All things American

I thought I would do a picture essay of all things different here in the U.S.A. A picture tells a thousand words, as they say.

This is our living area, with Ros sitting at the dining room table. The TV has around 3000 channels, most of which are rubbish to watch, about half of them are in Spanish.







We are staying in what is called a "gated community", a large area of land with units behind closed gates and you must have a pass to get in and park. You have to carry gate keys all the time to get in and out of the community, or get to the rubbish dumpster, or private car parks. This is a view out our back door to the shared backyard.

Where is this ominous door leading to?

It's the communal laundry and these are the washing machines.

Here are the dryers - no washing lines here, everything goes in the dryer.

To use either the washing machine or dryer you insert this Laundry Card into a slot on the machine and choose your cycle and it automatically deducts the amount from the card.

To top up the Laundry Card with money, you insert it into one of these Add-Value Stations found in most communal laundries (fortunately ours does, Luke's does not), and add cash or credit as required. You can also buy a new laundry card from here if you don't have one or have lost your old one.

This is looking back at our unit from the laundry, ours is the middle unit, ground floor only (or as the Americans say over here, first floor only).

This is our kitchen, which doesn't get much use as we mostly eat with Luke and Michelle, just for breakfast and the occasional lunch.

This is called a faucet, not a tap. Hot water is from a communal boiler and it is a long draw to get the water to turn hot. Pressure is not that great either.

One sink always has one of these, an In-Sink-Erator or common garbage disposal. All food slops or peels are pushed down these, which grinds it up to paste and flushes it out to the sewers. Makes a hell of noise when you turn it on.

This is a power socket, note no switch they are permanently live! Only 110 volts, so not as deadly as our 240 volts over in Australia.

This is a typical wall light, Americans seem to have some aversion to having lights on the ceiling, the only ceiling lights in our unit are in the kitchen and above the dining room table. All the rest are either wall lights or lamps. To turn this light on you rotate the small projection that is sticking out  of the bottom of the light. Most lamps also have rotary controls, some you have to rotate several times before the damn thing will turn on or off!

Here is the bathroom faucet. Note the silver knob between the taps on top of the water spout. That is the plug activator. If you look at the sink, you'll see a silver cover over the plug hole. Believe it or not, that is the open position. Lifting that knob between the taps pulls that cover down, preventing the water from draining out so you can fill the sink if you wish. No more lost plugs!

Here's the bath faucet. Note the small knob in the spout - no this does not activate the plug, you can see there is a fairly standard looking plug there underneath it. No, pulling this knob upwards diverts the water flower from the faucet to the shower nozzle.

Here's the shower. All, and I mean all American showers are in the bathtub. I have never seen a separate shower cubicle like we have in Australia. Even in hotels, the shower is always over the bathtub.

The shower curtain is in two parts, one hangs outside the bathtub and one hangs inside it. The attraction between the two layers prevents the inner layer from trying to wrap around you like the good old shower curtains do back home. The plug hole is tiny and doesn't drain very fast so you often end up having a bath and a shower at the same time, if you get my drift.

In a hallway closet, you find the central heating gas heater, which pushes hot air out of vents in every room. As this is a small unit, it only has two vents, one in the loungeroom and the other in the bedroom.

And this is the thermostat which you set to the temperature you wish to keep your unit at. Believe it or not, we have not had to use it much even though it is winter here, Los Angeles is nearly always warm. Temperature settings are degrees Fahrenheit, by the way.

This is the view from our front door to the street.

And this is where we park our cars. Ours is the fifth one down. This is also the way we walk to Luke and Michelle's unit at the other end of the community.

That's it, a wrap up of how the American's live over here. Hope you enjoyed it.

Back to Los Angeles

We slept in this morning as we wanted to miss the morning traffic back to L.A. Joshua had purchased a keyboard from a real estate agent in Vegas because he knew we were going there, so after breakfast we punched the address into the GPS and went to pick it up. The chap, Paul, picked our Australian accents and told us he had just returned from a trip to Sydney and said he'd move there in a moment's notice. He was a really nice guy and we chatted about the differences between the two countries.

