA. That sort of puts all the geography into perspective.
It was 50 degrees when I arrived and the natives here thought it was freezing. The taxi dispatcher was all wrapped up in a wool hat, a wool scarf, heavy winter coat, etc. I, on the other hand, had taken off my winter clothes and packed them up in my wheelie before I even got on the plane in Dulles, for fear of dissolving like a tablet in water once I arrived in balmy LA.
I took a taxi to the Century Plaza Hotel in Century City. My hotel is built on the former back lot of 20th Century Fox. They sold off a bunch of property to developers a while ago and that's how Century City came to be. I thought that was pretty neat trivia. I'm told that John Wayne, Judy Garland, Gregory Peck and Marilyn Monroe filmed movies right here on this spot. The Westin Hotel company was first among the developers to biuld here, and the person who built this hotel is the same guy who desinged the World Trade Center in NY. Hmmm. It's all white and chrome inside and very LA looking -- the halls are slightly curved so you can never see where you're going, and you expect Elizabeth Taylor to come around the corner. The front if light at night with pale pink lights. You get the idea.
This morning I woke to a beautiful view of the Santa Monica mountains with the sun rising and the sky is perfectly clear. I really like LA -- I much prefer it to SF. If I ever moved to California I would move here. The view of the mountains is beautiful, and the city is not trying to be something it's not (like SF). It embraces the fact that it's maligned and considered superficial and silly. It adores movies -- there are movie billboards here that you never see on the East Coast. They prune and and shave the palm trees here, as if they were poodles. The weather is fabulous. The food is yummy. I actually feel uplifted in Los Angeles, almost the way one feels uplifted in New York. I am excited to step out onto the Avenue of the Stars and go to the Beverly Hills courthouse.
Some of you may be wondering about the weather out here. It rained yesterday and will rain tonight, I'm told. Interstate 5 was closed down in the Grapevine -- the twisty turvy part near Pasadena that goes through the mountains -- due to ice. The roads up near Big Bear are in their "snow chains required" status. In the higher elevations of the LA Basin, there will be snow today. Down here in the lowlands, it will be in the low 60s, and brilliantly sunny.
As many of you already know, my trip out West has gotten off to a bad start, mainly because I haven't actually gotten there yet. I got to the airport, checked in, went through security, bought my usual grande non-fat vanilla latte at the Starbucks in United's mid-field terminal, and settled in for the six hour flight to LA. I whipped out my materials and began idly preparing for the deposition I was supposed to take tomorrow. I listened to obnoxious business men talk way too loudly on their cell phones about their dull and insignificant business deals. I overheard people speaking proudly about the fact that they had flown in to DC all the way from Dubuque. The gate agents were just warming up to announce that United premier fliers (me) could pre-board and then general boarding would commence. I was walking down the gangplank, excited that I had a fabulous seat -- seat 9C. Before I got to the door of the aircraft, my cell phone rang. It was my secretary calling to say that the opposing lawyer had called and that the witness did not intend to show up tomorrow at the deposition. So I turned around and marched up the gangplank.
It turns out that because my ticket was such an expensive fare (last minute business fare), the landing agents were willing not only to rearrange my itinerary and guarantee me great seats, but they probably would have cleaned my house and picked up my dry cleaning, too. I told them someone else could have seat 9C if they could get me on tomorrow evening's flight to LAX.
Not only did they do that, they told me which flight tomorrow is on a 777 (my favorite aircraft). They looked at me brightly when they said this: "There are plenty of premier seats available on the 5:50 flight, and it's a 777, to the extent you have an aircraft preference." Membership has its privileges. And now I know that I do indeed have an aircraft preference.
So now my trip to LA will involve little more than a court appearance in the Beverly Hills Courthouse -- during which I will be required to do nothing but sit there, look smashing, make friends, and take notes on court personnel and the cast of opposing lawyers -- and a meeting with an expert at which my boss will do most of the talking.
And I don't have to drag heavy exhibits around or engage in any taxing thought processes. And I get to move to a hotel more convenient to the Winona Ryder Courthouse -- the Century City Westin on the Avenue of the Stars, instead of the Dallas-esque glass high rise Westin in downtown LA.
