Category: Drives and Events (Page 2 of 5)

Pam and I had just walked up to the Virgin Australia check in counter at LAX.  We were feeling pretty smug, as we were able to use the priority line instead of the one for schleppers, the one we normally use on our infrequent flights.  Pam handed the Virgin Australia representative our ticket information and our passports.  The representative then said,  “May I see your visas?”  Confused, Pam and I just looked at each other.

When it comes to travel, Pam is super organized.  I am useless.  When checking in, 99% of the time Pam responds with, “I have the information right here.”  This time she said, “We are only going to Australia for two weeks.  Do we need visas?”

The representative responded, “Yes.”  Pam and I looked at each other again, this time with a sinking feeling in our guts.

Our daughter, Kimberly, has been living and working in Australia for almost seven months.  She had visited the country twice before moving there, and we were en route to Australia to visit her.  Pam and Kim had planned the entire trip.  Throughout the process, Kimberly had never mentioned that we needed a visa just to visit the country.  They had discussed Kimberly’s issues getting an extended work visa at length, though.  Later we found out that Kimberly had applied for a travel visa before she went to Australia the first time.  Of course, she neglected to tell us about that.  Pam, and especially I, would discover that this would turn out to be the first of many of Kimberly’s omissions over the course of our trip.

After a brief moment of panic fueled by the fact that our plane was leaving in an hour, we asked, “How do we get them?”

The Virgin representative said that we could purchase them on-line for $20 each.  She went on to say that if we chose to do that we would have to leave the check in area, apply for the visa, and then get back in line once we had them.  She ended by saying, “I can do it for you if you want to pay $40 each.”  Obviously, we opted to pay double.

While we waited for her to finish our transactions, we noted with some morbid satisfaction that we were not alone.  Other travelers were purchasing visas, too.

We completed the check in process and headed off to our gate.  While we were walking, I was wondering about the other words uttered by the Virgin representative when telling us our gate number.  She had said, “It is a virtual gate.”

Pam did not hear her say that.  I did, but I am a clueless traveler, so I had no idea what she meant.  I would find out soon enough.

We had checked into terminal 3 at LAX, but our flight was leaving from the Bradley terminal.  We walked to Bradley, went through security then walked and walked to our gate.  Once there we found seats and waited.  Our flight was leaving at 11:00 PM. on a Wednesday night  It takes 14 hours to fly to Sydney, but we would not be landing in Sydney until Friday morning at 11:00 AM, after taking the 19 hour time change into account.

When we got to the gate we were happy to note that we had priority boarding.  I was still wondering what the Virgin representative meant by a virtual gate, as it looked normal to me.  We found out right after we started boarding.  Instead of going out the terminal, walking down a jetway and boarding a plane, we went out the door and were herded onto a bus configured like a tram.  I wondered how we were going to drive to Australia.  Then it dawned on me that any value we had from the priority boarding was gone, as many, many people were crammed onto the bus and it was unlikely order would be reestablished when we got off.

The Vrgin representative supervising the loading made very sure that the entire bus was filled to capacity.  It was so crowded that the last woman to board was not even all the way into the bus as the doors began to close with her backpack about to be caught between them.  I was standing near the door, mainly so Pam and I could exit in a heartbeat when we stopped.  The woman was unaware that her backpack was hanging out until I gently tugged it (and her) completely into the bus.

We were driven quite a long way across the airport, finally stopping at a building in the middle of nowhere.  We disembarked from the bus and walked up a long ramp, only to stop near the top.  We stayed there for about 15 minutes, wondering if we were in the right place and if we would ever board the plane.  Pam handles these situations better than me.  I was starting to get grumpy.  I was tired of standing and my backpack was digging into my shoulders.  Eventually, the line moved and we boarded the 777 to take us to Sydney.

We opted to fly Premium Economy, as we felt that Economy, aka Coach, would be too cramped and Business Class too expensive.  As we settled into our seats, which provided only a modicum more space that Economy,  I was beginning to wonder if the upgrade was worth it.  About 5 minutes later, just after our dedicated flight attendant, Alexandra, asked us if we would like a drink, I knew it was.

The flight was long, but very pleasant.  We landed in Sydney and met Kimberly, who had flown into Sydney from Brisbane, where she works.  From there it was a taxi ride into Sydney so we could begin our vacation  in earnest.