Solar Power Station

Anyway, we hit the road after that, and about 70 miles south of Las Vegas, we came upon this. It's a solar power station, with acres of individually controlled mirrors which track the sun and focus its rays onto one of the three towers in the plant. These get super-hot and generate steam which in turn drives turbines to generate electricity. It generates over 300 MW of power for Las Vegas, free from the sun. We also saw another large solar plant but this one was just a photovoltaic site, converting sunlight directly to electricity, similar to the solar panels we have on roof at home.

The vistas that you see on the L.A. - Vegas run are just enormous. The photo below does not do it justice again, but hopefully you will get the idea.

Descending into Mohave Desert

We stopped about half-way for lunch at Peggy-Sue's 1950's Diner, which was quite an experience, with amazing memorabilia from the 50's plastered all over the walls. The food was pretty good too!

Californian drivers are certifiably mad. We were on the Interstate on the outskirts of L.A. and I needed to move into the lane on my left, so I checked my mirror and it was clear, so I put my indicator on (optional in America, many, many cars do not bother to use them) and was just pulling out into the lane when this sports car sped past at least 50 mph faster than I was going, which was already about 70 mph. If I hadn't glanced back in my mirror as I was merging, I would have collided with him and the result does not bear thinking about at that speed. Fortunately, I did spot him at the last second and swerved back into the right hand lane. He vanished into the distance in seconds, an accident looking for somewhere to happen.

We are now safely back in L.A. again, spending time with Ros's sons.

Utah and Bryce Canyon

We left Flagstaff bright and early Thursday morning for the 5 and half hour trip to Bryce Canyon. It was chilly 17F when we left (-8C) and we were very glad for the warm clothes Luke and Michelle lent us. Even the short walk from the hotel to the car was challenging and we couldn't wait to get in the car and start it. I found out by bitter experience that you do not use the windscreen washers when the temperature is below freezing as the water instantly freezes on your windscreen. We had to wait until the car warmed up and I could defrost the windscreen!

Butte in Utah

Although the trip was long to Bryce Canyon, the scenery in Utah has to be seen to be believed. Many, many rock formations called buttes are visible along the road, and every time you turned a corner, the vista would change to something else spectacular. The trip was not boring at all, not like driving up north of WA is, and the five hours went particularly quickly.

Vermillion Cliffs

However the best thing we saw on the way was the Vermillion Cliffs, sheer 2,000 foot cliffs towering above the plain coloured a gorgeous pinky-red colour. The picture does not do it justice. We could see it from miles away, and it just got more spectacular the closer you got to it. They stretched for miles either way as well. There was even a village at the base where they sold trinkets for tourists, which we resisted.

The closer we got to Bryce Canyon, the higher we got in altitude and the more extensive the snow became from a snowstorm that went through the area last week Fortunately for us it was clear and sunny. It was interesting because you'd be driving along the road and the sunlight side would have all the snow melted, but the side in shadow was still knee deep in snow!

Approaching Bryce Canyon

We thought the canyon would be fogged in, looking at the picture on the right, but once we got into the canyon proper, it fined up again nicely. It was also very dry, the humidity is around 0-5% even though there is snow all around, so you need to keep your fluids up.

We drove right to the end of the canyon to Rainbow Point, where it was over 9000 feet in altitude and boy did we notice it with our breathing in the thin air. We just took it easy and didn't try anything too strenuous. One gent in a shop we stopped at for coffee said it took him a month to acclimatise to the altitude before he could breathe normally again.

View from Rainbow Point

I took heaps of photos but I will not bore you here with them all, just picking the best ones we saw. From Rainbow Point you could see for about 30 miles away, with some awesome scenery.







Again I could not fit the vista into one photo, another panorama shot needed here.

