087 - Chapter 87

(Illustrations: Collage of places we visited)

In 2017 Bob was given a new hip. 

He was a big brave soldier, and even though he had ‘leaky’ heart problems, his operation was a great success and he made an amazing recovery. Obviously, he felt a lot of pain once the local anaesthetic wore off that evening, but with the superb care he was given, he was actually walking by himself with sticks, unaided, the next day.

In no time at all, in a space of five weeks, he was doing three-mile walks! And so he was well and fit enough for a holiday in the USA in March that following year.

Svein, our Norwegian friend had been in England visiting us, and he invited us to join him for a holiday in Palm Springs, California, where he lives half of the year in his condo. He went straight onto our computer with Bob, and booked our flight there and then! It was so good of him to get us motivated, and lovely that he wanted to share a holiday with us, as our host, yet again.

So off we went, thoroughly enjoying flying in a huge ‘double decker’ aircraft over the North Atlantic, and Canada, and Svein met us in San Francisco. It was a lovely city with its piers, sloping streets, large art galleries and quintessential coffee bars.

 We also visited and worshipped at a famous church there, its congregation is known for its ministry among the poor and disadvantaged, among the addicts and the homeless. What a wonderful atmosphere there was there, it was one of the most welcoming churches I’ve visited. 

We also enjoyed the harbour with its floating wooden platforms which were crammed tight with sea lions sleeping in the sun, and then we travelled across the San Francisco Bay bridge and had breakfast on the far shore. We also asked to view a fire station in the town there, with having a son who is a firefighter himself. We also took a boat journey around Alcatraz, formerly a federal penitentiary, which housed famous convicts such as Al Capone and George "Machine Gun" Kelly.

Bob, Svein and I went out on our last night in the city, to a restaurant in Chinatown, following directions someone had given us. After a nice meal we were standing at a bus stop, hoping for directions to get back to our hotel, when a bus pulled up and the bus driver told us to get on his bus, that we couldn’t stay there, it wasn’t safe!

We drove south the next day.

We had hoped to take the famous sea route down to California with Svein at the wheel of a car he’d hired, but there had been mudslides weeks before, and that route was closed. I was so disappointed, as that was a part of the journey I’d been looking forward to most, but it couldn't be helped! We took the desert road instead, which was long and so straight, and I slept most of the way. We eventually got to Palm Springs, and Svein’s condo was lovely. We also met some of his friends, most of them married couples, at another apartment complex, where Svein owned another condo not far away, one which he lets out. These folk were mostly Canadians, known in the USA as the ‘snow geese’ who arrive at certain times of the year to escape their own freezing weather. We had lively afternoons there, also a grand celebration on St Patrick’s Day, with everyone dressed as leprechauns, or in something green. The other 'get-together' that was planned was a singalong around the pool. Someone had lent Svein a guitar for me, but one tuning peg was broken. The next day Svein and I went into a local guitar shop to see if we could get it fixed. As the shopkeeper was explaining to us that he didn’t have the spare part to repair it, another man in the shop, who was sitting on a stool playing a guitar, spoke up. He gave us directions to a large music shop in the next town, Cathedral City, further along the valley, and said it.was the best guitar store for miles around. He then informed us he was an American Indian chief, who owned some properties just along the road. He insisted on giving us an American Indian blessing, before we left. So Svein and I both stood there in the shop, heads bowed, while he sang his prayer over us, waving and wafting his hands. When he had finished, I said to him, “Thank you so much, and I’m a priest in the Church of England, UK, and I would like to give you my blessing too!” He was rather taken aback but he stood still, while ‘heavenly blessings’ fell on him too! Fair's fair.

Next day we went to find the guitar shop, and it was huge, with hundreds of top-notch guitars for sale. There was a large desk drawer full of every spare-part imaginable for a guitar here and I was in my element, like a child in a candy store. But lo and behold this same guy, the American Indian Chief, was there again, playing a guitar, sitting on a stool in this shop too. I asked the shop assistant on the quiet, “Do you know that man over there, is he really an American Indian chief?” Don’t know about that,” said the assistant, “but we can’t get rid of him. He comes in here every day and just sits and plays all the guitars!”

What a character, well at least we were blessed by him!, and he us. And with the guitar mended we had a wonderful sing along back at the condo complex the following day.

Svein, Bob and I attended the Methodist church in Palm Springs during our stay, it was a beautiful church, very spacious, modern and clean. We also visited another church, called the Chapel of the Holy Cross, in Sedona, Arizona, on our way to Las Vegas. This Roman Catholic church rises up between two red rock buttes or mounds in the desert, with an impressive 90-foot cross at the front of it. The church was funded by rancher and sculptor Marguerite Brunswig Staude, who visited the area in an aeroplane where she was hoping the church would be built, and when she saw rock formations which looked like the Madonna and child, she decided to position it there. We attended one of the services there and I loved their wonderful music, and the worship.

