Dr Moo in California

If you are wondering why I waited so long to post my last article and why I am immediately following up with this, my laptop died over the weekend. I was writing up our experiences and the things you will see below when my screen became corrupted. Some component in the graphics card appears to have failed (perhaps the RAMDAC) and so these posts have been delayed.

Houses: Well, we have finally cleared out Ali and Jamie’s old place and the new place is slowly becoming more like a home. It took much effort and Jamie spent many evenings working very hard to get the move out done in time (and even then, we had to request a few extensions). However, the new house is lovely and it is wonderful to finally look forwards to returning home each night!!

Intruders: However, not all has been 100% well at the new house. On Saturday night, we had intruders on our property! Alicyn woke me up to tell me that she had heard a sound in the back garden and when she investigated it, she saw someone fleeing down the road! Further investigation revealed that somone had indeed been in our back yard and that is when she woke me up. Given the disorientation when waking up to such news, I was worried that they had been trying to burgle our house. However, it appears they had just been using our garden as a hiding place/escape route. It appears that the police had been chasing or searching for someone and they had used our back garden to hide in.

I had been given a new tomato plant and left it outside in its pot and the intruder had kicked it quite hard (probably not seen it in the dark). An oxy-acetelyne torch had been moved and one of Jamie’s antenna’s broken. The sound Alicyn had heard was the person knocking over the antenna! There was a small amount of other miscellaneous damage, but not too much thankfully. What they were intending to do with the torch is unknown, but they ended up leaving it behind on top of one of our fences. I think perhaps they were trying to climb over the fence to escape and got disturbed by the police or Alicyn. They may also have been trying to use the antenna for a similar purpose. Thankfully, it appears they were caught shortly afterwards. It did however leave us a little startled, partially because of the damage, but also just because of the intrusion into our private space. Anyway, the tomato plant seems to be recovering (poor thing) and there wasn’t too much damage.

Dead Laptop: As a final straw, later that day, my laptop screen became corrupted. The same is true of any external monitor that is connected. The data appears fine and intact, but it is impossible to use the laptop for anything now. Windows no longer detects the graphics card (so it uses VGA mode) and half the screen just shows junk (lines of good interleaved with lines of corrupt graphics). I can’t really afford a new laptop at the moment and a new PC I ordered a while back is being constantly delayed by Dell.

As usual, it has been quite some time since my last post. However, in that time, much has happened. I will try to do this post the justice it deserves, because there is much to write about… I had two of my good friends (Chris and Simon) come over to visit from England and in the middle of their visit had to move house. So a very hectic, but fun, time.

Chris and Simon arrived on the June 24th and stayed for two weeks. On their arrival, we had a nice relaxing weekend to help them recover from their jet lag and then went into our full holiday. We had decided to hire an RV and drive up to Lake Tahoe and Yosemite. The RV we hired was a wonderful vehicle and felt very comfortable. We had intended to shop on the Sunday before we left on the Monday. However, due to a number of problems finding what we needed, we ended up doing much of our shopping Monday. One thing we realised was that we didn’t have enough space in our cool boxes to store all our stuff, so we ended up buying a HUGE one (its capacity was 142 litres or 248 cans) to store everything in. We also spent a small fortune on food and drink for the trip. We finally going going mid afternoon and were up at Lake Tahoe by the end of Monday.

We had paid in advance to have a berth at a KOA campsite in Lake Tahoe. We arrived later than intended, but thankfully they had left out instructions for us. The berth was very convenient (located near the entrance) and there was a great place to park my car (I forgot to mention above that we decided to tow my car on the journey). I could drive my car up behind the RV and easily exit. It was a good evening except for a bit of a panic when Alicyn realised that some tablets she needed were left behind. However, all in all, a good journey and good day.

Our plan for Tuesday was to go to Lake Tahoe and rent a couple of Jet Skis. We spent four hours racing around Lake Tahoe on these Jet Skis. It was a great experience and we managed to get to speeds of almost 50mph. Very exhilarating! After exploring the lake thoroughly, we decided to cross over the Nevada and go to a casino for some food and a bit of a dabble with the gambling. The buffet food was great, but I wasn’t massively impressed with the gambling. If I were to enjoy it, I’d want to play at the tables and the stakes are a little too high for me to do this just casually. However, we had a little fun with the slot machines and overall it was a fun experience.

