Almost home
Slow morning in Rawlins. I went to the library to see if I could find any information on Gail’s father, and was happily surprised when they took all the information I had and promised to call within 72 hours after they search the microfiche and available databases. Then I went to the Presbyterian church, hoping to find a wall with photos of pastors back to 1900. That didn’t happen–I wanted a very old church building, but found a modern one and nobody home on a Thursday morming. The building has tiny stained glass windows that may well be from an older building, but there was no way inside to check it out.
Driving out of town, I noticed this sign, and needed a picture to convey just how barren and desolate it is around southwestern Wyoming:
Not exactly Pebble Beach
Near the western end of the state is Little America, quite possibly the best truck stop in the world. A vast number of pumps fuel trucks of all shapes on one side and autos on the other. The diner is good, and they offer 75¢ soft serve cones. The gift store is large and clean, stocked with books and tapes to keep the kids amused, souvenirs of every shape and color, and a case full of knives and brass knuckles. I don’t understand everything…………
Naturally, I hit Salt Lake City at rush hour, got lucky by using Waze to find the fastest route through town and had no real issues. Then the fun began.
Most people wouldn’t think it was fun to hurtle down a narrow causeway with water on both sides in a large rented truck as fast as it could possibly go in the middle of a huge thunderstorm with lightning all around. I thought it was incredibly exhilarating. Rain pounding on the truck, the wipers on their highest setting, Meatloaf blaring on the sound system, the engine roaring with my foot on the floor, life doesn’t get any better than this.
Passing out of the line of the thunderstorms, the clouds were still beautiful. I shot this out the window as I drove:
Fascinating cloud cofiguration
Then it happened–I saw something I’ve never seen before.
UFO
Probably that isn’t the mark a flying saucer leaves when it breaks through a cloud. Probably. But a perfect circle of light in the middle of a huge cloud? Glad I had the camera handy.
Elko is about as miserable a wide spot in the road as you can imagine. I walked into, and immediately out of, a Mexican restaurant and then a Chinese restaurant before giving up and buying a sandwich at Subway. There is a Basque place that looked interesting, but they serve family style and I don’t have one with me. I just wasn’t in the mood to join a communal table tonight.
Tomorrow I’ll get an early start and get this load to the store in Sonoma. It will be good to be home.
Still on the road
Some days are more interesting than others. Today was mostly one of the others, but there were a few things worth notice.
First off, this is beautiful country. People talk about Nebraska as “flyover country”, but driving it is breathtakingly gorgeous. The scenery changes slowly, starting out in the semi-big city urbanism of Omaha, morphing into endless corn or wheat fields on broad flat prairie which then becomes hillier and less even ranch land with huge herds of cattle as the ground begins to climb towards the mountains of Wyoming.
The relentless winds across the plains keep the trees from growing tall–I don’t think I saw a tree more than 30 feet high all day, and most were half that size. They only grow naturally near the rivers and lakes–but every homestead is surrounded by trees planted as a wind break and shade creator. Thus do people affect the ecology of an area.
Lee’s Legendary Marble Museum
As with yesterday, I passed many museums and points of interest I wish I had time to investigate. This is the one I most regret–Lee’s Legendary Marble Museum and Collectables. in York, Nebraska. It’s sort of a tribute to eccentricity. The bottom of their web page has a counter so you can see how many people have looked at it. The counter goes to 12 digits, so they can represent hits into the quadrillions. At the present, there have been 1661. Hope springs eternal in the mid-western breast.
The driving is easy. Nebraska has a speed limit of 75, Wyoming is posted at 80. My truck will go 76 and no more, but I had it right at the top almost every inch of the day. Outside of the towns, there are very few cars on the road, just trucks. The few cars I saw blew past me quickly, even the high speed limits are just a suggestion.
I know that this is the end of May, but it was snowing as I came through Cheyenne Wyoming today. Not hard, but snowing nonetheless. Rain had been falling off and on all day, but Cheyenne is at 6000 feet and the rain turned white.
Clear roads and high speeds meant I was making great time, so I drove 100 miles further than planned, and have stopped for the night in Rawlins, Wy. After checking into the Hampton Inn, I found a Thai restaurant and had a mediocre dinner of steak salad and pad thai chicken. Some salad was desperately needed after subsisting on fat and sugar all day with truck stop junk food.
Gail and I played two hideous tournaments on Bridge Base–i zigged when i should have zagged every time.
In the morning I have to check out the town library and see if there is anything to be learned about Gail’s father’s family–he was born here about 1909. Then on to Elko, and home on Friday.
Slow road to Omaha
Twelve and a half hours and 620 miles later, I’m in Omaha, safely ensconced in the Hampton Inn catching up on Game of Thrones.
