Anaheim

It takes a lot of getting used to, this big tank on the Mercedes. We're all the way to Anaheim on 2.5 tanks of gas. Fill up near Chico, then again south of San Luis Obispo. Here in Anaheim, we still have a half-tank. You could almost forget you need gas!

Disneyland Highlights:

• M spent the morning in the Princess Pavillion. She got her hair done, her face painted as Marie (the Disneyland Paris white cat mascot) and wore her Cinderella dress all day in the park (with shorts and a t-shirt discreetly hidden underneath!)

• On another day, M returned to the Princess Pavillion with Mom to take part in the Coronation ceremony.
  
• Both R and M were chosen in the same session of Jedi Training Academy. They wore Jedi robes, learned to use their lightsabers, and each battled either Darth Vader (M) or Darth Maul (R) to ultimate victory. They loved it.
  
• Watched Indiana Jones fight villains in the ramparts above Adventureland.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• We rode ALL the rides. Both sides of the Matterhorn. Space Mountain, everything. EVERYthing.
  
• Tuesday's dinner at the Blue Bayou was nice. They've upgraded the dining experience (and the price) since our 2004 trip. It was worth it. The wait staff was attentive in proportion to the price, so that was a fair trade-off. We rode Pirates, then exited straight into the restaurant. C had salmon, I had jambalaya (a LOT of it!). The kids both had Mac-and-cheese that was exquisite. Drinks came with light-up Tinkerbelle or Captain Hook clip on lapel pins. Neat. Dessert was a boat-shaped chocolate chip cookie with a scoop of ice cream that held up a drinking straw mast onto which was attached a fancy ships sail made from the hard stuff inside a jawbreaker. Clever!
  
• M's new rides (now that she's tall enough) included:
• Indiana Jones
• Space Mountain
• California Screamin' (California Adventure)
• Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
  
• R's new ride was Indiana Jones. He was lucky enough, on our second ride, to get to sit behind the wheel of the jeep. For him, that was full immersion in the ride experience.
  
•  
  
• Everybody was trading pins with Cast Members this trip. Seems there were fewer traders in the park than we remembered. No matter; we still found lots of good ones. M was the most aggressive trader. She just about turned her pin collection over, weeding out basic and unremarkable pins for a nice collection of Stitch pins.
  
• Cast Member Pat talked to us on our last day, just as we were happily coming off the Matterhorn. She chatted to us about the fun we were having. Then, to our surprise, she wrote us a 'silver bullet' fastpass for ANY ride, gave us each "Year of A Million Dreams" limited edition pins, and explained herself by saying "Just trying to make a little magic happen!" So we used the fastpass to take C one last time on her FAVORITE ride: California Soarin' over in Disney California Adventure.
  
• I kept getting approached as if I were a management Cast Member. Probably because I was dressed in business casual all week. It was surprising how many people thought I was on staff just because I wasn't dressed in shorts and white socks like everybody else. Funny thing is, with those golf pants and warm weather button-style shirts, I was cooler than on the day I wore blue jeans and a t-shirt! You know, it made me kind of wish I DID work there.
  
• Saturday Breakfast at Goofy's Kitchen was delightful. Because this was a repeat engagement, the kids knew when to abandon the table for dancing in the center of the restaurant. We required one serving of protein, and otherwise they could eat their fill of whatever. So there was peanut butter and jelly pizza, and cake. Pie and mac-and-cheese. Photos with Jasmine, Chip n' Dale, Pluto and Goofy ensued.

The hotel room was close. The convention center was a five minute walk; the parks were a ten minute walk if the parking lot tram wasn't running. If it was, then there were only four minutes of walking in the ten minute commute. Not that different than our walk from the Paradise Pier hotel back in 2004.

For all the cachet that comes from staying in a Disney property, we had a nice time using the value motel approach. C, who usually prefers more stars on the hotel rating than the Jolly Roger could dish, even said it was a pleasant enough time. This trip, value weighed more heavily than 'effect.' More days in the park were better than a nicer room experience.