My last day in London was very sunny but also very cold. In the morning I walked from Covent Garden to St. Paul's without either getting lost OR accidentally visiting Trafalgar Square. This was a major accomplishment. St. Paul's is definitely my favorite thing in London -- it's so big but it is all crammed into the old streets that you can only catch occasional glimpse of it until you are actually there. It's sort of like the way you come upon the Pantheon in Rome. Little winding streets, darkness, cobblestones, more winding streets, and then you come around a corner WHAMMO! There it is. I couldn't see much of St, Paul's because there was a ton of scaffolding up inside for some reason. But it has great mosaics and there was an Anglican priest saying prayers in an extremely British accent. It was hard not to giggle. It was like that scene in Monty Python -- "Dear God, thou art, SOOO big, thou art, SOOO powerful...." The actual prayer he was reading was the one about how God gave names to all the animals -- which is, of course, also a Bob Dylan song. Weird. This Anglican priest said the word "cattle" in an extremely effective manner. It came out sounding like "kattul." Right after he said "kattul" someone came up and whispered something and so the priest started over and said "kattul" again. Very fun.
The most interesting thing I saw in the cathedral was the display about efforts to save St. Paul's from the German's during the Blitz. There are amazing photos of smoke and fire all around and St. Paul's rising out of it all on the skyline. There are photos of the damage caused by the bombs that managed to hit. There is a very sad letter written by a member of the St. Paul's Guard -- the British men who manned the dome 24 hours a day and put out fires and saved the structure. It was very difficult to read -- the man wrote about how horrible it was to see German planes in the sky over London and to feel the bombs falling all around and then the man said, "Of course, I am bursting into tears every half and hour, but that is only physical." There was also a photo of the view form the top of St. Paul's over London -- and you could see the blimp that was tethered to Buckingham Palace to protect it. I wondered how a blimp (which doesn't have any guns and which one could pop, no?) could protect a palace from bombs, and I decided it must have been a geographical marker so that anti-aircraft people and American and British dogfighters would know where it was at all times. Anyway, it was all very moving.
Then I walked out of St. Paul's and up Fleet Street and looked at all the British people and thought how amazing it was that we won the war and London was still English and how awful it must have been to live through that time.
I stopped at the office (which is on the Strand, across from India House and the BBC and next to the London School of Economics) and said bye to some folks and then went out to a quick lunch with one of the associates in our London office. We ate in Seven Dials. I really like Seven Dials.
Then I hopped back in a taxi and did the reverse route to Paddington Station and to Heathrow on the express train. Heathrow is a really awful airport. They don't post your gate number until about 15 minutes before boarding, so you have hours to sit around in a common waiting area with nothing much to do. My flight left at 4:30 and it was dark by 3:30 (Northern altitude) so there wasn't even anything to look at out the windows. Also, you go through many more security checks than here in the U.S. United had three United-only security checks before we even got to the waiting area at the gate.
Two things to report about the flight back:
1. We flew very far West and came almost straight down from the Hudson Bay in Canada over Ottawa, Syracuse, and the Finger Lakes. We were so far West we had to make a left turn (to the east) to land at Dulles. Do suppose the people living in Ottawa realize that some of the planes flying over them are en route from London to Dulles? I bet that would news to them.
2. The captain came on towards the end of the flight to explain the bankruptcy and to say Mileage Plus miles will still work and that everything will be "normal" from the customers perspective and that they really appreciate us flying with them and that they hope the bankruptcy protection will make the airline more competitive, etc. It was actually very moving. Poor United.
Now that I'm back, I've just learned that I will probably be spending two or three days next week in Los Angeles for work.
I have not seen the sun since I got here, and the rain and fog has made of mockery of my "hairstyle," and the balls of my feet hurt from walking on cobble stones in stack heels, but I'm having a wonderful time. 1. Yesterday I went to Westminster Abbey for the full tour and noted a few important items: (a) the place is so crammed full of 1,000 years of monuments, plaques, tombs, and other stone stuff so that you can't turn around or deviate from the beaten path or even see the walls nor can you satnad at one end of the nave and see down to the ends becuase there are numerous alters and mini churches set up in the way; (b) British people were mean to their dead ancestors, and wrote peevish epilogues about some of them such as "Jane attemped in life to maintain a spotless record -- hers was a life of unending struggle" or "Edward was primitively religious." 2. Humorous items on display include the "Practice Regalia" which are the fake coronation things QEII used to practice on ("Don't Drop It!") and her coronation day undergarment which they called the Super Tunica!" I wondered if it was a typo and it should be the Supra Tunica, since it was an undergarment, not an overgarment.
