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O Canada

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Floating Post Office on Vancouver Island

It was 2004. I was on an old packet boat called the Lady Rose that went back and forth on the Alberni Inlet on Vancouver Island between Port Alberni and Bamfield. It was a beautiful day, and I was surrounded by a congenial group of Canadians.

The Lady Rose has since been decommissioned, but my memories of that trip will last a lifetime. The next day, I took another ship to Ucluelet, from which I took a bus to Tofino, where I stayed for several days.

I would love to spend some more time in British Columbia. Andrew Marvell had it right: “Had we but world enough and time ….”

There is something about Canada that Martine and I love—from Nova Scotia and Quebec to Alberta and B.C. Martine loves practicing her French (she was born in Paris) in Quebec; and she loves the fact that Canadian food is generally non-threatening. I know that she would accompany me to Canada in a heartbeat, whereas Latin America is more problematic.

I know our current President (I forget his name) has a grudge against Canada, but that’s his problem.

Plotting a Getaway

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Isla Mujeres Seen from the Air

The island is a half hour boat ride from Cancun’s Puerto Juarez. It is approximately 4.3 miles (7 km) long and on an average of 0.4 miles (650 meters) wide. In the above photo, you are viewing the eastern tip of the island, known as Punta Sur. The main town and the best swimming beaches are at the far end.

I am in the process of trying to convince Martine to come with me for a week in Isla Mujeres. It would be a low stress visit with lots of great seafood and, at Playa Norte, a beach that has a sand bottom, no waves, no rip tides, no rocks, no seaweed, and plenty of clear, utterly transparent water of the right temperature.

Martine does not like traveling to Mexico (she’s been to Yucatán once and Cabo San Lucas once). I am hoping I can lure her with pictures of a no-fuss, no-muss destination with great seafood, swimming, and shopping. And virtually no automobiles, except for taxis.

Shopping on Isla Mujeres

Although Isla Mujeres is famous for diving and snorkeling, I have no intention to do either. I have never dived or snorkeled before, and I don’t intend to start at age 80.

I have been watching YouTube videos submitted by Internet Influencers. They have been useful for showing what the place looks like, and how young influencers like to get sloshed when they’re away from home.

Wish me luck with Martine.

The La Brea Tar Pits

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The Lake Pit, Largest of the La Brea Tar Pits

It’s one of those redundant names: brea in Spanish means tar, so the La Brea Tar Pits are literally the Tar Tar pits. (Similarly, Torpenhow Hill in Britain means Hillhillhill Hill.)

Martine and I haven’t visited the tar pits for almost a decade, so we drove down to Hancock Park and took a good look at what the area looked like ten thousand plus years ago. Based on the skeletons that have been fished out of the pits, there were giant sloths, mammoths, lions, camels, sabertooth tigers, and many, many dire wolves.

Skeleton of Columbian Mammoth

The archeological record shows that there were humans living in the area during the Ice Age. It couldn’t have been much fun for them to contend with their primitive weapons against so many gigantic mammals.

Visiting the pits, I am reminded of a famous line in Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness, when Marlowe points to the shore of the Thames and says: “And this also,” said Marlow suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth.”

The La Brea Tar Pits Museum is a fascinating place to visit. In addition to all the skeletons of giant mammals who perished by drowning in the pits, there is a lab which allows you to watch volunteers cleaning bones recently pulled from the pits. (There are a number of them on the grounds.)

Martine got into the spirit of the occasion by donning a dire wolf headdress:

Martine with Wolfish Smile

Sick Again

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Twice in the last eight days, I have come down with a combined attack of nausea and diarrhea complicated by a lack of adrenaline to fight them. Both times, I wound up lying on my back in bed while my intestines attempted to turn my body into a Niagara of something browner and more disgusting than Lake Ontario.

I felt almost too weak to make the occasional dash to the bathroom, and for a while, I had the chills.

There was no fever, however, and there was a very clear solution. I took 60 mg of Hydrocortisone and waited several hours for it all to go away. By 4 PM, I was up and about and even able to eat some crackers and plums.

The good thing about my lack of a pituitary gland in these situations is that the solution is increased Hydrocortisone or Prednisone. The illness departs in a few hours and leaves no trace behind.

Except, one of these days I will be alone and too sick to take the steroids, and I will slowly, peacefully, glide out of this life. It’s not a bad death as deaths go, but it is just as final as any other.

Sorry I had to leave you with this image, but it is an aspect of my life that I cannot ignore. Thanks to Martine’s kind nursing, I’m still kicking.

El Segundo Car Show

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Purple 1950 Mercury

Martine and I used to frequent the Automobile Driving Museum in El Segundo, but were dismayed to find that it had closed its doors earlier this year. Luckily, the City of El Segundo puts on its own car show once a year and closes down its main commercial streets to make room.

Flyer for El Segundo Car Show

Unlike me, Martine is an aficionado of classical American cars, particularly of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. She had a number of conversations with the car owners, two of whom came up to me afterwards and spoke highly of her grasp of the subject. In all, we spent three and a half hours looking at hundreds of cars, most of which were models about which my little girl knew her stuff.

Martine Admiring Soapbox Derby Racer

At the show, we learned of several other upcoming car shows, including one at the Police Academy in Elysian Park sponsored by the LAPD. It looks like we’ll be going to that one, too.