We spent Saturday night driving out of LA and up to Monterey. Back for whale watching, dude!

Monterey

We got in to Monterey after dark, and checked in to our mid-20th-century drive-up single-story motel, the Blue Lagoon. At $65/night, it isn't fancy. But it was clean and functional. We just needed a place to sleep, shower and change. It was that, without doubt.

Monday morning, after rousting the kids, packing the car once again, and loading up, we were off to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. This facility was orginally funded by the Hewlett family (as in Hewlett-Packard), and opened about 25 years ago or so. I first saw it in 1986, and it was mighty impressive then. Now? It's over twice the size and truly spectacular.

The Aquarium sits on the ocean side of historic Cannery Row. The aquarium building itself once was a cannery. In fact, the cannery's original boiler system is preserved in-situ in the lobby of the aquarium.

We spent all day. In fact, we had to hurry through the second half of the facility, because the original building took up six of our scheduled eight hours! There was so much to see. Sharks. Sheephead fish. Touch pools with bat rays. Species upon species of beautiful jellyfish. Diver shows. The works. The one exhibit voted MOST COOL by the entire Johnson family? The lone Cuttlefish, off in the corner of the kids exhibit. R is fascinated with the color-changing capabilities of Cuttlefish. After spending some time with this guy, we all came to share R's enthusiasm for them.

Finally, at 5PM, we started off on the six-hour mostly non-interstate drive to Anaheim. We got there uneventfully. The car, steadfast as it continues to prove, got us there with nary a clunk or clatter.

On the drive to Anaheim, C called for a family consultation. She floated the idea that we change our schedule and spend Father's Day back in Monterey. As she suggested this, she held up a brochure for whale watching in Monterey Bay. Apparently, there were three simultaneous whale populations working through the Monterey area: blues, greys and humpbacks. The vote was to see if the schedule change was do-able. After a few quick phone calls, it turned out it was. We canceled one day in Anaheim at $160/night, booked one day at the Blue Lagoon again at the weekend rate of $100/night, and reserved our space on the 9am whale watching trip.

I guess that pretty much tells us all what the family thought of Monterey and Santa Cruz, eh?

So, How Did It Start?

We needed a getaway. That became clear as we got going on our trip. It seemed that the whole family was ready.

The drive to San Francisco got started a couple hours later than we had planned. C and I needed a bit more sleep before we felt safe to drive. We pulled away from the front of the house at about 6:15 on Saturday morning, and arrived in San Francisco at about 5pm. It was almost that uneventful.

We got some McDonald's breakfast in Cottage Grove, drove straight through almost to Sacramento before needing gas (that's a LONG haul), and made our approach on San Francisco from the north bay, so as to cross the Golden Gate into town. It all went without a hitch. C had built up a bunch of map references for us - Google Maps routes and addresses. We didn't have a AAA trip-tik for this trip and she felt out-of-the-know. What we did have was a new GPS for the car, a Garmin Nuvi 220. C was used to the less-than-helpful guidance our old GPS unit gave us. But slowly, steadily, as I used the Garmin to fill in the details she didn't have (and was stressing over), and used the Garmin's  POI add on feature (which I'd loaded with key points of interest to us) to dynamically keep us on track, she started to realize that this GPS unit  really DID make a difference.

The car managed everything just fine. This is our first official road trip in the '94 S320 Mercedes. It is abundantly clear to me that the initial owner(s) of this car pampered it to no end. That, coupled with the Mercedes tradition to over-engineer the S-class cars means that this scoot does NOT show it's age at all. We motored right along. In fact, at one point, I was doing between 75-80mph on open, straight, traffic-free interstate. C turned to me and said "This is a nice car. Rides really well. Why are you driving it slower than normal? Are you pampering it?" Of course, when I told her we were doing 80, she chuckled. We talked about how this car was designed for the autobahn, and that 80mph is hardly even stressing it. "This is a great road trip car, after all" she concluded.