3. The Funniest Thing in Westminster Abbey Award goes to a nicely carved stone in the floor at the foot of a tomb in a little chapel. The stone was carved to read "Way to Vault."
Yesterday night I went to see a play called The Woman in Black. It is a ghost story set on Christmas Eve and it was in a tiny little theater that was like something out of the Hobbit. There were windy staircases that went up much further than you would have thought from looking at the theatre from the outside, there was a bar tucked into the landing of one of the very topmost staircases, the halls and aisles were very narrow, and the audience was practically on top of the stage. We had front row seats on the first level up ("the Dress Circle.") The play was TERRIFYING! The whole audience was absolutely petrified, and several times we screamed forcefully out loud in unison -- raising a holy racket -- and horrified gasps and muffled yelps escaped periodically throughout. The play had only two cast members and no set -- it was pure psychological horror. It was the best play I have ever seen. The theatre was so small that we all felt each other's terror and were as a bonded unit when it was over and we all tumbled out into the street, exhausted.
Before the play I had eaten with my fellow theatre goer at lovely subterranean Italian restuarant somewhere i the theatre district. I am perpetually lost in London -- the streets are not straight and the names change and every time I thought I knew where I was I'd come around a corner and I'd be in Trafalgar Square. I got pretty sick of Trafalgar Square. I know every statute in Trafalgar Square now and I think I have probably approached it (accidently) from every possible direction. George Washington is on the north of Trafalgar Square and I've said hello to him several times now. South Africa House is on another side and I've said hello to the elephants and kudu on its outer stonework several times as well. Admiralty Arch is now the center of my moral compass, though I can see that coming from far enough away that I'e only actually walked through it twice. All this to say, don't ask me where the Italian restaurant was -- I have no idea except that it was somewhere in Covent Garden. I also spent a good part of yesterday in Waterstones on Piccadilly Street in Piccadilly Circus. Piccadilly Street is a madhouse with holiday makers -- it's like -- a CIRCUS out there! The Waterstones on Piccadilly Street is the biggest bookstore in Europe. That's where I met my fellow theatre goer -- it's huge and hard to miss and you can occupy yourself if the person you're meeting is late.
After the theatre we went pubbing in Clerkenwell, the new chic part of town. It is amazing how easy it is to get beer after 11 p.m. in a town that supposedly can't sell it to you after 11 p.m. We had no troubles at all. We did see some people on the street all dressed up in monkey's outfits. Not sure why.
Today was a totally different kind of day. I started off in a taxi to Liverpool Street Station where I caught a train to Billericay in Essex. In Billericay, a half an hour later, I got off the train and was met by Jim Higgins who is a person we used to know when we lived in Portugal in the 1970s, when I was only 6 years old. The whole Higgins family lives in a town called Stock and I went out there for what turned out to be a 5 hour boozy odyssey of reminiscenes and local Essex lore. They took me to thier local "country club" and we ate what is called a Carvery -- basically a Sunday Buffet. Every kind of meat imaginable was available. We ate and ate and ate and ate. Then we back to the Higgin's house and looked at pictures of Portugal and pictures of their house and ate some more. Then we played with the Higgin's grandchild, and ate some more, and then we got on the phone and called the other Higgins child who lives in Arizona, and we reminisced about Portugal with her, too. Mrs. Higgins told me some things about myself at age 6 that I did not know, in particular that I was the youngest of the kids and I was always getting into trouble because I apparently had the hardest time following the rules. She actually said, "Poor Kim, you were so little and you were always in so much trouble." This came as something of a shock. So I I told Mrs. Higgins she could not be right, and I listed all the terrible things my brother and her two girls had done -- all of which was news to her and so then she was somewhat shocked. Then Claire -- her oldest daughter, came to my rescue and said that really my brother and Claire's sister were the ones who caused all the trouble, and everyone else was always blamed for it no matter what, usually me. Anyway, the whole evening made me sad that we don't live in Portugal anymore, and also sad that I am not six and that the Higgins's are not in their mid-30s anymore. The Higgins took me back to the train station and sent me off from the platform in the rain and dark as if I was a little girl going off to boarding school. I got back to Liverpool Street Station and took a taxi way across town to West Hampstead where, believe it or not, I ate dinner. A colleague made me dinner and I couldn't refuse on the grounds that I had just eaten every cow in Essex. That would have been rude. West Hampestead and Hampestead Heath are lovely -- I saw Emma Thompson's house, and John Keats's house, etc.