Wednesday we headed down to Yosemite and found our new campsite. This one was very pleasant and was spacious enough that we could extend our awning and also have a separate cover up. Very nice. It is a long drive from Lake Tahoe to Yosemite in an RV with a car being towed (very narrow and mountainous roads), so we didn’t arrive until early evening. We then went to a Pizza place nearby. Opinions over the pizza were somewhat polarized (some described as very good and some as the worst they’d ever had).

Thursday we drove to Yosemite National Park (took the car, not the RV). I have been there once before, but was still completely blown away by the magnificent scenery. We got out of the car many times to view things on the way in. After viewing the park from the valley, we then drove all the way to the south entrace. We were rather rushed, because we had booked a horse ride through the area just south of Yosemite and barely had time to get there. A few bends were taken perhaps slightly faster than they should have been, but we arrived safely. Horse riding through the valleys in that part of the park was amazing. We had booked for two hours, but were probably out even longer. An amazing experience, but very dust experience. The ground was very dry and the horses kicked up huge volumes of dust to the point where are lungs felt full of the stuff. Finally we drove back via Glacier Point. We got there just in time to witness sunset over the park and it is hard to put into words how amazing the view was. Although photos can’t do it true justice (no criticism to the photographer), here are some photos from the trip.

Friday we had to drive home. I woke up with a splitting headache and was rather ill all morning. Luckily, the RV’s main bed was still usable (perhaps not legally) while driving, so I ended up taking some strong pain killers and trying to sleep it off (I suffer from Migraine and bad headache occasionally nowadays). We finally got home and immediately went to our new house to get the key.

Saturday and Sunday were move in days. The day didn’t start off too well. We had secured a van rental on a credit card before leaving for our vacation. However, no one told us that we only had 1 hour from the time the van was supposed to be collected to get it before it would be given to someone else. Jamie go there to find the van was no longer available. After much searching, we finally found a replacement and got the move underway, but we were running late. We managed to get most of my place moved on Saturday (having only been in CA for so short a time, I haven’t accumulated too much junk) and good portion of the big stuff from Alicyn’s place also. However, it was rather tight, because the van had to be back for 5pm for another customer. We also got to go see the new Superman film this weekend, which was pretty good. Well worth checking out.

Monday was the day we visited Alcatraz. We had booked well in advance and were glad we had, because there were no tickets available that day for anyone who hadn’t pre-booked. Visiting Alzatraz was great fun and we had a good time looking around the place and taking many photos (I might even get round to posting some of mine, but see above link for some good photos of all the places mentioned). On Alcatraz, we got a short tour about native American protests on the island and a truly amazing audio tour of the prison block. Great fun. We then went to Pier 39 and had a very nice meal at Neptune’s Seafood Restaurant.

Tuesday was July 4th, so we had a nice quiet day. Adobe had a great place to view the San Jose fireworks display, so Simon and I headed over there to watch them.

Wednesday we went down to Monterey. We visited the Monterey Aquarium and spent a good few hours enjoying the sights of the deep The aquarium is one of the best in world and a very good way to spend a long afternoon. We saw Sea Otters, Sharks, Seals, etc. and they have some very impressive tanks that are so big you can barely believe it. Highly recommended day out in Northern California.

Thursday Simon, Chris and I went back to San Francisco for the day. We started slightly late due to helping Alicyn and Jamie move a few more items from their place. We got there for lunch and then went exploring San Fran. We went up Coit Tower and then journeyed over to Union Square and had a look around. Finally we headed back to China Town to the House of Nanjing Restaurant. There we had one of the best Chinese meals I have ever had (and I eat a lot of Chinese food, have visited places like Hong Kong, etc. so this is saying something). The place has a reputation for not letting first timers order for themselves and we were very happy to allow this. We simply told them that we were adventurous and hungry and they went and produced four delicious (and huge) meals.

Friday we went up to Muir Woods. I had been to Muir Woods with my parents in April this year and it had been raining heavily and was very muddy (ruined my shoes). This time I came prepared with hiking boots. We took a moderate/strenuous (this is how it was labelled) 4 mile hike. There were some amazing views and we saw a Deer, Snake, Reptile and a number of other creatures on our travels. After a rather exhausting time walking up the hill (800 foot climb in quite a short distance), the rest of the walk seemed relatively easy. Some more amazing views were to be found up here and once again can be found here.

Saturday was when Chris and Simon had to return to England. However, we managed to fit in Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest and a quick visit to the local IHoP before seeing them off at the airport. All in all it was a wonderful holiday.