The traffic stoppage in Indiana lasted 90 minutes this morning, and I never figured out what caused it. I knew I was in a construction zone, but never saw an actual construction. After an hour and a half of waiting, state troopers came driving the wrong way in the coned-off lane, blowing their horns to wake up the sleeping drivers and get the show on the road.
It was smooth sailing after that. Long, but smooth. Traffic moves along smartly here, and I didn’t see a traffic cop all day.
I saw something interesting at at rest stop:
Your basic 34 wheeler
I’ve never seen anything like this. A custom made trailer to haul one section of a wind turbine tower. The driver told me he made the trailer himself and it still cost $90,000. There is only 9″ of ground clearance at the front of the huge pipe, although he can raise it if need be.
The entire rig weighs 152,000 pounds, or about 50 regular cars. It goes into the wind well, but a stiff crosswind brings the fuel mileage below 1 mile per gallon. The driver does nothing else but deliver these turbine towers around the country, except California because his rig doesn’t pass our smog restrictions and he can’t drive in the state. You learn the most interesting things if you just talk to people.
I’m ready to take this trip again, on a much slower timetable. Yesterday I passed by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which has an exhibition of Dream Cars, the one-off concept cars the auto manufactures design to see what interests people. Today I passed the Iowa Museum of Aviation and the Danish Museum. I need to come back and see all of them, and who knows what else I’m missing.
Dinner at Qdoba, a semi-mexican chain near the hotel. After getting all set to order a burrito, I saw the enormous quesadilla somebody else was having and I had to try it.
Chicken quesadilla
The girl who made it asked if I wanted two sides, and I couldn’t imagine how I could have a one-sided tortilla, it was some kind of zen koan. Turns out she meant did I want sour cream and guacamole. Once again I was too hip for the room.
The meal was,let’s say, sufficient. Not really good, not bad. Difficult to eat with plastic utensils and it sticks to the paper it is served on. Qdoba is better than McDonalds, but that’s not saying much.
Omaha is much colder than Indy was, and it was starting to rain as I got here. Tomorrow will be another adventure.
Live from I74 in Indiana
Traffic isn’t just in the bay area. I am at a dead stop on the freeway for some reason that will be revealed. I hope.
After an excellent breakfast in the hotel, I hit the road about 9:30 this morning.
So far the trip is beautiful. The Indiana farmlands are mile after mile of gently rolling fields. The buildings are beautifully maintained and freshly painted on almost every farm. Freeways are wide with a large center divide but no guard rails or oleander bushes to separate the traffic.
The truck I am driving is comfortable with power steering, automatic transmission, air conditioning, a radio that plays largely Christian radio stations and a broken left side mirror. It rides well and has a governor so I cannot drive more than 75. That may be a good idea.
Google maps kept trying to get me to exit the freeway, which I ignored. Now I realize they may have been trying to reroute me around this roadwork. But if I didn’t stop, when would I dictate a blog post? Everything works out for the best.
I’m planning to drive as far as Omaha Nebraska today. This should fairly easily work out for a 4 day drive, stopping in Omaha, Laramie Wyoming, and Elko Nevada. I am looking forward to all of it, just as soon as this roadwork clears and we can start driving again.
I like it and I lump it
A lumper is a day laborer who loads and unloads trucks, typically a man with a strong back and weak mind. The work is hard but the pay is reasonable and you don’t have to worry about anything, just lift that barge and tote that bale. I did a fair amount of lumping in the daytime while I went to graduate school at night, but I thought I was long finished with that part of my career.
I was wrong.
Landing in Indianapolis this afternoon, Dave picked me up in big white Budget truck with a 16 foot box on the back. I thought we would just drop him off at this hotel to fly home in the morning and I could hit the road, clocking a couple of hundred miles before calling it a day.
Dave had other ideas–he was meeting a couple of guys who had some copper he wanted, and we had to get there, cut the deal, make some room in the back of the truck and load all the new goods before re-loading the items he had already purchased.
Copper? you ask. Me too. I thought maybe antique pots and pans, perhaps an old sink or maybe a bathtub. This is what they had:
All this stuff used to be a cathedral
Someone is demolishing a local cathedral, and this is all salvage roofing, siding, gutters and drain pipes. Dave wants it because it has a beautiful patina and the designers he sells to will re-purpose it into mirrors and decor, turning $4/lb scrap into thousands of dollars worth of high class home goods.
Chris the working man
,
Before we could get to the lifting and toting, the deal had to be made. The sellers were not exactly the most hot shot businessmen–one is a cop, the other is PC repairman, and they both like to talk more than they like to get to the point, so the process took far longer than it should have. By the time we were finished it was after 7, I was sweaty, dirty and tired and had no desire to start off on the open road.
We checked into the Crowne Plaza in downtown, a very nice hotel built right into the old Union Station. There are even a few rail cars still in the building, now converted into specialty hotel rooms.
