Kelly 40!

It's a slightly belated happy birthday - Aussie time - for Kelly, who is 40 today (Monday). Kelly was born at 44 Caldecot Way, Broxbourne, Herts EN10 6PH (yes I can still remember the postcode!) - the only home birth we/Jo had. Jo has more detailed memories of her being born in our bed upstairs in our little semi and the midwife, towels and hot water, but I'm afraid most of the details are a blur to me.

We don't have many photos of Kelly when she was newly born, but this was her christening party:

It's very sad to see how many of this group are, for one reason or another, no longer in our lives.

I also remember this wet caravan holiday when Kelly was still quite young:

and this one from a camping holiday with the Hansons in France when she was ill with chickenpox:

Coincidentally, just yesterday when Jo and I were driving down to Blair Atholl (more of that later), I wondered out loud whether we should take a trip back to Benodet in Brittany where we spent a couple of camping holidays in the mid-late 70's? Need to mull that one over.

For those not on Facebook, here's Kelly celebrating her birthday on holiday in Bali:

So, what else is new since my last post? Well, Braeden turned 15 on May 8th and immediately sat - and passed - his written driving exam which allows him to drive as long as there is an adult over 21 sitting beside him:

Solid built like his Dad - we noticed the difference in him this year.

Two days after that I travelled down to Perth to meet up with some of my old school chums again. We'd previously met in Edinburgh (twice), Glasgow and Dundee - initially just the 3 of us, but this time 6 of us managed along. Here's the original three:

Next meeting will probably be in Stirling in autumn.

The day after this meeting, I took a drive up to my old stamping ground of Fraserburgh to attend a CAMRA branch meeting. I'd obviously missed a few when we were on our world tour so felt I had to attend this one even although the timing and location were far from ideal. It was a Saturday so there was nobody in the offices at the factories where I used to work, but I drove round there anyway to take a look. I was a little shocked at the entrance where new steel gates and turnstiles had been erected - they are obviously having some security issues. It was a pleasant enough afternoon but it reminded me that I didn't miss the 110 mile return trip.

That Saturday evening we had dinner at Anne and Leslie Mason's new house in Drumoak - very nice. The following morning, I was off to Grantown-on-Spey and Boat of Garten for the first of our twice yearly golf outings there. This was our 67th outing there:

Despite a few relatively younger ones joining in in recent years, the onset of time is all too obvious in the photo above - particularly when comparing with photos from the early years in the mid-80's. At least we're still here however - three of our group have now passed.

Continuing on the ageing theme, here's some of our walking group on the hills round Ballater last Friday:

A little bit younger - but not much.

After a week of beautiful dry, sunny weather, it was a great disappointment to travel down to Edinburgh on Saturday to watch the Scotland - Sri Lanka cricket match only for it to be rained off. We didn't even see one ball bowled.

On Sunday, Jo and I drove over to Blair Atholl to meet up with Barry, Helen and Dawn who were all camping at Blair Castle Caravan Park. We had dinner at the Atholl Arms Hotel, after which we took a team/family photo outside the hotel:

I am getting all too aware of my ageing body which hurts after every activity now it seems. Just this morning (Monday) I drove back down the road again to Blairgowrie to meet our IFA and play golf. As soon as I was home, I was nodding off on my chair. Last week, I applied a couple of coats of treatment to our new shed/summer house - thankfully that little chore, although a little awkward due to its location, didn't also immediately render me horizontal, but that's about the extent of my pain-free activities now.

Continuing on the nostalgia theme, Jo and I both recently joined the Banchory Heritage Facebook group. There's some interesting stuff posted on this group and I've used them to start my campaign to resurrect the flower beds that used to be on the old railway embankment at the corner of Corsee Road. Remember "Bonnie Banchory"? The displays would change from time to time - this one's "Scotland's for Me":

The old railway line that crossed the North Deeside Road closed in 1966 and the bridge over the road was taken down soon after this, but we discovered from the Facebook page that the bridge wasn't quite high enough and they had to lower the road underneath it to let some of the taller vehicles to pass under the bridge. This, however, had the knock-on effect of creating a mini-pond whenever there was heavy rain, viz:

To close, another look back to the past - specifically to our early married life. We didn't have much money and meals were pretty simple and basic, but we always looked forward to a Friday night when our treat would be a Vesta packet curry bought from Grandfare in Glasgow:

We knew how to live.