We got an average mpg between 20mpg and 21mpg for the trip down. Looks like the mpg is creeping upward with every tank. We did better on the second tank than the first.

The San Francisco hotel was nice enough. On Lombard Street close in, it was a well-placed base for giving the kids a taste of the city. The GPS took us right to the driveway; now C was satisfied that we had a reliable electronic alternative. The hotel was a motel style, with room doors opening to the outside. The building was shaped like a courtyard, however, with car parking on the street level underneath the rooms. Nice and secure for inner SF. We unloaded, freshened up, and set off to see San Francisco in the afternoon.

First stop was Ghirardelli Square and Fisherman's Wharf. From there, we rode the cable car to Chinatown and had dinner. By the time we finished dinner, it was around 10 in the evening. Rather than futz with the bus home, we took a cab back to the hotel, and slept a tired, satisfied sleep.

Sunday morning turned out to be sunny and warm. We drove down the crooked part of Lombard, then doubled back to Fort Mason Center to have brunch at Greens restaurant.

The Brunch was just lovely. Greens is just as nice as it was twelve years ago. The view from our table was of the bay, and the Golden Gate bridge in the distance. Magnificent. I was a bit worried. In twelve years, did Greens improve or fall into a tailspin? Restaurants can change a lot in a decade, after all. For us, it was nice to see that they held steady over the long interval. It was like a step back in time for C and I...just as we remembered it. So that's what made it so poignant to be sitting there with our kids. Everything was the same in three dimensions, only the fourth dimension (time) had changed.

We finished with some trinket shopping in Chinatown, a banana split in Ghirardelli Square, then got out of town for Santa Cruz and Monterey.

The whole goal in stopping in Santa Cruz was to ride the Giant Dipper roller coaster. Built in 1924, of wood, on the beachfront boardwalk, it remains essentially unchanged. M was too short to ride, and C was unwilling. But R and I rode it a couple times. He said it was way different from anything else he'd ever ridden. And with that comment, I said to myself  "Well, then. Mission accomplished!"

M was struggling at Santa Cruz. She was too short for many of the rides. at 49 inches tall, she couldn't make the 50-inch cutoff for most of the thrill rides. Amazingly, though, the Double Shot ride - a reverse bungee cannon shot (like on the top of the Stratosphere in Las Vegas) had a 48 inch height requirement. M qualified. Even MORE amazingly , she wanted to go on the ride very much. Her older brother, however, refused to go. Said it was too scary. So M and I took the ride. As I got on, I called out to C "Hey, if I die, remember that the car has about a half-tank of gas. You'll need to fill up by Sacramento." She just laughed at me. As we waited in line, I turned to M and said, "You know what? With this laryngitis, when I scream like a little girl on this ride, nobody's going to know!" She thought that was a funny thing to say.

Well, the ride lived up to the anticipation. We rocketed up about 75 feet in just a couple seconds, then fell 50 feet just as fast. The launch caught M off guard and the acceleration slammed her face into the restraints. banging her nose pretty hard. The rest of the ride, she was calling out "I'm hurt, I'm hurt!" I was worried. At the end, though, she hopped off, announced that was awesome and then told me about banging her nose. R may have ridden all the roller coasters at Santa Cruz, but for the rest of the evening, M had bragging rights over her brother for doing something that he could have done but chose not to.

The drive to Monterey was at sunset. Nice. With the sunroof open and pleasant, we all felt relaxed and in harmony as a family.

More on Monterey in another post.

A Great Bit of Community Spirit

As I write  this, the kids should be getting out of school early. The reason? Rose Festival Junior Parade.

Portland Public Schools lets  kids out early  to attend the parade, which runs down Sandy Blvd from 5Oth to 4Oth.

From our new house, It's a short trip eight block to the parade route. C makes sure to let the kids to participate.