For those of you who know me you would be wrong in assuming that my title, More Than The Street, relates to one of my somewhat infrequent visits to the race track in my Porsche.  Very wrong.

If you knew Pam was involved, you would know that it does not relate to anything having to do with automobiles, but you would have an inkling that it is related to something current.  I tend to live in the past.  One of my cars is 30 years old.  One of my watches, Pam’s late stepdad’s Omega Speedmaster, is 34 years old.  I wear it all the time, even though it requires winding every day.  Staying current for me is nice, but not a necessity.

If you know Pam, you know that she is all about being current, staying relevant.  Downtown LA is a happening place.  Until recently, our younger daughter, Kimberly, was living downtown.  Kim and Pam went to many of the fun, Instagram moment exhibits that pop-up downtown.  Exhibits like the Ice Cream Museum and The 14th Factory, among others.  They usually go together, and enjoy some great mother daughter experiences while staying current.

A new pop-up art exhibit, Beyond The Streets, opened in downtown recently.  The exhibit features street artists and street art.  Its tag line refers to vandalism—literally—as contemporary art.  Pam wanted to go, and as Kim is spending the year working in Australia, she invited me.

I freely admit to being underwhelmed by most 20th Century, or later, art, especially the pieces created after the Impressionism era, pieces that are defined by symbolism, cubism, futurism, or a host of other isms.  I look at them, and they leave me floundering.  I lack the insight and/or the ability to relate.  Because of that, I like very little of it.  I have been to the Broad a couple of times, most recently to see the Jasper Johns exhibit.  I just stare at most of the pieces.  Other than Warhol and some of the Pop Art stuff, I leave scratching my head in disbelief.  I have been to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  More disbelief.  I have been to the Picasso and Miro museums in Spain.  More disbelief, though I liked early Picasso works, before he got the blues.  I have been to the Guggenheim in Bilbao.  Even more disbelief, though I loved the building.

I am also usually politically incorrect.  I prefer labels that explicitly state the obvious, not labels that soften the impact of the words.  Sayings like vertically challenged, reality challenged and sex care provider also leave me scratching my head in disbelief.  Though I do chuckle when bribes are referred to as public sector bonuses.  As a result, I have never bought into the term Street Art.  I just considered it a politically correct way to refer to Graffiti, which literally means writing or drawing on public or private property.  In short, vandalism—not something to which a suburban dwelling, middle class, unhip, reasonably irrelevant, curmudgeon-like boomer is going to appreciate or pay much attention.

I like hanging out with Pam, though, so I decided to go to the exhibit with her, not really expecting to enjoy it.  I knew nothing about the artists or their art.  I really had no idea that spray paint wielding graffitists had transcended from the street to the studio.  I really had no idea any of them had followings or showed their works in respected galleries.  But then I am not current.  Thankfully, Pam is.

Our older daughter, Shelby, and her husband, Bryan, joined us when we went to see the exhibit.  Shelby and Bryan are consistently current.  They do not even have to work at it.  But then they are millennials, and they are the current generation.  They know about street art and street artists, which helped me get into going to the exhibit.  It turned out that I did not need their help.

As I wandered around the 40,000 square foot exhibit curated by Roger Gastman, I shook my head in disbelief, not because I didn’t like it, but because I did.  There is no doubt that I will never fully understand or relate to street art.  I did not grow up with enough angst.  I do not have that “stick it to the man” mentality, which is necessary to really get into it.  The most rebellious I get is listening to country music in West LA.  Having said that, lots of the art, even the more gritty pieces, resonated with me.  For a brief time, I felt like Mikey in the infamous Life Cereal commercial.  The pieces resonated in a way no other modern art has.  I am not sure why.  I really do not need to know.  I just liked it.

No doubt that some of the pieces bordered on the type of modern art I do not like, but a lot of it was great.  I found the works of Kenny Scharf, Banksy, John “Crash” Matos, Eric Haze,  Faile (Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller), to name a few, to be really interesting.  I expect I will be spending more time looking at and appreciating street art in the future.

Thanks to Pam, I am current for the moment.  Too bad it won’t last.