Then the colleague drove me back to my hotel and in the process, took me on a night time tour of London all lit up. It was beautiful. My colleague's favorite monument is Big Ben -- mine is St. Paul's. St. Paul's has real personality. I love it.
Two things to note before I sign off: 1. Liverpool Street Station is wonderful. It is massive, and the taxis drop you off underneath the station right on the platforms. There are 17 platforms, and platform 10 is for taxis. Very nifty. On one side of the tax stand is the train to East Anglia, and on the other side of hte taxi is the train to Essex. You have to be careful not to tumble off the taxi stand onto the rails. From down on the platform level you look up about 10 stories to the wrought iron roof over the trains -- it is magnificent. People enter elsewhere, so the only thinkg down on the taxi stand are you, the trains, and the black English taxis.
2. After viewing the inside of Westminster Abbey I got hoplessly tangled up in the Fire Brigade Strike which was marching from Trafalgar Square (yes!) up Pall Mall to somewhere. The only picture I've taken in London (other than of the Higgins's) was of the Fire Brigade Strike. Huge numbers of mounted police were waiting in every side street and I tried several times to cross the stream of protesting firemen but didn't succeed until I'd been dragged off up Pall Mall somewhere beyond Haymarket Street. Once through, I began a circular, somewhat hopeless trek through Soho and Covent Garden looking for the Seven Dials again (my home). I just happened to find it finally (after several more unwanted visits to Trafalgar Square) because by chance I turned my head and saw the Seven Dials pillar down at the end of a street. To console myself, I went to the Neal Street Dairy and bought myself a package of Montgomery Cheddar Cheese (which is yummy) and a farmer's loaf, and sat on a bench in the rain and ate it all.
Thirty-six hours after getting off the Seattle red eye I was back at Dulles standing in line for United flight 924 to London, only this time there was 6 inches of snow on the ground. My flight to London was WONDERFUL! It was a big new airplane and I had the whole row to myself. It was a 777 so I got to watch the map of our progress and ground speed (we averaged 700 miles per hour in part because we had a 150 mph tail wind). I also got to listen to the cockpit, which I have never done on an international flight before. East Coast traffic is different from West Coast traffic. The East Coast has intersections, so we proceeded from Dulles to the Swan Intersection (over the Eastern Shore) and then went to the Jake Intersection (over Wilmington Delaware), etc. Interestingly, most of the other airplanes using our frequency when we got into UK airspace were also American carriers. Nice American pilots talking to nice British controllers. I think they must have someone in charge of incoming transatlantic flights at the London Center, because it obviously cannot be the case that most planes landing in London are coming from America. At least once I could see another airplane out the window (during our descent) and could figure out which person it was on the radio frequency. I could figure this out because London would say "American #42 heavy turn right 5 degrees and descend to 15,000" and I knew that our airplane was already at 15,000 feet and I could see an American plane coming into view and flying with us. Very exciting. Other advenuturous departure info was watching our big airplane get de-iced. It's just a guy with a big hose shooting stuff at the front of the wings in what looks like a not very scientific way. Also, one airplane at another gate (gate A2) got stuck in the snow and couldn't push back and a fire engine had to come push it out. These are the reasons to listen to the cockpit at all times.
The flight took only 6 hours. Consider that my flight to Portland, Oregon on Monday night took 5.5 hours... I enjoyed my flight so much (yummy dinner with brie, grapes and poached salmon, no noisy neighbors, no bumps, pleasant American pilot, etc.) that I didn't want to get off it. "Why do I have to get off the airplane?" I thought to myself...