First week back in Banchory - done

It's over a week now since we got back and I think our lives - and our bodies - are beginning to return to their norm. Routines are being re-established, although I missed my regular Friday night out with the "boys" as I wasn't feeling too good that day and just hibernated. On Saturday, I ventured out briefly - just over to the golf club to sort out my locker and then round to the Red Cross, where I bought 3 books. I had intended to go to the library but a brief hail storm forced me to seek shelter in the Red Cross before I got there.

The weather had been very kind to us on our return but it started to change on Wednesday afternoon, when I got a soaking on the course on the last 4 holes. I still managed to win our Wednesday group and, to my surprise, get my (new) handicap cut. Having been away so long on our world tour, I'm now known as Phileas Fogg. Here I am collecting my prize from Nigel Meany:

I also managed a short cycle on Thursday and another (solo) one yesterday (Sunday) when the weather was a little kinder than it had been on Friday and Saturday. I stopped off at Crathes as there was some event going on. It appeared to be dog racing - sprinting, jumping over hurdles etc. I think it was something called Canicross.

On my return journey, I went off the Deeside Way for a bit and rode along the rough track right on the river's edge:

Eventually it brought me to what must be the poshest fishing lodge on the Dee, surrounded by manicured lawns.

This morning (Monday) it's Jo's turn to not feel so good - must be a little bug going round. Hope she recovers soon. Jo's missing the return to her Wednesday/Friday swimming outings with her pals - none of them were available last week - or this.

The house is quiet just now - Ross has been staying over at Lizzie's again - so it's just Jo and me.

On Saturday, I took a look in our new shed/summer house - it still needs some work on the flooring and also weather proofing, so I thought I'd check out how it was after the winter. I opened up the doors and stepped inside to do some measuring up but was disturbed by a large wasp buzzing around. It's not really the time of year for them, so I was a little surprised. On looking around a bit more, I spotted this in a top corner:

The white stuff is anti-bike powder I sprayed on it - hope I've caught it in time. I checked again this morning and there doesn't seem to be any other activity, so hopefully it can now be safely destroyed.

As for the rest of the week I'm planning another ride this afternoon, then it's Inverurie for Luca tomorrow, followed by golf on Wednesday afternoon. Nothing planned for Thursday yet, but, on Friday I'm heading to Perth to meet up again with my old school pals. I've then got another River Dee Radio show to do in the evening.

Saturday could be busy - we're heading to Anne and Leslie Mason's new house in Drumoak in the evening, but I'm also under a bit of pressure to go to Fraserburgh for the monthly CAMRA branch meeting. I've obviously missed quite a few over the last 3 months and feel a bit guilty about not attending the first one after I get back - pity it's so far away.

On Sunday, it's the first Boat of Garten outing this year. Fingers crossed for decent weather.

I've been meaning to post these photos of Miller from school for a while:

Kelly Face-Timed last week (as did Lucy yesterday) - they've got everything sorted now for the house they're buying in Old Noarlunga. They move in at the end of this month. It's a lovely property - I'm sure they'll love it there. Check it out - it's still listed as being under offer on the agent's site - https://www.domain.com.au/63-paringa-parade-old-noarlunga-sa-5168-2014973222

Back in Banchory

Our journey home was largely uneventful. I had taken some of the potential stress out of our original travel plans for Friday, which involved a very early start, 2 flights and a tight connection from Seattle to LAX, by instead catching a direct flight on Thursday evening from Medford to LA, booking a one night stay at an airport hotel there.