I should have known better.  Actually, I did know better, but that did not stop me.  I took a Pure Barre class with Pam Friday night.  It was a date night, sort of like 50 Shades of Grey was a love story—a painful one.

Pure Barre is Pam’s exercise regimen of choice.  It has been for the past couple of years, and she really rocks it, despite being one of the few baby boomers to take these exercise classes that are mainly filled with millennials the ages of our daughters.  She loves the workouts, which are based on the principle of using small, isometric movements, accompanied by a ballet barre, a small ball, light weights, and rubber straps, to burn fat, sculpt muscles and create long, lean physiques.  Pure Barre, a franchise of independent studios, also works hard to create a supportive community for its devotees that celebrates participation and achievements, having members sign ceremonial ballet barres representing workout milestones.  Pam has passed her 250 workout milestone and is well on her way to her 500 workout milestone.  I may never get to two.

Every six months or so, the Pure Barre studio in Beverly Hills, where Pam goes to take her classes, has a “Bring On The Men” class to which the regular attendees can invite their favorite member of the weaker sex to join them in a Pure Barre workout.  A couple of weeks ago, Pam asked me if I wanted to go with her.  I said yes, knowing full well that it was going to be a painful experience.

Generally, when I write about Pam, I refer to her as a saint, mainly because she is.  She is also tough—physically and mentally.  I do not know if she was born that way or became that way after giving birth to our two children and enduring me, and my quirky sense of humor, for the past 45 years, 38 of them as my wife.  Either way, it doesn’t matter.  What matters is that Pam likes the Pure Barre workouts because they are hard, low impact, full body workouts.  She literally works her ass off.

Pam and I do not usually workout together, though I have been invited to join her a couple of times.  Once for a boot camp class and another time for a series of Pilates classes.  Neither was a really good showcase for my talents, though I did do pretty well in the boot camp classes and eventually became somewhat proficient at Pilates.  I am a pretty fit guy.  I have been a cardio junkie for decades.  I spent time doing Triathlons in the late 80s.  I have run the LA Marathon.  I have competed in numerous ocean swims and bike centuries.  I have run with track clubs and swum with masters swim teams.  I still run, row and lift light weights five or six times per week.  Despite all that, and quite possibly because of all that, I had a pretty good sense of just how tough the Pure Barre workout was going to be and how unprepared for it I was.

I was more than a little apprehensive the week before the class.  I adjusted my workout schedule to skip Friday morning and was thankful that I was planning to have breakfast with my Porsche buddies Saturday morning instead of working out.  It turned out that those were really good ideas.

Pam and I arrived at the studio a few minutes before the class started.  The studio, owned by a delightful 30ish young woman named Jill, feels like a day spa.  Its ambiance is soothing.  Its decor is soothing.  Its smell is soothing.  It has the de rigueur ballet socks and workout attire for sale.  It has cute little cubbies to store your stuff while you sweat.  It has innocuous implements of destruction, including the aforementioned small rubber balls, light weights, and rubber bands.  And it has a deceptively pleasant looking studio with mirrors and ballet barres on three walls.  It is the perfect place to get your butt kicked.

Pam introduced me to the instructor, Katie, another 30ish young woman with the face and demeanor of an angel, though she wore a microphone on her head instead of a halo. I nervously found a spot on the floor, feeling thankful that I was not the only guy there, feeling a little better that I would not be the only one to suffer.  The workout started a few minutes later, and for the first five or so minutes I rocked it, just like Pam.  Then the instructor calmly said the warmup, which I survived and felt was hard, was over.

The instructor proceeded to lead us through a complete body workout over the next 45 minutes or so.  Pam worked out the entire time, doing all of the exercises really well.  Generously, I think I  was able to complete 25% of them.  I spent the remainder of the time either trying to figure out what to do, how to get my muscles to actually move as the instructor requested, or how to stop my muscles from cramping if I did perform the requested movement.  Needless to say, I was shvitzing, not to mention quivering, when the workout ended.  I had no idea that three pound weights in each hand could be so heavy.  I had no idea that standing on my toes could be that painful.  I had no idea how a little rubber strap could cause so much muscle pain.  I do now, and I am not alone.

After the workout, we gathered for a group picture, had some beer and laughed at the general ineptitude of the guys in attendance.  It was all in good fun, and we all enjoyed the experience.  Pure Barre is a helluva workout, one I should probably voluntarily do once in awhile but probably won’t.