Natural Bridge

Ponderosa Point

Another view of the canyon

By the time we had retraced our steps to the canyon's entrance, we were "canyoned out". We had been hoping to also see Zion Canyon nearby but we simply ran out of time, so we turned our car towards Las Vegas again and hit the road again. Four hours later we arrived and went out for tea and another movie, this time we saw American Sniper, a true story and one I would also recommend you go see. The movie theatre was embedded in a huge casino, with endless rows of slot machines, an incredible variety and cacophony of sounds and flashing lights, all trying to tempt you to try them out.
I've always said the quickest way to double you money is to fold it in half and put it back in your pocket.

Las Vegas, Grand Canyon & Arizona Meteor Crater

Driving into Las Vegas

We motored into Las Vegas yesterday after a 4 hour drive from Los Angeles. "The Strip" (actually Las Vegas Boulevard) has grown even more in 6 years. We decided to catch a movie after eating and cruised the strip after dark until it was time for our movie. The size of the screens on the side of the road have to be seen to be believed, they are multi-stories high. There are so many flashing lights and screens, it's enough to induce an epileptic fit.

The movie was The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Kiera Knightley, was about Alan Turing who built the first computer to break the Nazi Enigma code and shortened World War II, thus saving millions of lives. Very, very good film, go see it.

Today we left early (or so I thought) to get to the Grand Canyon in time for our helicopter flight. What I didn't count on was a time zone change, Arizona is on Mountain Time and we lost an hour. Once we got to the turn off to the Canyon, it was still and hour to get there and our flight was due in 10 minutes, so we rang the company and they put us on a later flight, so a disaster was averted.

Cresting the rim

After the mandatory safety briefing, they strapped us into an Ecoflight helicopter, incidentally the same machine we flew around Kaua'i in 2012. We paid extra this time to ensure we got the front seats and it was worth it for the view. The pilot took us over snow-covered forest to the highest point of the canyon, then before we reached the edge, started playing Also Sprach Zarathrusta and just as the initial crescendo of that arrived, we breached the edge of the canyon. The view was breathtaking as the ground, which up till now had been about 50 feet below us, fell away to a mile below. There was a collective "Wow!" from all the passengers, including your erstwhile scribe.

Awesome view

They say your life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the number of events that take your breath away. This was one of them. If you ever come to the Grand Canyon, make sure you take the helicopter tour, you will not regret it.

After that, it was a mad dash to drive an hour and a half to reach the Arizona Meteor Crater before a) it closed and b) the light faded (which it does early this time of year). We made it just in time and with very little petrol left in the car.

Climbing up to the rim, we beheld another awesome sight and another breath-taking moment. The largest, most well preserved astrobleme on the planet. It's so big, I could not fit it in one photo, I'm going to have to stitch several photos together to make a panoramic shot. The crater is a mile across and 400 feet deep. The meteor that hit it was the size of a house travelling at 9 miles a second, releasing the equivalent energy of a 20 megaton atomic bomb. We saw a film about how the crater was formed, toured the museum a little, then hit the road back to Flagstaff for some food (we had skipped lunch in the mad dash to the helicopter) and fuel. In fact the low fuel light came on just 5 miles from the petrol station. I was sweating on that.

Arizona Meteor Crater

L.A. Zoo

Today (Monday) Michelle took us to the L.A. Zoo, one of Augie's favourite places. Took us about half an hour to drive there as it is over in the San Fernando Valley. Michelle had a annual pass and managed to sneak me in on it so we only had to pay $16 for Ros.

Meerkat

First up were the meerkats. Highly gregarious and social animals, they spend most of their time standing on their hind legs looking around. This gives them elevation and the ability to see further and react to danger more quickly. To the right you can see one in typical pose. They also constantly patrol their territory, making sure there are no intruders.



And here is my favourite meerkat meme from the internet.

Some very helpful zoo assistants at the flamingo display gave us some info about the elephant show plus other information, so we hightailed it over to the elephant enclosure in time to see Billy, their 30 year old Asian elephant do his repertoire of tricks. The trainers got him to assume various poses, brushed and washed him down then got him to demonstrate the dexterity and strength of his trunk, adroitly picking up a ball and dropping it inside a large tractor tyre. Then he just wrapped his trunk around said tyre and hoisted it effortlessly onto his tusks and carried it across his enclosure. I doubt whether I would be able to even lift it into the vertical position myself!