We got to the Marriott in good time for dinner, although just a little too late to use the Club lounge who, by now, were just serving desserts. We had all morning Friday to ourselves, but after breakfasting in the lounge, there really wasn't much else for us to do - there's nowhere pleasant to walk out next to one of the biggest airports in the world. We did, however, take a stroll down to the pool area. It was a typical LA morning with some sea mist/smog not clearing until nearer lunchtime:

Of course, I kept check on the Alaskan flights we were originally booked on, and, wouldn't you know it, they were both bang on time so we would have been ok to have taken them after all - but, hey, better safe than sorry.

We both managed to get some sleep on the big flight to London, but Jo was sick just before landing, which didn't bode well. We spent a bit longer in the lounge in T5 at Heathrow than we had planned as our flight to Aberdeen was delayed by about 45 mins, but, by 3 pm Saturday we were back on Scottish soil, with Ross waiting at the baggage carousel to greet us.

There was an interminable delay delivering the bags but we were still back in Banchory for me to tune in to the final scores coming in.

Sleep was a bit of a problem for the first 3 nights after coming home, with us both waking in the very early hours and our bodies refusing to go back to sleep, but we seem to have settled down a bit better now. In fact, I went cycling on Monday, golfed at Gleneagles on Tuesday and at Banchory on Wednesday, whilst Jo drove her car - for the first time for a year - over to Inverurie on Tuesday to pick up Luca from school. She was delighted to be able to do this again, stress-free now that she has her sight back to where it was.

One throwback to the holiday was an email I received this morning from the photo company at Table Mountain - the downloads they sent us didn't display properly and it's taken them 2 months to resolve the matter, but here's one of the photos we hadn't seen before:

Day of departure

We've said our farewells to the Lesinas - all bar Lucy, who's coming home from work at lunchtime today to drive us down to Medford to catch our flight to LAX this evening.

I didn't feel too good yesterday although I managed to walk 18 holes at Applegate River GC with Scott. It seems there has been a little bug going around - Lucy had an upset stomach a couple of days ago, then Jo had the same the day after, then me - and Cade wasn't too good yesterday, but he made it home for dinner last night - along with Mel.

Being our last evening in Grants Pass, I had to take the traditional family photo outside. I published one of them on Facebook last night, but this is an earlier version when Cade was displaying his toned torso and his tattoos - and I had forgotten to take off my glasses:

One more sleep .....

Yes - I changed our schedule and we're now flying out of Medford to LAX tomorrow (Thursday) evening, staying overnight at the Marriott next to the airport.

The other thing that changed was that we didn't go to Rich and Jen England's place last night - work got in the way and they had to cancel, so we were treated to another of Scott's BBQ's and Lucy's cocktails.

Jo and I did a bit of shopping before that - and also went to the Post Office to send a little gift off to Meghan. I went for another short cycle before that and passed - but did not imbibe at - a couple of Grants Pass's brewpubs:

The weather has been great - it's like summer now, only without the fires and flies. This afternoon (Wednesday) Scott is taking the afternoon off work and we're going to go to Applegate GC for a few holes.

Countdown

Just a few days left now. We're scheduled to depart Medford at silly o'clock on Friday morning, flying to Seattle and on to LA. We have a tight turn-round in Seattle and I took a bit of a panic attack yesterday wondering whether we should try and bring our flights forward to Thursday and stay overnight in either Seattle or LA. Needs further consideration, but if we do go with the original plan, I hope it all works out OK - we can't afford to miss our BA flight from LAX on Friday afternoon.

(Late update - just heard from our agent. He can get us on a direct flight from Medford to LAX on Thursday evening at 17:08. No refund for our cancelled Alaskan Air flights, I'm afraid. We'd need to add a hotel room as well. Tempting.)

Easter Sunday was nice - the sun returned and I went for a bike ride whilst Lucy and Jo went to church. Lucy made Angel Cake for our dessert - with strawberries and cream - yummy. Cade was home for a while and he and Braeden hung out on the settee:

They were enjoying watching the girls play fighting:

Buster was sensible - he doesn't get involved when Holly and Shelby play around like this. Sometimes young pup Shelby forgets it's just play and snarls and snaps at poor old Holly, who is looking whiter/greyer in the face each time we visit.