Indianapolis is at the far western edge of the Eastern time zone, so the sun comes up late and goes down late. It was 9 pm when we walked out to dinner, and this was the spectacular sunset:
Sunset in Indy
Looking in the other direction
We had an excellent dinner, then walked around the area in the delightful 70º evening air. In the morning, I’ll head out, planning on getting to Omaha. Stay tuned.
Look at this crowd!
I’m changing planes in Phoenix. The number of people here is stunning. I think it is busier than Dallas.
Coming here first class was a treat. I inquired if there was the possibility of an upgrade for the next leg, to Indianapolis. I am number 15 on the list for an upgrade. There are 12 seats in first class. I am not hopeful.
Airports are always good for people watching. Here is my entry for the snappy dresser of the day, waiting for the same plane I am.
The next flight is already 30 minutes late. Travel is an adventure.
An Auspicious Beginning
I am off on an adventure. I get to fly to Indianapolis and drive a truck home for our friend Dave Allen, owner of Artefact Design in Sonoma.
As I was squeezing into my seat a few minutes ago, the cabin steward came up and told me to move from my cramped pew in steerage to seat 1A in the front of the plane. All those frequent flyer miles are paying off.
Some people would hate the idea of driving for 4 days. I am not one of those people. I love travel and always like to see new places. I haven’t taken a long road trip since Carl Oeser and I toured the country in 10 days in 1971.
We got home from Tacoma last night after midnight. We had been there to watch grand daughter Chloe graduate from college. I was back in the airport at 5:30 this morning. Life in the fast lane has a few drawbacks but who can complain about a new adventure and a surprise upgrade to first class?
Life is good.
One Happy Mother
Mother’s Day, and the dining is difficult. Restaurants are jammed to the walls with people who only go out to eat once a year and don’t know how to do it. Reservations are hard to get, service is overburdened and the experience is often dreary and miserable.
This year, we got lucky. Grand daughter Demitra Athena Marie Rockas (and how I love the name Demitra Athena Marie) found a table for us all at Picco, a first rate eatery in Larkspur, one of Michael Bauer’s Top 100 restaurants in the Bay Area.
Dinner started well when there was a valet available to park the car–Larkspur is small and parking is otherwise difficult.
Picco is two restaurants in one–a pizza parlor on one side, a fine dining establishment on the other. Both were jammed on the busiest day of the year. The 5 of us were crammed into a table for 4, with poor Brad sitting in the aisle where the waitstaff was constantly rushing.
That’s the bad news. The food is the good news. We started with a couple of appetizers.
Burrata, toast and frisee
If there is burrata, Kate and I will be fighting over it. Picco got extra points here because the toast was warm and soft, not the hard, brittle, tasteless roofing shingles I so often get.
Avocado Bruschetta
Gail could have had two orders of this and been happy for the night. More of that perfect toast, avocado sliced paper thin and topped with balsamic vinegar, with julienned strips of chorizo to add piquancy. It was fabulous, inventive and new.
There was one flaw:
This is not tea
I’m a simple man, with simple tastes. When I order iced tea, I want them to dunk a bag of Lipton into some hot water, cool it off and bring it to me. I don’t want ginger peach, I don’t want mango hibiscus, I want iced tea. This isn’t it.
Restaurants do this in a failed attempt to “add value” to every item. And to charge more–you can get $7 for a bottle of this junk, and you don’t have to refill it. They wouldn’t dream of serving some hoity-toity bottle of chi-chi fruity bug juice instead of coffee, why do they plague me with this miserable crap?
Back to the goodness. This is a kale salad:
Kale salad
Kale is this year’s ‘in’ veggie. All the cool people are eating it. Picco makes a salad with kale, carrots, cucumber, radish, hazelnuts, crispy shallots and black truffle pecorino. Even macho men like it.
Now comes the highlight. I like gnocchi, those little pillows of potato that are sort of like pasta and sort of not, but I’ve simply never had anything as wonderful as these:
The best gnocchi ever
Ordinarily, gnocchi are boiled, sauced and served. Picco totally changes the game by taking the boiled gnocchi and grilling them, then serving them with house made fennel sausage and black truffle butter. If you aren’t careful, they will stick some wild mushrooms on the plate, but of course I would never allow that sort of desecration of good food.
Grilling gives the gnocchi both flavor and texture missing from more common presentations, items that lift this dish to heavenly virtue. The sausage is incomparably good. Brad and I both ordered this, and we both simply raved about how good it is.
So good, in fact, that I told the waiter I wanted to compliment the chef. Two minutes later, we had a visitor:
Chef Jared Rogers
Chef Rogers apprenticed in his first kitchen at 15, graduated from the California Culinary Academy, and at 30 is a local star and the genius behind the first rate food at Picco.