I arrived and my first move was to take the Express train from Heathrow to Paddington Station. Paddington Station is like something out of a Merchant & Ivory movie, or maybe Harry Potter. It consists mainly of a huge soaring iron trussed roof over the platforms, which are all open to each other so you can stand on Platform 1 and see all the way across the station to Platform 10. You expect to see steam engines pull in. At the head end of the platforms is an open space and some restuarants and ticket counters, and that's basically it. I got a taxi at Paddington to go into Covent Garden to my hotel. I was shocked at how big the taxis are -- they are not just cars like elswhere in the world. They have a very large area in front of the seats in the back where you can either pile up all your luggage or pull down two hatchback seats to squeeze passengers in. My cabbie told me that each car is specially made and costs 33,000 pounds. Some of them carry advertisements to help defray the cost. Someone else told me that they are built that way to that they can make U turns more easily, but I didn't believe that.
My hotel is very nice and is on a circle in Covent Garden called Seven Dials. From my window I can see the big Ferris Wheel across the Thames, and also some of the big buildings in the City of London. It is cloudy and rainy -- otherwise I think I could see St. Pauls. After I checked in I went on an investigative urban hike. I hiked around for 5 hours -- starting with Leicester Square, and proceeding through Trafalgar Sqaure, Admiralty Arch, the Horse Guards, around Westminster Abbey (which was closed) and Big Ben etc. I checked out the statute of Queen Boadicea by the Westminster bridge. I went over the bridge and walked down the other side of the river until I got to the new Tate. I went inside the new Tate and went to the cafe and had a glass of mulled red wine. Then I crossed the pedestrian only bridge (which I think is called the Millenium Bridge). By this time the sun had set and it was very windy and it seemed to me that the river was VERY WIDE. The Millenium Bridge drops you off right in front of St. Paul's Cathedral. I went in there to find a choir singing. It was beautiful. The Cathedral is right in the middle of a traffic circle and looks small from outside, but you get inside and it is massive with a really beautiful roof (that is not in any picture that I have ever seen) and somehow you can't hear the traffic. By now it was not only dark but rainy. I walked west from St. Paul's through some of hte Inns of Court (which are very beautiful) and found our new office. Inside I found very few people because last night was their Christmas party and most of them were under the weather. I said howdy to Kurt and found Sarah, Keith, and Chris, all of whom complimented me on my choice of hotel.
Now I'm going to bed. Tomorrow I am going back to Westminster Abbey to see it properly, and then I have theatre tickets to something here in the Covent Garden neighborhood.
I did learn three funny things today:
1. The national plant of Wales is the leek. I learned this because there is a one pound coin for each member of the United Kingdom -- Northern Ireland's is a celtic symbol, Scotland is the thistle, England is a field of lions rampant, and Wales is the leek. Doesn't that seem feeble?
2. There is a place here in the theatre district called St. Andrews-of-the-Wardrobe.
3. One cannot purchase topical antibiotics here without a prescription. This means no neosporine. I learned this because Sarah tripped over her shoelaces while jogging the other day and has a supurating would which needs neosporine, but alas...I suggested she make a leek compote.
The deposition in Oregon went very well, as it turned out. I drove west from the City, towards the Pacific. I drove through Douglas fir tree farms and fields of orchards, and along a ridge of hills that forms part of the Coast Range. It was a cold, sunny morning and under the orchard trees the ground was white from frost. There was barely any traffic. I past a million fresh produce and organic dairy stands The deposition was in a small town called Hillsboro, and the law firm I was in was right across the street from the tiny Washington County courthouse. The law firm looked like a one story concrete slab, but inside it was an architectural marvel -- several subterranean floors, skylights, profusions of orchids, little knooks of rooms filled with casebooks. This was clearly the center of the action in Washington County legal circles. The deponent was a former professional trumpet player from Los Angeles who had run away to Oregon when his wife left him for a richer guy. The deponent had build a "hand-made house" in the Oregon woods, where he works as a technical write for Intel -- a job he can dow without leaving the side of his wood burning stove. He wore jeans and a very thin, light blue T-shirt that said OREGON! on it. He spilled all sorts of dirt on our litigation adversary (who was sleeping with who, who stole who's girlfriend, etc.) -- it was a surprisingly successful session.
