Tag Archives: what i saw in california

Wednesday 14th February 2024 – IT LOOKS AS IF …

… I’ll be back in Paris at the end of April, despite what I said yesterday.

There’s a heart test already arranged for 24th April, so the doctor said “we’ll make it a stay for a few days and run a pile of tests on you”. Ahh well, can’t be helped, I suppose

All that way there and back and I was only with him for about 15 minutes, and even then he spent much of the time being interrupted on the phone by other people.

At least, it’s good practice, I suppose. Especially for me having to organise myself ready to travel.

Having had a good wash yesterday I still had plenty of things to do before I could go to bed so it was rather late when I finally crawled under my covers.

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed to switch it off and then to take my blood pressure. A mere 16.6/9.5 this morning – quite a change from the 18:8/10.9 of the night before.

Once I was up I dressed and then went to make my sandwiches for lunch – nice thick slices of home-made bread that had been stored in the freezer and left to defrost overnight, and filled with cheese, hummus, lettuce and tomato with garlic mayonnaise.

The taxi driver was someone who had run me round to the Centre de Re-education once so I knew her. We had a very interesting chat during which I learnt that she is on good terms with one of the guys off the radio. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" … – ed, the World is becoming far too small for my liking.

She’s not been taxi-driving long so she didn’t know the way very well, but I helped as well as I could and we arrived at the reception desk bang on time. And then I was called for the interview.

When I’d been there last time his office was right at the far end of the corridor and round the corner so I went to sit there. Today, his office was right next to the reception desk so he had to come to find me.
"Walk this way" he said, beckoning me in his direction
"If I could walk that way" I thought to myself "I wouldn’t be in this flaming hospital having this blasted treatment in the first place"

He went through all of my results with me, and everything seems to be an improvement (that’s not how it looks to me, but never mind) so he’s pleased with the progress of his cocktail of medication.

He thinks that an in-depth examination will be called for after a few weeks, and so he reckons transforming this day visit into a hospitalisation for several days.

One of the things that he suggested was another lumbar puncture – and I went cold at the thought.

As for all of my detailed and comprehensive notes about my blood pressure, he scarcely gave them a glance. So much for those then, I suppose.

Finding a nice quiet corner I ate my butties, went for a visit down the corridor and then found my taxi driver, and we set off for home.

Shame as it is to say it, I slept almost all of the way back and I’ve no idea why. But both the outward and the return journey were the most trouble-free that I have ever had. The traffic was slow-moving on the Prif but we weren’t ever held up, either on the outward or the return journey.

My cleaner was waiting for me when we arrived. She’d volunteered to help me up the stairs but strangely, I didn’t need it today. I could climb up all 25 steps without any help. So maybe there really IS progress after all. I must admit that last night, for the first time since my bad fall, I’d felt well enough to restart my musculation process with my elastic strap around my legs.

Back in the apartment I made myself a nice mug of boiling hot chocolate and then came in here to transcribe the dictaphone notes. And there were tons of them. No wonder I was tired. I’d travelled miles during the night.

We were managing a rock group last night. The drummer in this group was only very young but was a prodigy, extremely good at his job so one of the other teams in the league decided that they wanted to sign him. I said that he’d only go if they made a ridiculous offer and we had another drummer to replace him. My team in the transfer window arranged a few more transfers in, a defender, an attacker and one player whom I didn’t know. I didn’t recognise his name so I wondered where he came from and what he did, thinking that he might be a replacement drummer to replace the one whom we were about to lose but it wasn’t. In fact he was another outfield player. So I explained to the club that it doesn’t matter how much money they offer, they can offer as much as you like but if he’s still under contract with us and we don’t have a replacement then he can’t leave for another club.

And that really does make a lot of sense, doesn’t it?