Gail had the radiatore, Kate had the bucatini, Demitra Athena Marie enjoyed the salmon. We had dessert. We loved every single thing on the table, and cleaned our plates. But the gnocchi were the stars.
Service was excellent, even considering the dreadful day we had chosen to dine out. Picco is the only restaurant any of us had ever seen that offers a choice of ice–you can have one huge rock, regular cubes or crushed. Just another way to differentiate themselves from the crowd. The prices were what you would expect for a first rate white-tablecloth joint in Marin–not cheap, but not ghastly.
We have a couple of trips coming up, and Brad is already planning when we will all be back in town so we can go to Picco again and order more avocado bruschetta and gnocchi. It just won’t be Mother’s Day, and maybe they can do something about a decent glass of iced tea.
Nashville comes to San Francisco
Gail and I love the TV nighttime soap opera Nashville. Fun stories mixed with good music, it’s excellent entertainment. So when I saw that the cast of the show would be in concert, I had to get tickets.
Although I bought our entry online, I did something wrong or they did, and it was a hassle getting into the Warfield theater. Once in, we went up the stairs, waited in an interminable line for the bar and headed for our seats.
Dumb luck was with me: we ended up sitting dead center in the front row of the loge. Not only a perfect view but a ledge in front of us to hold our drinks and brace my camera.
The concert features 7 of the cast members singing. They are not in character, they are themselves sharing their music. Sam Palladio (Gunner) is from London, and speaks with his British accent then sings as though he were born in Nashville. Clare Bowen (Scarlett) is Australian and performs the same magic.
Chris Carmack (Will) is as hunky and gorgeous in person as on the screen. He sings by himself and in duet with his TV wife, Audrey Peeples (Layla). Then Audrey takes over the stage and belts out a few.
Sisters Lennon and Maisy Stella (Maddie and Daphne) are delightful. Lennon is 16 and growing into an adult, while Maisy is a cute 11. I appreciated that the show does not try to sexualize her or make he look more grown up than she is.
Clare Bowen comes out in a long dress, bare feet and a garland of flowers in her hair–I remember when there were thousands of girls around here who looked like that, but they didn’t sing like an angel.
Charles “Chip” Esten (Deacon) ties the show together, singing songs from the show and songs he has written himself. His song “He’s Not Me” was a major highlight of the evening.
They all get together, pretend to end the show and then come back for the now-obligatory “encore”. I’m pretty tired of this charade–sing your songs and end your show, encores are for genuinely great events, not every single performance everywhere. Like the standing ovation, the meaning of the encore has been diminished to nothingness. Ok, I’ll turn the curmudgeon off now.
We loved the show. Loved the singing and the singers. Had a wonderful time. Will go back if they come around next year, now that the show has been renewed for it’s fourth season. Wednesday nights at 10 on ABC. Don’t miss it.
The New Kid In Town
Dinner tonight at Vino, a tiny (24 seat) Italian restaurant in Lafayette, on Plaza Way near the old theater. I’ve seen it there, and heard about it, and now we’ve finally tried it.
I think we have a new favorite place for a delicious, healthy, moderately priced meal.
:Here’s the fun part–the new kid is 78 years old. Vino is owned by Castro Ascarrunz, a half-Italian, half-Basque maestro of the kitchen who has owned 16 different restaurants in 54 years since he moved to Lafayette. He owns the joint, he waits the tables, he sings, I think he plays the piano that’s taking up the space of another 4 seats.
Quirky is an understatement for this tiny festival of food. Here is the list of daily specials:
Tonight’s specials.
Castro is proud of how healthy his food is–no added fat, butter or commercial sauces. There is no sugar in the place. He sells wine, but no sodas or juices. He had to brew me a glass of iced tea, there is none already made. Good thing we keep some sweetener in Gail’s purse.
Our dinner started with the olives, dolma, white bean salad and pickled veggies Castro brought out before we even ordered, along with the warm fresh bread and a dish of olive oil. Castro is the only waiter, and at 78 he keeps moving smoothly and economically.
We shared the bruschetta, which was excellent, then I ordered the piquillo peppers, two sweet peppers filled with a mix of goat cheese, potatoes and white beans.
Gail chose the roasted snapper from the specials, and was completely delighted with the excellent preparation and presentation. The accompanying vegetables were so good we even finished up the string beans; she deemed the mashed spuds excellent.
I had the simplest of all dishes–pasta with olive oil and garlic. Getting this dish right is harder than it seems, since the balance must be perfect. Fortunately, this dish was right on the money, and I was a happy camper.
Vino is only open 4 days a week, Wednesday thru Saturday, 5 to 8:30. The weekend nights are busy and you really want to have a reservation.
This is a great little spot. The food is good, the owner is unique, the price is right. Give it a try.
Totally Unauthorized 