Billy in pose

After that we wanted to see a bird show, but unfortunately it was a cancelled due to lack of staff, so we wandered around the various exhibits, seeing American Black Bears, tigers, crocodiles before arriving at the hippo enclosure. Two hippos occupy this enclosure, a male and female, and the female surprised zoo staff and visitors alike by giving birth to a female baby last October in broad daylight. The zoo staff were especially surprised and puzzled because the female hippo was on birth control! Anyway she is the star attraction for obvious reasons.

Baby hippo

After that it was time for lunch near the giraffe enclosure, so I took of photo of Michelle and Augie in front of the giraffes, Augie went for a ride on the carousel (merry-go-round for you Aussies) and then we went home for a well-earned rest, as the zoo is built on a hillside and has many steep paths between the exhibits.


Tomorrow it is off to Las Vegas on the first leg of our road trip.

Michelle, Augie & giraffes

Endeavour

Space Shuttle Endeavour

Today (Sunday) we went to the California Science Centre to see the space shuttle Endeavour which arrived here in 2012. It was a massive undertaking, taking 68 hours to manoeuvre the shuttle from Los Angeles Airport to the Science Centre. They used a massive trolley with independently steerable wheels to guide her through suburban streets and had to cut down trees, lift or take down electric cables and even remove traffic lights and signs. Anyway, she is here and she is magnificent.

The Endeavour was the second last shuttle to fly before they were retired. The final mission was flown by Atlantis, both supplying the International Space Station with supplies and equipment.

Thrusters

We weren't allowed to touch her and she was elevated way above reach anyway. Notice the holes in the nose? They are the Reaction Control System or thrusters which allow the shuttle to be manoeuvred once she is in orbit. Here's a closer picture of them. As you can see, they are angled in different directions to allow fine control. When the shuttle is in the atmosphere, it uses regular control surfaces on the wings and tail to manoeuvre her.

We were allowed to touch her wheels though, in a separate exhibit and you can clearly see the wear marks where she touched down on the tarmac. 

Shuttle wheels

The engines are not in the Endeavour, they are so advanced they have been repurposed into future space missions. NASA did kindly attach nozzles at the rear so she does look complete.

The nose and bottom of the shuttle and all the leading edges are lined with special ceramic heat tiles to absorb the tremendous heat of re-entry, glowing red hot with the friction with the air. However, the technology of the tiles is so advanced that you can pick one up after it has been heated to white hot and it will not transfer any heat to your hand. Each tile is individually numbered and goes in its own special place. Most tiles are replaced after each mission, again painstakingly by hand. Here's and example of one individual tile. You can clearly see its number as well as its neighbour.

Heat tile

After seeing the space shuttle it was time for some lunch at the cafeteria before wending our way home again. We did some washing in the communal laundry several hundred metres from our house. When we went to collect it from the dryer, one sock is missing. Damn! Forgot to disconnect the sock-muncher, it's right next to the button cruncher.  It has been raining for the past two days, quite rare in L. A. as it only rains about 16 times a year. Fortunately tonight it has stopped so we could walk to Luke and Michelle's place for tea. Yesterday we had to take the car and parking is atrocious near their place.

Tomorrow we're off to the L.A. Zoo, which should be interesting.

No engines, nozzles only!

Sick, shopping and planning road trip

Today I woke up sick, feeling cold and light-headed. Got in the shower which warmed me up a bit, but the best thing for warming you up in this house is the bathroom wall heater. It is built into the wall and stands vertically. Once turned on the amount of heat that comes out from it is amazing. I definitely want one of these at home.

Bathroom heater

After the shower I did not feel any better so it was back to bed until after midday when I arose feeling a little better.