Mr Teale, our geography teacher at school was telling our class about the Midwest USA. He was talking briefly about the Oregon and California Trail that they took. So when he finished I told him about the time that I’d visited there and seen it. I had my photos that I showed everyone. I mentioned the big baskets at the top of the hill where the descent into California starts, where back in the past they went through and found all old bits of wood lying along the trail. They picked them up and stuck them in this basket. It’s extremely likely that much of the wood in there comes from these crashed Pioneer wagons that failed to make the descent correctly and came to grief somewhere along there on towards the end of the trail on this downhill slope

Regular readers of this rubbish in another format will recall that we have spent a considerable time on the Oregon and California Trail. in 2002 I went to see the famous trail ruts and Register Cliff IN GUERNSEY, WYOMINGand then went back there IN 2019, and one day I’ll finish editing the … gulp! … 6,000 photos from my famous trip

Then I put some knock-out drops into the air when our Geography teacher and one of the other teachers were talking about the summit of the Oregon and California Trail. I’d been there of course and knew all about it but it seemed appropriate for the class to have a break and go to sleep so that the rest of the room could occupy ourselves for a bit

As for the summit of the trail, it’s not easy to know what is meant by it. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have been TO SOUTH PASS which is the watershed, where rivers to the east drain either into the Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico, and to the west where rivers drain into the Pacific, so I suppose that that might be described as the summit.

However you’ll never lose a wagon down the descent there. Edwin Bryant, in his book WHAT I SAW IN CALIFORNIA described the slope either side as being so gentle that you’d hardly know that it was there, and that was my opinion too.

I also started later on talking about my Will, where I was going to leave money and to who. Actually finding it is a bit of a struggle but it was above the treeline on the route that these Oregon Trails took. But I found it sure enough and opened it to read. It’s different from the one that I have at home. My property will just be left to my heritee whoever that will be, with no mention of sorting it out amongst the people who ought to benefit so I hope that other people will understand, if they find this document, exactly what I want to do. I’ll have other ideas but I probably won’t get them down

That’s something that I really need to do – to write my will. It will be pretty straightforward and simple, and won’t take long. But that won’t be the end of the story because there will be a lot of work to be done in its respect and also in the respect of carrying out my wishes.

Apart from a few bits and pieces, it’s all going to be dropped into the lap of one person, and that person will certainly earn their share of the inheritance at the end of it. Mind you, they’ll deserve it

So who will that person be? The answer is that even though there’s a lot of ground between us, there’s really only one person honest and reliable enough in my entourage upon whom I could in theory rely.

And if that person doesn’t carry out my wishes? Well, there’s not much I can do about it, except to come back and haunt them, rather like the two gay ghosts who really gave each other the willies one night.

But that reminds me of Liz (not “this Liz” but “that Liz” who died in 2009) going in for a serious operation, and writing down a list of names
"Is this the list of people you want us to tell how it went, mum?" asked Kathryn?
"No, dear" replied Liz. "This is the list of people whom I’m going to come back and haunt if it all goes wrong".

Liz would have known about all of this, though. Having served on many University committees she’s had plenty of experience of holding hands sitting around a table and trying to contact the living.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed – as I said … "when?" – ed … but didn’t record, the people making this programme … "which programme?" – ed … presented her … "who?" – ed … with a teddy bear afterwards as a kind of memento of a trip that she’d made. Of course no-one from that voyage is with us these days except of course the teddy bear. That’s the only survivor of that first 1840s voyage across from East to West

That looks like an awful mess, doesn’t it? It looks as if it’s related to the Oregon and California Trail, but what’s the rest of it all about?

And then I was back at my little house in Winsford as well last night, wondering how things would have been if I’d actually stayed in Winsford and not taken the opportunity to move to Gainsborough Road in Crewe.

That’s a really good question. I quite liked my little house in Winsford but for some reason I felt really uncomfortable there.

Nevertheless, even though it was a Barratt House, I won’t ever hear a bad word against them as they helped me onto the property ladder. I went in three years from living in a van to owning (with a mortgage of course) a brand-new semi-detached house and I wouldn’t ever have done it without them.

While I was writing out my dictaphone notes I fell asleep again. It’s one of those days, I reckon, so in the end I went and made my leftover curry. It was delicious and the naan bread was cooked to absolute perfection. I’d eat all of this again and again if I could.