Both Scott and Lucy took the day off yesterday (Monday) and Scott and I drove up to Myrtle Creek to play golf at Cougar Canyon. It's a nice layout with lots of elevation changes, but we'd never played it this early in the year before and it was like the course was just waking up after the winter. They only charged us winter rates, which was nice, but there was lots of loose grass cuttings everywhere and there were damp patches too after the heavy rain the area experienced when we were in Palm Desert. The result was that Scott and I kept losing balls, which were either plugging in the damp areas or hiding under the loose grass cuttings. It took the edge off of our fun, but it was still nice to get out there again.

On the return trip, we dropped in to the DMV office to pick up the info for Braeden to sit his written driver's test - he turns 15 on 8th May. Next stop was Albertson's to pick up tri-tip for the BBQ. If, like me, you don't recognise the name of this beef cut, here's the explanation:

"The tri-tip roast is a triangular section of the sirloin primal and comes from the point where the sirloin meets the round and flank primal. Some may know it by other names. Ask for a 'California cut' and see if that helps."

This is what it looks like:

Clear now? Anyway, it was delicious.

Tonight (Tuesday) we are going over to Rich and Jen England's place - this seems to have become a regular fixture on recent holidays. Looking forward to it.

Last week of holiday

It's the start of the last week of our mammoth holiday. It's now Saturday morning here in Grants Pass and the rain that was originally forecast to arrive yesterday afternoon didn't come until overnight. It's just stopped but it's brought the temperature right back down after the heat of the last few days. Meanwhile, I believe it's El Scorchio in Scotland, so it was very unusual viewing on my weather app this morning:

or, for my American friends:

OK - it was only early morning here when I took this and it is forecast to heat up again later - and the next week looks fine too - but it's unusual to see Banchory at the top of any temperature chart.

Yesterday (Friday), Jo and I headed up to Cathedral Hills and completed the Outback trail - the jagged line below:

Here's a few photos I took along the way:

Note the walker in kilt and gaiters in the background

Tricky negotiation, Jo

We went for lunch afterwards at Goodness Gracious. No matter how often we come to the States, we never cease to be amazed at the size of the portions - way more than the light lunch I was planning. We visited a couple of downtown bookstores afterwards and then headed off to the new (brewery) kid on the block - https://www.weekendbeercompany.com/ - to refill my growler. The place has only been open for 6 months but it had a nice vibe to it - may have to pay another visit as yesterday was Good Friday and Jo was abstaining.

Last night we watched a movie on PPV - Holmes and Watson. Here comes the health warning - avoid at all costs - it's pretty dreadful. How does Will Ferrell get away with this?

We're heading to Medford this afternoon and will probably pop in to Kaleidoscope, our favourite Grateful Dead themed pizza pub - you don't get many of them, do you?

First week in Grants Pass

This apparently is my 1,600th blog post.

After our first couple of cool days here, the temperatures have steadily climbed - it almost hit 90F yesterday (Thursday) and the outlook seems set fair although we may get a shower this afternoon. I think we'll go for a walk this morning (Friday).

Yesterday we took a drive, taking in our favourite towns round here - Jacksonville and Ashland. We did a short trail walk in Jacksonville, which included a bit of a hike up one of the hills overlooking the town:

In Ashland, we walked through Lithia Park, where we'd been with the Lesinas on many previous holidays - fond memories of playing in the water with the boys. Jo posed on a bridge:

The day before (Wednesday) was Lucy's day off. She got through her chores, including taking the dogs out and then went for a run. I took the opportunity to get back on the bike again after a break of a couple of months. I took it pretty easy and did a bit of a circle round the town, coming back along the riverside trail:

You can probably see that the river is still high after the weekend rain - plus some snow melt from the mountains. We're not used to seeing it this high - normally when we're here in July/August, the water levels have dropped substantially.

What did we do on Tuesday then? Obviously not a lot - I can't remember and didn't take any photos.

We don't see much of Cade nowadays - he's either working or spending the night at his girlfriend's. This is his (empty) room:

Braeden is usually around - and we met his girlfriend the other day. Here's his room:

What this photo doesn't really show is the size of the TV on the right of the picture - it's enormous.