Scrawny Squirrels

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Martine Trying to Feed a Squirrel

Sunday was a typical hot-and-cold day with a heavy marine layer and forecasts of rain in the eastern mountains and deserts. In other words, it was Mexican Monsoon season. Rather than break into a sweat in our apartment, I proposed we spend some hours at Chace Park in the Marina, maybe picking up a picnic lunch at the supermarket on the way.

I grabbed a book (George Mackay Brown’s Rockpools and Daffodils) and headed out with Martine to the Marina. She picked up a ready-made chicken sandwich at Ralph’s and saved bits of the crust to feed to the local squirrels and crows.

The park has a large number of scrawny squirrels who, I think, feed mostly on the leavings of picnickers. It was funny to see her approach the squirrels and try to convince them that they should take advantage of the crust she was offering them. Occasionally they did; but then, they decided to give it a pass. Martine turned away disgusted. But it was not in vain: The crows landed and grabbed the crumbs refused by the squirrels.

There was a pleasant breeze at Chace Park, and I enjoyed taking a walk that took in the statue of the helmsman at the tip of the peninsula in which the park is situated.

Statue of the Helmsman at Chace Park

The sun didn’t come out, but in sunny California that is no tragedy. We got fed, the crows and squirrels got fed, and I read a goodly chunk of George Mackay Brown, which is always a good thing.

Two Auto Museums Bite the Dust

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Martine Sitting in a Classic Corvette

I was dismayed to find that two superb auto museums closed down in 2024. In both cases, the museums grew out of personal car collections. When the museum founders passed on to that garage in the sky, both museums started to run into hard times.

The first was the Mullin Automotive Museum in Oxnard with its Bugattis and Art Deco paintings and furniture which closed in February 2024.

Hitting closer to home was the closure in October of the Zimmerman Automobile Driving Museum in El Segundo. There was a time when we visited the museum every few weeks. Martine loved it because they concentrated on American cars and because they allowed visitors to sit behind the wheel. She was particularly fond of a classic Corvette illustrated above.

There is an excellent article in Hemmings.Com about the Zimmerman Museum’s frantic attempts to raise cash after Stanley Zimmerman died in 2020. The article contains some excellent photos of the museum’s holdings.

Museums based on private collections have a high mortality rate. They are like restaurants, which, especially after the Covid-19 lockdown, are dropping like flies.

An Upcoming Road Trip?

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Saguaro Cacti Near Tucson

Martine has generally not been interested in travel. Lately, however, she mentioned the possibility of two Southwest road trips: One up U.S. 395 and other to Tucson, Arizona. Years ago, Martine had fond memories of a visit to an aunt who lived in Tucson.

I, myself, have never been to Tucson or even Phoenix. My knowledge of Arizona is mostly the area north of I-40 along the Kingman-Williams-Flagstaff-Winslow axis.

Today, I took my car in for its 39,000-mile service so that if we went to Tucson in March or early April, I would not be forced to make any last-minute decisions. Since I am also due to visit my brother in Palm Desert in two weeks, I will try to talk Martine into coming with me. It seems that the Coachella Valley is on the AAA preferred route to Tucson, and it would be killing two birds with one stone.

I will write more about the upcoming trip after I do a bit more research.

Christmas Cheer

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Christmas Display at the Grier Musser Museum

This afternoon, Martine and I visited our friends Rey and Susan Tejada at the Grier Musser Museum near downtown L.A. The Victorian house is being dwarfed by a four-story apartment building under construction just north of them, but the Spirit of Christmas is very much evident in the holiday-related antiques on display.

I forgot to bring my camera along, so the picture above is from our 2019 visit at Christmas time.

As Christmas Day gets closer, I have pretty much surrendered to the good feelings that supposedly prevail at this time. Martine is listening to the Classic Christmas Music channel on Music Choice, and I no longer grit my teeth—unless they decide to play “The Little Drummer Boy,” in which case I feel it incumbent on me to leave the room. Pah-RUP-pup-PUM.

I just want to make Martine happy this time of year. On Monday, I will cook up one of her favorite dishes, a beef stew from a recipe in the New York Times. And we already have a couple of bottles of her favorite wine, Egri Bikavér (Bull’s Blood of Eger) from Hungary.

If Martine is happy, I will be happy.

Halloween vs Christmas

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Display at the Grier Musser Museum

At first, Martine and I liked visiting the Grier Musser Museum because of the of the interesting holiday related displays. We still like the displays, but in the meantime, we have become friends with the owners, Rey and Susan Tejada. Re-visiting the museum and chatting with the Tejadas has become part of the fun surrounding holidays.

Speaking of holidays, it is becoming ever clearer to me that celebrating Halloween is becoming more of a thing, and that celebrating Christmas is becoming less of a thing. Perhaps because it is so associated with guilt trips: so many things that have to be done, some many unrealized goals that remain unrealized, so much expenditure of cash and effort.

Halloween, on the other hand, is cheaper and more fun. And it is not tinged with guilt. It involves pretending that you’re a ghastly monster (no difficulty for most people), attending fun events, and eating a ton of candy.

So even if we don’t get any trick-or-treaters this year (they don’t like climbing stairs), Martine and I feel good about Halloween. Martine got her annual pumpkin pie from Marie Callender’s, we stockpiled candy in case some trick-or-treaters do ascend the stairs, and I’ve read some good scary books this month.

Of course, coming up is my least favorite holiday. I really dislike Thanksgiving. And I’m not overly fond of the traditional food items associated with it.