Ros and I went off to Farmer Joe's to do some food shopping. Food shopping is very strange in the U.S. Trader Joe's is mostly like our supermarkets, but you cannot buy ordinary white cane sugar there, you have to go to CVS Pharmacy. I kid you not! And both stores have alcohol for purchase, from wines and beers and up to spirits and liqueurs. Amazing! They are big on organic foods over here, just about every food is labelled as organic or has an organic variety.

When you go to pay for your shopping, you give the trolley to the packing man who packs it into paper bags for you, all the while holding a conversation with you. They do not have PayPass for credit cards over here, you still have to sign for purchases, and not on the docket either, on a screen with a stylus.

After that I started planning our road trip for next week, booking hotels and planning routes. We have decided to skip the Grand Canyon Skywalk as all the reviews about it are terrible. Apparently you pay about $50 for admission, can wait up to 1.5 hours to get onto the walk, no cameras or mobile phones allowed, but you can get your picture taken by staff for the bargain price of $15 per photo. The photos are very small and posed cheesily so they are not worth the cost. To top it all off, you are only allowed on the walk for about 3 minutes before you are shuffled off to the exit. Definitely not worth it, so we will just revisit the South Rim. I was planning to go to the North Rim too, but that is closed for the winter.

Anyway, next Tuesday we will set off for Las Vegas and stay the night there. It is about 5 hours from Los Angeles over the excellent interstate highways here. On Wednesday we'll travel out to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, then push onto the Arizona Meteor Crater, before returning to Flagstaff to stay the night. Next day it's up bright and early for the 5 and 1/2 hour trip to Bryce Canyon in Utah. We may stop off at Zion Canyon on the way. From there it's back to Las Vegas for another overnight stay, then back to Los Angeles on Friday.

Tonight it is back to Luke and Michelle's place, just a 10 minute walk up the road for tea. Hopefully Josh and Sam will join us as well.

Moving Day

Yesterday afternoon we packed up from Luke and Michelle's place and moved to our new residence - nearly! Went to look for the keys to the new place...and we couldn't find them. Turned Ros's handbag inside out, not there. Back to the car and look in her bag and the clothes she was wearing two days ago when we picked up the keys, not there. So it was back to Luke and Michelle's place and unpacked the cases inside, all except my big case because I knew the keys were not in there. Still no luck.

Our new house

Then a thought occurred to me - had I clipped them to the keyring of the car I had exchanged the day before? A call to them revealed the car had been repaired and rented out again for three days and lost property was closed for the day. Just about then I was resigned to booking a hotel room for the night when Ros said "Let's look in your case" so in desperation I brought my case into the house and Ros started looking and there they were! Neither one of us remembers putting the keys in there. Do you know why you always find things in the last place you look? Because when you find them, you stop looking. Needless to say we were relieved.

The offending item

This morning we went and had breakfast with Luke and Michelle and I finally got to meet my grandson Augie. They had all returned from Wisconsin the night before and were a bit sick with colds and gastro but nevertheless were glad to see us. Luke and I went off to his business so I could fix a computer problem for him while Ros stayed behind with Michelle and Augie. We returned home around 6pm for tea then after fixing Michelle's MacBook came home to relax with a little TV watching.

Death, car troubles and Argentina

I looked up "things to do in L.A." and found the Museum of Death, which piqued my macabre interest, so Ros and I drove up to Hollywood Boulevard to take a look. Very interesting, lots of information about serial killers, suicide cults (think Heaven's Gate), unsolved murders, autopsies, coroner's cases, even traffic accidents, all in their unadulterated glory and uncut. There was even an autopsy picture of Marilyn Monroe, proving once and for all the adage "live fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse" does not always hold. Definitely not for the squeamish or fainthearted, but as we are both seasoned nurses, it did not worry us a bit. Unfortunately, no photos allowed, so you'll have to take my word on what we saw.

Museum of Death

After that we found a Subways store and had a 6-inch each. I asked for the smallest drink and they gave me a container I would have called large back in Oz. We shared one between us instead.