That's about it for now - need to get dressed and out before the forecast afternoon showers.

Palm Desert (2) and back to Oregon

Wednesday was pretty windy in the desert - at least in the morning - so we postponed our initial plans to go up to the top of San Jacinto mountain by what they called the Aerial Tramway, which was really a cable car, until the afternoon. It gave Scott time to try to make a few phone calls and deal with the theft of his dirt bike, which happened at home on Friday night - somebody apparently got in to the garage and took the bike, but was spotted by a neighbour at 3 am, acting suspiciously. As yet, the police haven't managed to file a charge nor recover the bike.

Mount San Jacinto is pretty high - over 8,500 feet - not the tallest in the range (which is almost 12,000 feet) but still high enough to have snow lying in April, despite the heat in the desert below:

It was alternately chilly and warm as we travelled on one of the many mountain top walks. The views of the Coachella Valley far below were good too:

I moved on by myself from Notch 4 to Notch 5, expecting the others to follow close behind on the downward trail, but I waited for a while and there was no sign of them. Best just to take a selfie then:

The other 3 had taken a wrong turning and ended up on another trail but eventually found their way to meet me at Notch 5. Of course, this was my fault for having left them in the first place and Jo had been worried that I'd got lost.

Thursday was a busy day - in the morning we drove over to see Cabot's Pueblo. Built as recently as 1941 by the Dutch adventurer, trader and artist Cabot Yerxa with his bare hands and a few basic tools, in the style of the Hopi Indians' - sorry Native Americans' - pueblos, from reclaimed and found materials, it is a treasure trove of artefacts from all round the world. It was abandoned a couple of times after his death in 1965 but is now run as a museum with guided tours. It's astonishing to see what he created - but why? It all seems pretty random and illogical, a product of a fertile and restless mind we suspect:

On the way back to the resort, we stopped for a quick bite at an Italian restaurant, then Scott and I hit the golf course again. We got a freebie this time - I think the assistant pro took a shine to my accent and the fact that, like his grandfather, I came from Glasgow. "I've got it covered" he said when I asked about paying. Bonus.

Lucy and Jo went back to the pool in the afternoon and we then tried to finish off the contents of our fridge as this was our last day at the resort - we were leaving one day early as we decided to break the long drive back to Oregon - 14 hours it would have been.

As it was, we spent a good chunk of Friday on the road, stopping occasionally to refuel both the car and ourselves. One pit stop we made was at a place called Bravo Farms, which looks like an old fashioned Wild West trading post, although I rather suspect, it's a modern faux facade:

Our overnight stay was in Sacramento. Our hotel, which was really a motel, was handily placed close to the Old Town area and the river so we walked out there for a quick beer and something to eat:

We settled on Fat City eventually. We were all a little tired over dinner, especially Scott, who had done all the driving, but we tried to make a good fist of the photos:

After a night's sleep, we were on the road again at 8 am. We made a coffee/fuel stop at Redding, where Scott and Lucy first met. You may recall the city was the scene of major fire devastation last summer and a lot of work still has to be done to restore parts of the town and the surrounding forests. Many of the tall pine trunks are still standing, although heavily blackened by the fires that took out their branches and all the undergrowth, but a good number must be dangerously fragile now. We spotted choppers at work moving some of the larger trunks.

We got back to Grants Pass in good time, leaving the afternoon free for Scott and Lucy to catch up with their domestic chores - mostly trying to get the house back to normal after the boys had pretty much had a free run for over a week, albeit Scott's mother, Karen, was in attendance trying to keep them on an even keel!

It's now Monday afternoon and it's been pretty cool and damp since we got back - the coldest since we left Scotland mid-February. Temperatures are supposed to be getting back up to the 80's Fahrenheit by Thursday - let's hope so. We didn't do much on Sunday, other than go downtown for a coffee, and today (Monday) is back to work and school day so Jo and I are on our own. We chose to take a trip to Medford to do a little shopping, which included a visit to our favourite book store, Barnes and Noble, where, amazingly, for the first time ever, we both left having bought precisely nothing.