As I write this, it is Sunday morning about 36 or so hours since I was Pure Barred.  Pam just returned from her third Pure Barre class of the weekend, feeling great, having taken morning classes on Saturday and Sunday.  I spent Saturday morning resting at the Spitfire Grill at the Santa Monica Airport, swilling coffee and stuffing my face with a mondo breakfast burrito laden with eggs, cheese, bacon and hash browns.  I spent Sunday morning running one of my normal routes, though it took me several minutes longer than usual as I tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to flush the lactic acid from my muscles, the majority which still ache.  Like I said, I should have known better, but I would most likely go back if I am invited again.

I am a native Los Angelino.  As such, walking is just not in my DNA.  It’s not that I am not fit.  I love to run—for exercise, not to get anywhere.  To get somewhere, my preferred mode of transportation is the car.  I am not alone.  The rest of the world is well aware of Los Angelinos’ aversion to pedestrianism.  Steve Martin highlighted it in LA Story by having the characters drive one block to dinner.  Missing Persons sang Walking in LA, a song that makes it abundantly clear that nobody walks in LA.

Pam is also a native Los Angelino, but somehow her DNA mutated.  She loves to walk—not for exercise, just to get somewhere.  She also likes to walk fast.  I have almost no ability to walk, and, despite my height advantage, I struggle to keep up with her.  When I complain and ask her to slow down, it lands on deaf ears, as her usual response is, “If I go any slower, I will fall over!”

As I begin to write this, it is mid-day Sunday, and I am feeling a modicum of pain while seated on a plane heading back to LA from Austin.  Ironically, the pain is not from the plane, which is unusual, as pretty much all planes are a pain.  Instead, I have a dull ache emanating from both legs, the result of taking fifty thousand and two steps in Austin over the past three days.  Steps I would have never taken on my own,  But I was not on my own.  Pam and I spent the past three days vacationing there.

We were excited to go to Austin.  Austin is a cool town.  It is the hippie part of Texas.  It has been voted one of the best cities in which to live a number of times.  It has a ton of history, including Lyndon Johnson, Sam Houston and the real Steve Austin (Stephen F. to be precise),  It is damn close to the Alamo and Davy Crockett.  It has music, culture, music, BBQ, music, boots, music, University of Texas with throngs of college kids and the Johnson Library, music, bats, music, Formula 1, music, Tex-Mex cuisine, including queso and Mexican Martinis, and more music.  We wanted to experience it all, except for Formula 1, as the race was not scheduled during our trip, and the Alamo, as it was not within walking distance.  Git Along, Little Dogies!

Before the trip Pam was focused on planning.  She knows me, and if she does not have a list of things to do while we are on vacation, there is a high likelihood that I will want to hang out at the hotel, sitting on my butt watching television.  So she scoured the internet and asked friends for recommendations for things to see, places to go and stuff to eat.  Then she focused on music.  We knew Austin had a great music scene.  The city motto is the “Live Music Capital of the World.”  The city is known for a wide range of music, especially the blues and outlaw country.  In my mostly misguided opinion, it’s musical renaissance began in the 70s when the outlaw country artists, including Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Jerry Jeff Walker, Steve Earle and Ray Wiley Hubbard, took up roots there.  At first, Pam focused on bars with live music, as we really enjoy just sitting in bars drinking beer and listening to music, especially in the afternoon.  But we really have only done that in Nashville, and she quickly realized that Sixth Street did not have the same country vibe as Lower Broadway in Nashville.  Unfazed, she persevered and found a show at Antones featuring Shooter Jennings, Waylon’s kid, which was most likely more than enough country for us, as we would still be checking out the bars on Sixth Street throughout our stay.