We stopped overnight at a motel and Bob and Svein ordered a full American breakfast which came piled high with five or so pancakes and maple syrup! Ugh!

One shop on our route had a very firm warning for thieves in its window. It read:

WIN A FREE RIDE IN A POLICE CAR, JUST TRY SHOPLIFTING FROM THIS STORE. YOU WILL ALSO GET A MENTION IN THE LOCAL PAPER. MOM WILL BE PLEASED!

We visited the Hoover Dam also en route. Look over the edge of it, it was a very long way down, as was the Grand Canyon later on. It was truly magnificent, so vast and deep with its changing colours, depending upon what time of day it is! Visitors can walk the narrow path all the way down to the Colorado River, but if we’d gone down there, I doubt whether we would have been able to climb back up again!

Later that evening we saw Las Vegas in the far distance, you couldn't miss it, as the sky was lit up all around it, and very dark elsewhere. But what a place it was, a different world!  I didn’t like it much. 

To see so many people gambling away hard-earned money, in the casinos there, was too much for me. The main road seemed vibrant, flashy and colourful, but how much despair was there behind the facade of those attractions ? How many people had lost fortunes? How many families were in debt as a result of one visit?

We were shown the exact place where a year before there had been a real tragedy: a shooting incident. This is what was written at the time in the news:

On the evening of October 1, 2017, Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old man from Mesquite, Nevada, opened fire upon the crowd attending the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada. Between 10:05 and 10:15 p.m. PDT, he fired more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition from his 32nd floor suite in the Mandalay Bay Hotel, which killed 60 people and wounded 411, with the ensuing panic bringing the injury total to 867. About an hour later, Paddock was found dead in his room from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His motive remains officially undetermined.

No, I definitely didn’t care for Las Vegas, nor did I feel happy that unstable people can so easily acquire weapons in the shops and go on shooting sprees.

On a bus tour of the city we saw Trump Tower not far away, all resplendent in gold, glistening in the sun, and in the evening as we walked around the main thoroughfare, we saw landmark themed hotels, such as the Eiffel Tower, and the Pyramids, all glittering with lights. The huge digital displays advertising casinos were gaudy and hypnotic. 

 I did however love the dancing fountains in front of the grand Bellagio hotel, which swayed and rose gloriously in time to piped classical music.

On our way home to Palm Springs, we stopped off at a former silver mine mudeum at a place called Calico, a genuine ‘ghost’ town. It was exciting to see this open air museum, up close and personal, which looked so very much like the towns shown on TV Westerns. Its shops were rather like our Beamish Museum shops, in Durham, with ‘genuine looking products’ on display, items which must have been ‘for sale’ there in the early 1800’s.

Some of the friendliest people we met in the USA, were Svein’s friends; members of the LGBT community. Bob and I visited art galleries and karaoke bars with Svein, several times, and his friends had such talent and tremendous singing voices. Bob and I hadn’t been to bars like this before; there was no excessive drinking going on, just people having a good night out. I had told Svein I wouldn’t be singing, but it wasn’t long before I was joining in the fun and choosing a few karaoke songs to sing myself. I made some good friends there.

This was such an unusual holiday in other ways too. We enjoyed the novelty of being driven around in Svein’s red Mustang convertible, with the sun roof down, and wherever you went the streets were named after famous film stars, Bob Hope Drive, Bing Crosby Drive, Burns and Allen Road etc, Frank Sinatra Drive, the Gene Autry Trail.

We also climbed a local mountain on the rotating Aerial tramway in Palm Springs, passing through five life zones (biomes) on its way to the summit at 8,516 ft (2,596 m) above sea level. We started our ride in the Sonoran Desert and arrived at the Mountain station in an alpine forest, a twelve-minute ride to the top!

We enjoyed tuning in early each evening to Svein’s favourite TV presenter, Rachel Maddox, who had so much to say about President Trump’s misdemeanours and ‘insane rantings and ravings.’ I got on chatting to lady one evening in the swimming pool outside the condo, and we discussed Rachel’s programmes and I soon found that our views on Donald Trump were diametrically opposed! Let’s say she was a devoted Republican, who hailed him as saviour of the nation!

One thing that really delighted me and which was so unusual was to see tiny humming birds on the lush foliage outside, the size of bumble bees. They were incredibly beautiful, a welcome flash of colour in this town, reclaimed from the desert.

All of this was a once in a lifetime experience, and a real eye opener of a holiday for us. Svein was so giving of his time, and a good host. It wasn’t until the end of our holiday that we sought out a friend who lived out there, called Scott Weightman, and amazingly, we discovered that he lived just around the corner from Svein! What a small world, so before leaving Palm Springs, we spent a very pleasant afternoon with him.

What a holiday! What an experience!