Now we are five

Most people we meet admire our sense of adventure, saying we are brave to take our young daughters on the road for an extended trip. Others go further, calling us wise to take advantage of a window in our lives where such an opportunity to travel presents itself. Still others wholly disapprove, suggesting that we are irresponsible parents, putting our own wanderlust ahead of our children’s needs.

Everyone, though, is intrigued to know that we are adding one more person to the mix: Barbara, Daniel’s mom, who will be traveling with us for 3-4 weeks.

“How is it going with your mother-in-law?”, people whisper to me.

Just fine, actually. Barbara’s incredibly intrepid, for an 82-year old, or for someone of any age, for that matter. “I’m no longer a passive reader of the adventure, I am now IN the adventure”, she exclaimed, upon arrival at San Francisco International.

Provided she’s given a cold glass of white wine in the evening, and regular doses of Culture – preferably in the form of museums – she is game for anything.

Nevertheless, we decided to start out slowly, easing her into life in a seventeen-foot trailer.

So, in San Francisco, we rented an apartment in the Haight. Daniel, Lulu and I had the bedroom, with Barbara and Sophia shared the living room, sleeping on separate pull-out sofas. Sophia decided that this made Barbara her playmate, that they would watch Disney DVDs and play Littlest Pets together.
The apartment provided welcome shelter from the five consecutive storms that assaulted the California coast over the course of a week, and gave us an economical way to feast on the state’s excellent produce and wines.

From there, we moved into hotels.

The Super Eight in Monterey (best décor yet in the budget category), where we enjoyed a Mark West Pinot Noir and a fine dinner of organic salad leaves, sautéed tuna, rice and green beans, leftover from the previous night’s dinner and prepared in the microwave.

Once we worked out a diplomatic resolution to the battle for TV primacy: Barbara’s news vs. Sophia’s cartoons (plus, ideally, a half an hour to watch Jeopardy!), it was smooth sailing.

The next two nights found us at the Kronborg Inn in Solvang, Central California’s only Danish village. This establishment featured our largest room yet AND our own door opening directly onto the heated pool and Jacuzzi.

Having downloaded our first movie ever from iTunes – a huge advance for Luddites - we put the girls to bed and crowded around the laptop to watch ‘Sideways’, a mid-life crisis wine adventure set in the Santa Ynez Valley, where we were staying.

Our final hotel stop took us to the heart of Hollywood – the Best Western on Franklin Avenue, very well appointed with super-comfy beds, a marble shower for two and gelatin print black-and-white photos of Hollywood legends. Through the lobby was the fantastic Café 101, a 70’s décor diner with friendly staff and great food.

After four nights chez Johnson-Marcil, we moved into the trailer. We picked an upscale RV park, Sam’s Family Resort in Desert Hot Springs. Here, for $44 a night, we bask in views of serrated mountain ranges – stony, grey, blue, snowy – sweepingly brush-stroked pastel desert sunsets and our very own full mooned night sky. Included in the price is a leisure complex, complete with heated pool, four hot spring fed pools, waterfalls, pond and gardens. Nice.

So far, we’ve slept in two configurations: (1) Daniel, Lulu and I on the double bed, with Sophia and Barbara on the top and bottom respective bunks of the new bed designed and built by Daniel, and (2) Lulu, Sophia and I on the double bed, with Barbara and Daniel on the top and bottom bunks.

Updates to follow shortly – wish us luck!

Pictured:
- Daniel, Sophia, Barbara, Lulu and Connie Bruce. Cousins Barbara and Connie were reunited in Mill Valley, CA after about 60 years. Lots to catch up on
- Barbara and fellow octogenarian Grandmother aka Sue
- Claire, Lulu, Sophia and Barbara at the Getty Center, Los Angeles

View from a hill

Olivia and her Canadian husband David, together with their nine-year old Alfie and three-year old William are in San Francisco for a year or so while David works on a movie project for DreamWorks. Olivia’s on sabbatical from the same company, looking after the kids and working on a screenplay about a LA, a woman and trees…it sounds really cool.

Very kindly, they offered to put us up for a weekend at their amazing house in Bernal Heights, on the side of a massive hill just above The Mission neighborhood and overlooking the whole of San Francisco. So even staying inside – watching the monolith-like fog overtake the metropolis or the reflection of the sunset on glass skyscrapers built to outlast earthquakes - you are really doing the city.

Snug on this vantage point, we enjoyed three days and nights of really delicious food, quite a few bottles of wine, lots of catching up and the sound of three-year olds mostly playing very nicely together. Alfie, for his part, sat with the grown-ups and was a delight. At night, we got to sleep in real beds(!) in a house(!), which was beyond wonderful.

We ventured from the house a few times: twice to the bottom of the hill into the Mission, and once up the hill to a park at the summit and then over the other side to Bernal Heights.

San Francisco is a beautiful city, full of fine food from all nations, overflowing with sophisticated people and plenty of arts, music and culture. Sitting between the Pacific and the Bay, and further beautified with all species of warm weather trees and flowers, the city forms an odd microclimate with a temperature that only varies by about twenty degrees year round. So it is neither hot nor cold, just something in between.

The Mission is a great melting pot of a place, serving as a point of landing for the city’s many immigrants. Full of lively restaurants serving ultra fresh food from all of Latin America and beyond, the neighborhood also has lots of small galleries, excellent bookshops and cool clothing boutiques.

Daniel totally wants to move to San Francisco.

A less than graceful entrance

San Francisco and trailers don’t really go together. After a spectacular entrance into the city, across the majestic Golden Gate Bridge from Marin County and up the main (mostly flat) drag of Van Ness, things got dramatic.

For anyone who’s never been to San Francisco, those hills are serious. We’re talking gradients of 15% and cars that have to park pointed out onto the street to stop them from sliding down.

Our own ascents and descents were accompanied by the sounds of tha-dumps (the trailer), violent churnings and squeaks (the hitch) and general clatter (our belongings inside the trailer).

Daniel looked increasingly worried.

Luckily, having already crossed the Rockies, we knew how the car’s gears worked.

That didn’t stop the general public from rushing onto the street to watch us drag the Airstream up Bernal Hill and then partly back down it at what looked like a near-vertical angle, as we approached the home of my friend Olivia Mole.

Londoner Olivia spent a summer in Pelham, New York, living with the Rowlands (who seem to directly or indirectly have introduced us to much of northern California) when we were both 18. We met again in London, once I had moved there, and then she relocated to LA to take advantage of a green card she had won and pursue a career in animation.

At the crest of the rollercoaster-like hill, Daniel suggested I run to the bottom to photograph the truck and trailer’s descent – for your enjoyment, dear reader.

Having done this and hugged Olivia, who had been watching the spectacle of our arrival out various windows of her house, I turned around to see the Airstream caught in a tree – and hear the scratching of twigs and gnawing of large branches against its lovingly mirror polished surface.

Face fallen, Daniel couldn’t go forward or back. We all looked up to the sky for divine intervention. Amazingly, it arrived immediately, in the form of a saw wielding lady named Jill.

“The people who live in front of this tree and the one over there are renters, I do this all the time,” she said, casually.
“The city collects garden refuse once a week”, she added, indicating towards the green bin she had thoughtfully wheeled with her.

And she started sawing. Once she had gotten the most offensive large branches down, she handed over the saw to Daniel, who worked on the medium sized ones. Then Olivia and I finished off the smallest ones, to facilitate Daniel’s painful reversal up the giant hill.

After a meticulous parking job and unhitching, we all giggled nervously and kind of decided to pretend nothing had happened.

Sorry, San Francisco.