Our plan was simple.  It only had one fixed element.  We had to be at Antones at eight pm on Friday night.  Everything else was fluid.  We landed on Thursday morning, went to the hotel, checked our bags and planned our day.  We decided that we would eat BBQ at Iron Works, buy boots at Allen’s, watch the bats leave from under the Congress Bridge at dusk, and then check out the food and live music on Rainey Street at night.  I assumed that we would get it all done with some walking and a handful of Uber rides.  Pam thought differently.  17,000 steps later and lots of time spent standing waiting for the bats to emerge, we got it all done sans Uber.  We had really good BBQ and Shiner Bocks at iron Works.  We had fun buying cowboy boots, which neither of us really needed, as we had just bought some about 18 months ago on our last trip to Nashville.  I had an especially good time, as I tried on a pair of Alligator (AKA Cayman) boots, but they were just too expensive.  I did get to meet a fellow Porsche Club member and Cayman owner while in the store.  Small world.  We spent an hour waiting almost in vain for the bats to emerge from under the bridge, and when they did, they did so on the other side of the river, making for a less than spectacular view.  We ate killer grilled cheese sandwiches from a food truck for dinner.  Our only let down was the lack of quality live country music at the bars on Rainey Street.  Maybe it just was the wrong night or maybe it was just not the venue for us.  We did have fun, though, people watching  and drinking Texas beer, which we would later learn was going to be the recurring theme of our trip.  Pam had a really good draft Thirsty Goat amber ale, which was funny because she bought goat leather boots, and I had an amazing draft (512) Nitro Pecan Porter.

Friday, we decided to visit the local landmarks, including the Capitol, University of Texas and the Johnson Library, check out Voodoo Doughnuts and the afternoon Sixth Street bar scene, eat queso and Tex-Mex and drink a Mexican Martini before heading to Antones for the show.  Again my Uber dreams were scuttled.  18,000 steps and even more standing later, we arrived at Antones.

Despite the walking and standing, Friday was a great day.  I am not a huge fan of visiting Capitol buildings, finding them less than thrilling.  But the history of Texas is cool from the perspective of the United States.  Besides being a regal building with a great rotunda, the building is filled with dark art featuring Davy Crockett, the Siege of the Alamo, and the Battle of San Jacinto.  Very sobering stuff, but I really liked the paintings.  To top it off, while we were in the building, we were treated to the Ukulele strumming and vocal prowess of a bunch of grade school kids, who, among other things, treated us to a rousing rendition of Deep in the Heart of Texas.

From there it was off to UT, its football stadium and the Johnson Library.  We are essentially inept navigators, though collectively we have a decent sense of direction.  Just to be safe,we were relying on Google to provide directions.  While Google works pretty well when driving or when walking on city streets, it does not always work in less developed areas like river banks and college campuses.  We found that out in spades while visiting UT.  Google apparently has access to facts, like street names, that are not apparent or visible to pedestrians, causing us to second guess the directions and backtrack a ton, adding yet more steps to our journey.  Oh joy!

The campus is huge and really nice.  We made our way to the Johnson Library.  Before we went, I was nonplussed, about seeing it.  Though I lived through the Johnson era, I was too young to have formed any real opinion about him.  All I really knew was that my mother, a devout Kennedy supporter and conspiracy theorist, dissed him most of the time, and that he escalated the Vietnam War, something at the time I dreaded more than anything else.  The tour of the Johnson library was very impressive.  I was mesmerized by the memorabilia.  I was almost brought to tears by reading the timeline, as it recounted Johnson’s role in the civil rights fights of the 60s as well as other critical events of those years.  I was fascinated by his ability to intimidate and strong arm his political foes to achieve his, mostly admirable, goals.  I was saddened to think about how far our political system has devolved from a government which enabled decision making despite differences to one which is mired in gridlock.

We left UT with Sixth Street on our minds—mainly doughnuts, but music and beer, too.  We arrived at Voodoo Doughnuts and got in line.  The place is part of a small chain that began in Portland, Oregon, and is known for its uniquely crafted doughnuts that would have made Andy Warhol proud.  I learned most of this from the people standing in line in front of us—college kids from Arizona State University.  One of them was from Portland, and we got a complete Voodoo education.  We also got a good laugh when I asked them why they were in Austin.  They replied, “We are competing in a Quidditch tournament!”  Hermoine would be so proud.

We ordered a huge box of doughnuts and ate a few of them for lunch.  Of course, we way over ordered, even as we over ate, though we did take what was left back to the hotel and picked at them over the next two days.  It turns out that there is a Voodoo Doughnut location in LA, but thankfully it is in Universal City, which is pretty inconvenient.  Otherwise, I think I would frequent it way too often.