We were done by noon and I had ten and a half hours to kill before my flight -- which, incidentally, departed from Seattle, not Portland. So I stocked up on pistachio nuts and peanuts, and headed east. First stop was the Columbia River Gorge. I had been listening to NPR in the car and knew two important things were happening in Oregon -- an airplane had hit an elk on a runway in Astoria, and there was a wicked, terrible wind and a fog warning in what they called "the Western Gorge." My Alamo rental car map suggested there were a number of Lewis & Clark historic sites to visit in the Western Gorge, so I went. It was absolutely stunning. Practically within sight of the Portland airport is this fabulous gorge -- the Columbia River is wide and rough -- on Tuesday it was covered in white caps. The earth goes up vertically on each side of the River, and I don't know what the rock is but it is very dark gray and covered in fir trees and primeval looking in the extreme. The entrance to the gorge was sunny -- as you went west you could see the fog stopping up the gorge and making the sky look yellow and gray and ery violent. Believe it or not, an Interstate highway runs down the south side of the gorge, wedged between the granite (I assume?) cliffs and yellow river grass paddies that line the river. The highway was in the shade -- the yellow river grass was very bright in the sun, the river was bright blue. It was like something out of a Western landscape painting. I took a right turn and drove straight up to the top of the hills (this was no longer the Coast Range -- these were the Cascade Mountains) and I found a flat windy place at the top where I could see Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helen's and Portland. I was parked in the driveway of an apple orchard, and two nice dogs (one yellow and one black laborador) came out and kept me company. They were accustomed to the wind. We got along well -- I took a picture of them next to my rental car with my disposal camera. There were no people anywhere.
Then I headed north up I-5 into Washington State on the way to Seattle. Almost the whole way, Mt St. Helen's was off to the right. Because of the mountains, it got dark by about 3:30 p.m. but the mountain was standing up straight in the sun and was covered in snow and glowed. About 1.5 hours after leaving the Columbia River Gorge, I passed a sign that said, "National Volcanic Monument -- 5 Miles from Highway." I was in a town called Chehalis. I took the turn, and drove through a dense Douglas fir forest for 5 miles, until I found a wooden, mountain lodge. There was no wind and down at the bottom of the tall trees it was very very quiet. Douglas firs are very big -- they live for 1,000 years and can be several hundred feet tall. They are the big tree featured on Oregon license plates. They have excellent personalities -- much better than spruce trees or hemlock trees. As I walked down the hill to the lodge, I realized that you could see Mt. St. Helen's through a crack in the gloomy fir trees. It was still sitting in the sun -- it was glowing white -- it was perfecty silent out and there was a bright blue lake between me and the mountain. There were no people anywhere, and you couldn't even hear the sound of the highway. It was a bizarre feeling -- almost a religious experience. The mountain just sat out there in the sun. Totally silent.
Inside the lodge there was a very cool exhibit about the eruption in 1980. Still no people. While going through the exhibit I remembered when I first learned about Mt. St. Helens -- we were living in Zambia and we got a National Geographic that showed pictures of the eruption and the ensuing devastation. It was very weird to see it all of sudden, unexpectedly, so far away from Zambia and to find it sitting all by itself with no people around. I learned from the exhibit that the eruption was preceded by almost 300 earthquakes in the 4 days leading up to the eruption, and that if they hadn't evacuated the mountains the week before the eruption, as many as 2000 people might have died. Apparently dust from the eruption ruined a parade in Spokane -- on the other side of the state -- and the eruption was heard as far away as Boise, Idaho. The lodge had a viewing platform where you could sit and look at the volcano for as long as you wanted. I decided Mt. St. Helen's was my favorite volcano.
Next stop was Seattle. By this time I was getting tired so I did only three things in Seattle before heading to the airport:
1. I drove the front bumper of my red Chevy Cavalier as close as I could get it to the Space Needle.
2. I went to the Pike Place Market and had a grande vanilla latte at the Original Starbucks.
3. I drove around the new Seattle Marinrer's baseball stadium, which is built on top of the BNSF mainline which carries loaded freight trains under the spectators and off to the Port of Seattle, where they get put on boats and sent off to Asia. Near the stadium is the Starbucks Corporate headquarters -- very comforting sight. All lit up with the giant green woman emblem on the top of the building.