Driving back home, we noticed the air conditioner in the car was blowing hot air unless we set the temperature down to the lowest possible. Also the outside temperature was registering as -40F and every time the car started up it warned me of possible icing conditions and to drive carefully. The actual outside temperature was around 75F, so we figured the air con system was faulty. Took it back to the nearest Enterprise car rental place, just over a mile away, but they did not have any premium V6 cars available, so it was a fight through peak hour traffic to the airport branch where we picked it up yesterday for a replacement. Ros stayed at home and had a nap because she was still tired.

Did I tell you it gets dark around here early? It took me around 2 hours for the return trip, in the meantime Ros had woken up and found I was not home, it was dark outside and she became a little worried. She was very relieved when I finally got home with the replacement car, and even more happy when I told her they had knocked 10% off the rental due to the problem developing with the aircon.

By now it was time to join Josh and Sam for dinner, so we motored over to Santa Monica and picked them up. They guided us to the Ushuaia Argentine Restaurant where we had a sumptuous meal all done in traditional Argentine style - needless to say, it was delicious.

Ushuaia Restaurant

We were tired and ready for bed so we dropped Josh and Sam off and headed for home. Tomorrow we move from Luke and Michelle's place to our own place around the corner. Thankfully it is a single level house so Ros's knee will stop complaining about the stairs.

Arrived in Los Angeles

After 20 hours travelling and 3 hours to get through customs, immigration and get our car, we are finally at Luke (Ros's son) and Michelle's place. We arrived at 9.30am local time, just under 4 hours after we left Perth (16 hour time difference).

The flight was OK, we hit a fair bit of turbulence about 5 hours out from L.A. that continued for a few hours, but it wasn't too bad. We were supposed to be on an Airbus A380 for the Sydney to L.A. leg but when we boarded we discovered it had been switched to a 747-400. However it had been refurbished with the same seats that are now in the A380, so when you recline, the bottom of the seat slides forward, allowing you to lie a little flatter. The headrests also fold up at the sides so they support your head when sleeping. Ros didn't sleep at all, spent the entire 13 hours watching movies, I managed to get about 3 hours, with the aid of some sleeping tablets.

The new seats also have the new entertainment units, with a large selection of movies and TV series to watch. I watched around 4 movies, then decided to watch the IT Crowd and The Big Bang Theory. Here I am in a darkened plane with most people around me fast asleep and I'm laughing my head off! Oh dear.

Our car is a Chevrolet Impala, a V6 with all the mod cons. Tried to find the park brake, there was no hand brake or foot pedal visible. Finally found it on the dashboard, it's been replaced by a switch!

Chevy Impala

Handbrake!

Anyway, fired up the good old GPS we brought with us, switched to the US maps and it unerringly guided us to Luke and Michelle's place. They are currently visiting friends up in Wyoming so we have the place to ourselves. This is my third visit to the US and driving was almost automatic now, I had no trouble adjusting to driving on the right side of the road or sitting on the left side of the vehicle.

Joshua (Ros's other son) and his wife Sam met us there and we went over to my favourite restaurant, the Woodranch BBQ Steakhouse, which is just a short walk away and had my favourite TriTip smoked steak with an Idaho Baked potato, complete with whipped butter and sour cream and a peanut coleslaw. Delicious! We will be revisiting this restaurant several times while we are here. After that, Josh took us to an Italian restaurant nearby that sells gelato ice-cream and we all had a cone of that, mine was salted caramel with chocolate chips all through it, also very delicious.

After that it was back home to talk, but soon the lack of sleep started catching up on us, so Josh and Sam left us to let us go to bed. Ros retired at 4.30pm but I managed to hang on till around 6pm before I joined her. Woke up twice during the night, but we both managed to get a reasonable night's sleep and this morning we don't feel too jet-lagged at all.

Just to prove where we are

Today is Josh and Sam's third wedding anniversary and erstwhile followers of my blog will remember my previous postings from their wedding in Hawaii. We are going to meet them tonight in Santa Monica where we will be going to an Argentinian restaurant for tea to celebrate their anniversary.