But now I’m off to bed. And I go, as Joachim du Bellay said, "heureux qui comme Ulysse a fait un beau voyage" “happy is he who like Ulysses has had a good journey”.

What I’ll be hoping is for more pleasant dreams like I used to have when TOTGA, Castor and Zero used to come to see me. It’s all very well giving me medication that has a side-effect of blanking them all out but as Tennessee Williams said, "If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels"

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Tuesday 14th November 2023 – WHEN THE ALARM …

… went off this morning, I was round at Liz and Terry’s. Two visitors came round, a young couple. The woman was a teacher at the same school as Liz. There was a big banquet that had been prepared but there wasn’t very much that I could eat so I had to pick my food carefully and then I ended up eating some feta cheese by accident. While I was sorting out my food I was listening to this couple recounting to Liz and Terry a tale of woe about how some kind of dirty deed had been performed against them. As I listened, a light went on in my head because I recalled from a previous conversation that I’d had with someone else that I’d heard this story before, told by a different person and from a different point of view which, nevertheless, didn’t put it in any better light.

So I made it to my feet and went off in search of my medication. I’m starting to run out of some of that now so I’ll have to contact the doctor and see what he can do about it. I’m going to have to be much more reliant on him these days if I’m not going to Leuven again.

Back in here the first thing that I did was to transcribe the dictaphone notes. And there were quite a few this morning. I’d had a busy night. I’d done some work on the laptop and gone to put the SSD back into it but it wouldn’t work. It took an absolute age to load up. I replaced the SSD with another one and then another one but each time it took really so long for the opening programme to load up onto the laptop – the homepage. I couldn’t understand why. Usually a clean install works quite well, the original hard drive was unaltered but the two other ones were new. There I was, stranded again with all of this going on again without a laptop for the moment.

And then a group of us had tickets for the European Cup Final. We arrived at the stadium quite early and found it fairly empty. We settled down on a couple of seats right at the very edge of where the stage was. There was a lot of discussion about football clubs – who was qualifying and where? Who did you need to support to get someone else, a long complicated discussion. I was busy looking at the speakers on the corner where we were sitting thinking that we’ll be deafened by these. They were in fact old PA speakers from The Who from one of their tours a few years ago. I couldn’t understand why they would be there. Slowly the hall was filling up as people were coming in and people were going. I was beginning to wonder whether we ought to make for a better vantage point than this because the music out of the PA speakers just by where we were sitting would be absolutely deafening.

There was something happening in my life about being divorced or separated etc. Catherine came to see me because we’d had a discussion the previous day or two ago about some kind of appointment. The Social Services had intervened early on that particular morning because the situation that I’d described to them had changed. Catherine asked me for the official date of my divorce or separation. There was no such thing as far as I’m aware. We agreed in the end that once the Social Services had found out the change in circumstances, should we say “5 minutes before that?”. It made no difference at all to me so I agreed. Then she suggested taking me off for an appointment with various different Social Services and Welfare people. She wanted to know about my personal papers, whether I had all of them. I replied “as far as I’m aware”. She asked “there’s no sign that your cupboards and drawers have been forced?”. I replied “no. They aren’t even locked”. She was astonished by that. I said “we aren’t that kind of people. We didn’t really have secrets”. She found a lot of it extremely difficult to believe. I don’t think that I was able to convince her of the truth.

With all this talk of divorce the fan must have been working quite hard. Just as we were talking about Labrador, the “Big Land” the head of the fan flew off and hit a dog that was standing close by us.

At some point I remember being in a motorbike race when I lost control of my bike on a band and skidded across the track and collided with the corner of a grandstand making some people sitting in there jump for safety

And then I’d found a mouse when I was round at someone’s house, a yellow golden colour, not exactly a mouse but something of that description. We managed to catch it and keep it in a jar. It was extremely friendly. We let it out at night when we went to bed. Next morning when we awoke it was still here. We caught it again. I decided that I’d keep it (as if that is ever likely to happen) and take it home. I went to the householder and asked if there was any food that the mouse could eat. They thought that there might be some bread or something but in the end when we looked through the fridge we came across half a cold cheese and mushroom omelette. We have it some of that. The person who fed it gave it an enormous amount, probably 3 times bigger than the mouse itself. I thought that if the mouse was starving you don’t want to give it that much food. It could quite easily kill itself. We put the mouse down to attack away at this cheese omelette.