I'm not able to go; I'm at work. It's great that C can make time to go. What a great sense of community this experience  fosters. It was one thing when the trip to the parade involved an eleven mile drive home after; it means something else when its right in our neighborhood, within walking distance.

Thanks for making sure the Kids get to go, C. I appreciate it; I'm sure the kids are thankful, too.

Hypermiling - from CNN Today

 

This guy www.cleanmpg.com claims techniques to get up to 50 mpg out of his unaltered Honda Accord. Also claims his techniques will work on any vehicle, though - as always - your mileage may vary.

CNN did a piece on him, and pointed at the website. I havent' fully investigated, nor tried his techniques, so I can't vouch for the effectiveness. But he claims to have been at this research since 2001.

Check it out for yourself...might want to wait until the CNN crowd has stopped overwhelming his server, though.

Boy Scout Court of Honor

Tonight was the first Boy Scout Court of Honor R has attended with Troop 22. I didn't grab the camera, so I don't have any photos, unfortunately. 

This morning, as we got ready for school, R exhibited strong signs of a sore throat and a very stuffy nose. We discussed the likelihood of missing school. In the context of figuring out how serious it was, I said, kindly, "No school today, no Court of Honor tonight" R responded with "I can definitely go to school." I definitely don't think he's faking a stuffy head or a sore throat. But I think its telling how badly he wants to participate in Scouts.

At the Court of Honor, all first year scouts were assigned to their patrols. R is now a member of the Shark Patrol

R received the following awards and distinctions for his uniform:

• SCOUT rank
• 2007 QUALITY TROOP patch
• 80 year troop bar
• Bulwinkle's Scout Night 2008 patch
• Shark Patrol Badge

I was approached about 'suiting up' as an assistant Scoutmaster for Fall 2008. I'm open to the idea, but haven't consulted with C yet.

STILL Almost there...

The hardscape guy worked on both Saturday AND Sunday this weekend*. We worked in the yard, too. The backyard transformed from a raging mess of rock piles, overgrown flowerbeds and a trash heap the size of a car on Friday evening, into a space with functional patio, completed walkway, lawn furniture, a burbling (if only roughed-in) water feature, well-groomed flowerbeds, a sprinkling of new plants, and a vastly reduced debris pile.

Of course, we responded to the debris reduction by making MORE yard debris as we cleared out the flower beds!

I must say, it was nice to sit in our patio rockers, under a freestanding patio umbrella, eating a sandwich and listening to the burbling of the fountain.

We did some front yard work as well: I sculpted out most of the soil to make the new front yard terrace area. I also hacked experimentally at the god-awful front yard junipers, and made some cool progress there.

As soon as the hardscape guy is done, I'll re-grade the east side of the house and seed throughout. I'm guessing we'll be able to seed the new lawn in mid June. That'll be cool!

Shoot, we even got to the western side-yard behind the fence! This is a cul-de-sac accessible only by wiggling around the corner of the house from the back yard. Aki dog had claimed it as her 'poop spot' but it got overgrown with flowers and weeds this spring. Access was difficult, so she gave up on it, resorting to the less discrete back yard. For an Akita, that just wouldn't do. We cleared the foliage, dug out the two vestigial fence posts, removed the excess dirt (sounds familiar, eh?) created a grade that will keep water draining away from the basement foundation, and put down barkdust. Now she's got a wide-open private space for her 'business'. Perfect for an eleven year old arthritic pooch!

Inside, I made progress on kitchen 'frosting'. There's a flooring ledge that I've had to custom fabricate. This weekend, I glued many of the pieces down. This is a long, slow process. Five minutes to glue and set, then six hours to wait for the glue to dry. It made for a nice break from the dirt-slogging elsewhere.

C painted the second coat on the porch and basement stairs. The new color is an earthy grey that goes very well indeed with the new outside paint.

No pics to post yet, but I will do so shortly.

 

* So, is he done? No. BUT... he's fine-tuning the fountain, cutting a few trim pieces, and installing the outdoor lighting today. That'll be DONE.