Then it was to the SeaTac airport to wait for the redeye back to Dulles. Being the West Coast, the place was practically shutdown when I got there at 8 p.m. All the eating establishments were shut (even Starbucks) and the United monitors showed ony about 10 flights left to depart that night. The Dulles redeye was the absolute dead last flight to leave the terminal. I checked in and got through security in about 10 minutes, and spent the next 2.5 hours doing absolutely nothing. I wonder what people on the West Coast do at night. They are either all gourmet cooks who eat at home, or they are an extremely well-rested people.
Redeye was beautiful. It's entertaining to look down at the lights all the way across the continent - the fog and condesation blurs them so the towns glow up out of the clouds like a Disney movie. And you can see the stars because you are above the clouds. Landed at Dulles just before sunrise. Dulles was abuzz - all the other redeyes get in around the same time, and the differene between the lifeless West Coast airports and the perpetually open East Coast airports is remarkable. I remember thinking the same thing coming in on the SF redeyes. Starbucks was already open.
I have managed to make a fool of myself three times already here in Portland, Oregon, and I've only been here for three hours. Here's how: 1. I asked the rental car guy where "the mountain" was and could you see it from the airplane if it were sunny out. I was tipped off that there is a mountain around these parts because there was a picture of one on the wall as I got off the plane from Dulles. He pointed out the window behind me and there it was, a giant thing, in the distance. It was visible in the moonlight, covered in snow. It is really humongous. You can see it from virtually every street in town. It's in all the newscasts. The buildings looks itty bitty compared to it. That is Mt. Hood. If you gaze in the other direction -- which I haven't tried yet -- you can apparently see the other mountain, Mt. St. Helen. I'll try that tomorrow.
2. I drove all the way into town in my rented red Chevy Cavalier with my driver's side door sort of open. I thought it seemed REALLY loud in my car. I accused the road surfacing, in my East Coast snobbery, thinking maybe it was made out of redwood chips or something. I could barely here the classic rock station I had found on the radio. After I got to my hotel, I asked the valet what they made the roads out of here because it was so noisy. He told me they use tar and concrete, just like civilized people in the East, and that the problem was probably that my door was partially open. I said, "thank you," and went inside. it really is cruel that when you rent a car you have to figure out how it all works whilst simultaneously performing difficult driving tasks like exiting a multilayer parking lot and mergin onto a high speed highway that you have never been on before.
3. I got miserably lost in my red Chevy Cavalier trying to find my hotel (the Westin). I ended up somehow driving up a little mountain. This is a hilly town. The little mountain was very cool, with wonderful condominiums with fabulous views and a little windy road through tall evergreen trees. It is right smack in the middle of town -- I think. Turns out I was near Portland State University and was driving through a neighborhood called Governor's Park.
I have also learned some cool things about Portland so far:
1. It is very hilly here. I had no idea. I was expecting it to be like Eureka, California, which is flat and ugly.
2. There is a lot of water everywhere. This is apparently due to the fact that the Willamette River and Columbia River meet here in this town.
3. It is a transit mecca. Whilst existing the rental car parking lot I kept hearing the sound of military jets overhead. As I exited, I saw two jets takeing off -- WOOSH! They were combat airplanes and they looked very cool drifting off over Mt. Hood. My brother could tell me what they were if he were here. Also, along the interstate coming into town is a nice looking light rail system. Dulles should be ashamed. Ony copmlaint with it is the headlights on the locomotives blind drivers on the highway. Then, I drove for a little while on the famous Interstate 5 -- the same one that goes all the way down the San Joaquin Valley to Los Angeles and which has been the subject of recent newspaper articles about how boring the San Joaquin Valley is. I-5 crosses the Willamette River in a series of overpasses that would make the Springfield Mixing Bowl weep.
4. Possibly due to the transit-mecca nature of this town, there is no traffic. I parked my red Chevy Cavalier right in front of my hotel. You know, the spot under the marquee...
5. This is the thirty-second state that I have visited.
Finally, four annoying things have happened so far (which are different from the embarassing things at the top of this email):
1. This is the West Coast which means everything shuts early. E.g., dinner service at the Westin stopped at 10 p.m. I got here at 10 p.m.
2. Airplane was populated by Infrequent Travelers.
3. There are no cashew nuts in my mini bar.
4. I get the impression that Starbucks is frowned upon.
I listened to Susan Stamberg on Morning Edition during my 15 minute drive. She was talking about NPR's new Los Angeles production studio.