And that’s pretty similar to the story of the Donner Party. In 1846 they set out on the Oregon and California Trail – a trail that I’ve been following bit by bit on foot over the last 20-odd years – from the Mississippi to emigrate to California, which was in those days part of Mexico.

Edwin Bryant, who travelled part of the way with them, wrote in his autobiography “What I Saw In California” that he was so dismayed with the slow progress that the Donners were making that he and his friends abandoned them and pushed on alone, and I had a lovely lunch in 2019 at one of their lunch stops among the same cottonwood tress where they ate their lunch along the Sweetwater River in Wyoming back in 1846.

Anyway, Bryant was not wrong. The Donner Party arrived in the Rockies so late that they were snowed in and ended up eating each other to stay alive.

But worse was to come. One of the few survivors so gorged himself on food brought by John Sutter’s relief expedition the following year that he dropped down dead.

And it’s a shame that I never made it as far as what became subsequently known as Donner Pass. I made it as far as South Pass – the watershed between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans – and a couple of miles further on, but that will have to be that.

Meanwhile back at the ranc … errr … apartment I went and had a good strip-down wash (I’m still wary about getting into the shower) and fighting off wave after wave of sleep I prepared for my Welsh lesson.

Today, I didn’t stay until the end. My first session at the Centre de Re-education was at 13:30 today so I had to finish early and prepare myself to leave. You really have no idea how long it takes me to put on my shoes.

At the Centre de Re-education I had a very long chat with someone who began the conversation with “how are things up on your rock?” and I don’t have a clue at all who he is.

But he clearly knows me, and that’s worrying.

There were just two sessions today, not three as I had been told last week. Someone had a chat with me about making some kind of plan to build up my muscle tissue, such as still remains, and then Severine pulled and tugged me about for half an hour.

It was later than I hoped by the time that I returned home, where I bumped into my cleaner who had run to LeClerc this morning and had taken a list of mine with her.

And thanks to her, we don’t just have the European Vegan Burger Mountain and European Potato Mountain but also now the European Vegan Cheese Mountain. She has done me proud.

But checking the spuds today, I shall have to do something with them. I suppose that there’s no reason why I can’t freeze them. When I’m freezing carrots, I wash, scrub, dice and blanch them and that works well enough for them, and also for the broccoli and sprouts that I have frozen from fresh.

And so I reckon that doing the same with potatoes will work well enough. If it doesn’t, I suppose that one of you lot will tell me about it

For the rest of the day I’ve been recovering from my exertions and doing a little radio work. As well as checking over the radio programme that will be broadcast this weekend.

It’s always a good idea to listen to the programme before it’s included in the stream to broadcast. I won’t ever forget when Liz and I were running Radio Anglais back in the good old days when I’d prepared a programme about “Yes” bassist Chris Squire, only for him to drop dead the morning of the broadcast.

That must have been the quickest re-write in history.

Tea was a taco roll with some of the leftover stuffing, with rice and veg. And while regular readers of this rubbish will recall the monotonous nature of my meals, they are in fact quite tasty.

So off to bed now, and tomorrow I’ll push on and finish the notes for the radio programme if I can. And then off to the Centre de Re-education. Coming back up the stairs was a little easier than it has been and I wonder if really is Severine who is doing her stuff that is working.

It’s all very well about healing the sick, but I wonder if there’s a massage that will raise the dead.

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Saturday 10th August 2019 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about the latitude and longitude co-ordinates! And, much to my surprise, so was the American Geographic Survey of (1869?). We both came up with the correct answer TO THE FOOT and that was impressive.