We then checked out a few bars, needing a beer chaser to wash down the doughnuts.  We settled into the San Jac Bar, which is pretty highly rated on the internet. Pam ordered some more Thirsty Goat ale and I ordered some other beer, and we listened to some old school acoustic county.  Then we walked back to the hotel.

We walked, what else, in our new boots to dinner at the Cedar Door and ordered Mexican Martinis, essentially Margaritas served from a shaker and poured into a martini glass.   When the waitress delivered them, she said there were two rules, “First, hold the top of the shaker when you pour, and second, there is a limit of two per person.”  Pam and I looked at the size of the shaker, and, while wondering if we could finish one and still walk, nodded and said, “No problem!”  The Mexican Martinis were great.  For dinner we ordered an appetizer of queso and entrees of Tex-Mex tacos.  Pam and I were both a little leery of queso, which is just a boatload of melted white cheese, but we soon realized why it is so popular.

We decided to go to Antones because of the act that was playing.  Not because we knew squat about Antones.  It turned out that Antones, which is sort of like a smaller version of the El Rey in Los Angeles, holds a hallowed place in the musical history of Austin,  It is generally known as being a house of blues, not country, and is one of the top rated music venues in the city.  Apparently, many legends, including Stevie Ray Vaughan, played there often.

We knew none of that when we arrived.  All we could think about was getting a place to sit, as neither of us relished the thought of standing for the duration of the show.  As we entered and looked around, we quickly realized that all the tables were occupied.  Pam noticed that two people were sitting at a table for four and it appeared that two seats were unused.  We walked up and asked if we could join them.  They said yes, and we had a lovely time learning about them and the history of Antones.  They were a unique couple.  She was a Texas girl who grew up in the area, hated country music and moved to Southern California for work.  He was an ex-Dead Head from Santa Cruz who had moved to Southern California for work.  They married, and as they can work remotely, moved to Austin.  While they are not country fans, they love Shooter Jennings, who it turns was not as country as we thought.  Thankfully, the opening act was country, and fortuitously, Shooter Jennings played a lot of new material from his soon to be released album, and all of that was country.  Yee-Haw!

Saturday, we decided, was nature day.  Naturally, we walked.  Another 17.000 steps or so.  I did not even utter the word Uber, except when enjoying the scenery.  Our destination, which was a botanical garden, was not as important as the route we walked, which was on the river.  We walked the river, made it to he botanical gardens and then walked back.  On the way back we detoured back through Barton Springs, which was a delightful area filled with Tex-Mex and food trucks.  On the way, Pam said, “Let’s check out the bars on Sixth Street some more.”  We did, but we were not impressed with the musical options.  As we started back to the hotel, Pam, in a completely out of character, but spot on, comment said, “Let’s go back to the Cedar Door and have beer and queso!”  What a brilliant suggestion.  Pam had another Shiner Bock, and I had another Pecan Porter.  That really wet our whistle!

Saturday night we ate at the hotel.  I was stoked, not because of dinner, which was good, but because we were done walking—for the day, the night, and the entire trip.  I only had Two Steps to go, Texas style.  And it was finally time to call Uber.  Hallelujah!

Our destination that night was the Broken Spoke, a vintage 60s honky-tonk, where we would be learning to Texas Two Step and listening to Two Tons of Steel,  a regional Texas rockabilly, Americana and country band.  When we first got there, we were a little underwhelmed.  The place is on the rundown side, a little scary and a whole lot kitschy.  At that time we did not know that Garth Brooks loved playing there.  When we first walked in, all we could see was a little dining area and a tiny bar.  All we could hear was a pretty pathetic band playing old time country.  We did not see a dance floor anywhere.  That changed a couple of minutes later when we were ushered into a pretty good sized concert area with tables surrounding a dance floor.  We had fun learning to Two Step, though I have to admit that I am a better walker than a two-stepper, despite the Scamper Juice (AKA whiskey) I drank, which is somewhat disheartening.  We loved Two Tons of Steel.  They put on a great show.  We tried out our Two Step skills.  Mostly though, we sat back and relaxed, listening to the band and watching the people, all the while wondering if the lead singer would hit is hat covered head on the ridiculously low ceiling.  We Uberred back to the hotel feeling really good about the evening and the entire trip. Yippee Ki-Yay!