Palm Desert, California

The longest day of our lives - Saturday 6th April, 2019, lasting over 40 hours including crossing the International Date Line on our flight from Brisbane to L.A. - wasn't as painful as we thought it might be. The worst part for me was the wait at Brisbane airport - our Qantas flight had been rescheduled by 3 hours a month or two ago, so, having caught a 10 am Virgin Australia flight out of Adelaide - which, sod's law was extremely punctual - we were stuck in a virtually empty international terminal for over 8 hours. We couldn't even get to the Qantas lounge as it was the other side of security and we couldn't go through as we didn't have boarding passes and the check-in gate didn't open until 5 pm.

The reason we didn't have boarding passes despite having checked in online was due to new security regulations introduced by the US Government - all passengers had to be interviewed before boarding passes were issued. Anyway, we got through eventually and munched our way through the freebies in the lounge.

We discovered we were flying on the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Compared with its major long haul rival, Airbus' 380, I would say the passenger experience in the latter is better - primarily because there's more room for the passengers. The main advantage of the Dreamliner is environmental - it's lighter, made from composite materials and is 20% more fuel efficient. It is a bit quieter too, which is a bonus.

Anyway, a meal, a G & T plus a couple of glasses of wine and then down on our flat beds to catch as much sleep as we could. I just had time to watch one movie - Vice, the hatchet job on Dick Cheney. I've watched more films on this holiday than I've done for years - normally I find a lot of the films formulaic and predictable, but this year, between all the flights we've had, plus the cruise, I've seen Bohemian Rhapsody, The Favourite, Green Book, If Beale Street Could Talk, Will They Ever Forgive Me, BlacKkKclansman, A Star is Born and probably a few others I can't remember just now.

Anyway, we got to LA on schedule - well, the plane did anyway - but we still had to undergo the torture that is immigration at LAX. We were amongst the first off our plane and we managed to grab one of the machines which scans your passport, takes your fingerprints and photographs you, then prints off what you assume is a pass that will speed you through immigration ahead of the hordes standing in line who either don't have modern passports that can be scanned or just couldn't be bothered to go through the procedure. How wrong we were - we still had to join the Disney-like lines and we were now behind the rest of the people who didn't get scanned! Grrr.

Meanwhile, Scott and Lucy were waiting patiently outside the airport to take us out to our resort in the desert. Memories of a previous trip to Palm Desert driving along the 12 lane freeways jammed solid with cars, flooded back, but fortunately it wasn't quite as bad on a Saturday evening as it had been previously when we hit the Friday afternoon commuter rush - and this time it was Scott driving thankfully.

Our first full day at the Marriott Desert Springs Villas was, understandably, a quiet one, with a bit of orientation and some rest. We thought that should be enough to recover from a bit of jet-lag - after all, we are seasoned travellers now, aren't we? - so we made plans for Monday trips. Monday morning came and Scott and Lucy were ready to get out and about early on, but I had to be woken just before 10 am - by my standards a long lie-in.

We managed to get going by 11 am but Lucy's plans for us to visit Cabot's Pueblo Museum were scuppered when we discovered it was closed on a Monday, so we diverted to plan B - a visit to the "world famous" Shields Date Farm:

It was pretty interesting actually - lots of samples of the many styles of dates and a pleasant desert garden walk:

The 24 oz date shakes went down well too.

The next plan was to visit Desert Distilling but we found it was only open at weekends. OK then - when in trouble, revert to brewpubs - we did two - Coachella Valley Brewing (CVB) and La Quinta Brewing - the latter being much better and it took us in to the heart of Palm Springs, which had a nice vibe to it, including a Stars Walk on the pavement.

Back at the resort, I took a dip in the pool - a nice quiet refuge and much needed as temperatures had soared to over 100 F today.

It was not quite so hot today (Tuesday) - low 90's - and Scott and I took the opportunity to play one of the resort's courses - and delightful it was too, with some lovely views of the high, still snow-capped mountains:

 Lucy and Jo spent most of the morning at the pool then came over and joined us for lunch and drinkies - nice!