Another mystery that I solved this morning too is why there’s a difference of several dozen feet in the altitude for South Pass commonly cited by those who have access to the trail documents and the US Government Survey and those who rely on modern measuring techniques.

And that is that they are measuring the altitude of the Pass at different places. Where the modern highway crosses South Pass (and where the modern figure is given) is about 2 miles away from where the emigrants crossed over the Pass.

Bryant noted “The ascent to the Pass is so gradual that … we should not have been conscious that we had ascended to and were standing upon the summit of the Rocky Mountains” and he was right too, because I walked over the crest (such as it is) without noticing it at first.

So in my expensive Palace last night I had a reasonable night’s sleep with a couple of interruptions, including an attack of cramp in the left calf this time.

Breakfast was provided so I stuffed myself with free food and then collected my frozen water bottles and packed everything away.

Much to my own surprise more than anyone else’s I was on the road by 08:30 and that’s not something that happens every day.

The Lady Who Lives In the Satnav directed me to almost where I had ended up yesterday but about 200 or so metres from the modern summit she directed me off down a track to the left.

After about 2 miles down this track she announced “make your way 300 metres to your right” but I couldn’t see anything at all that would give me a clue so I drove on to a fence about 300 metres further on where I parked.

I walked back to where she had indicated, but couldn’t see anything at first. But closer inspection revealed that the sides of the track had been grubbed out and drainage ditches dug.

And so I crossed the ditches and there we were. Unmistakable signs of wagon tracks in each direction. Right by where I had expected them to be.

I walked several hundred yards along the tracks in each direction and they were certainly heading to and from where they were supposed to be, in the footsteps of emigrants from 170 years ago.

And the provenance of these tracks can be authenticated to a certain degree by the fact that they continue in a straightish line right across where the road and the drainage ditches are, broken only by these more modern constructions.

I was tempted to walk on to Pacific Springs, just a couple of miles further on. Its waters are known to be cool and invigorating, and I could have done with some of that, but I’m not as young as I used to be and I didn’t have much time.

Back on the road and back to Lander where I fuelled up the Kia and bought myself one of those ice-slush drinks. The day wasn’t hot as yet but I had a feeling that it might be.

The road north from Lander has its moments. Some of it is quite sterile but other parts are magnificent and I don’t have the words to describe the Wind River Pass. It’s one of the most phenomenal places that I have ever visited.

This afternoon we had a tremendous thunderstorm – just like the arrival of the Demon King – and it accompanied me for miles well beyond Billings. But round about 40 miles north I started to flag and a motel loomed up in the little town of Roundup.

Much more like my kind of motel this. Old, tired and cheap. But then again so am I. As for “value for money” which is always the most important consideration for me, it’s spot-on and just what I wanted.

The air conditioner blows right past the clothes rail so I had a shower and washed my clothes. They’ll dry pretty quickly now.

Lentil soup with pasta for tea and now I’m off to bed. It’s been a long tiring day and I’ve done 600 kms, all but about 20 of those being done on normal roads.

Tomorrow should see me back in Canada but I still have a long way to go.

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Friday 9th August 2019 – REMIND ME NEVER …

… to stop in a motel anywhere near Jellystone Park in August when the kids are off school and there’s a motorcycle rally going on. I only wanted a room for the night, not to buy the motel!

Last night was another good night, to such an extent that I almost missed the third alarm. And the air-conditioning blowing right by the clothes rail had dried the clothes beautifully.

The breakfast wasn’t much to write home about – at least, for me it wasn’t because there was very little that I could eat.

Nevertheless I was soon packed and on the road, where I drove non-stop all the way to Independence Rock. Well, not quite, because I did take a handful of photos on the way of things not to be missed.

Independence Rock was rather a disappointment though. Reading back over the old trails diaries, the rock was covered in names of the emigrants who had passed by.

But the weather has taken its toll of them and most of them have shingled off. Even the most famous inscription of all, carved in 1905 by an early pioneer retracing his steps, has worn down to a shadow of its former self.

It was called Independence Rock by a party that passed by here on the 4th of July (1831?) and it was the aim of every emigrant to be here by that day in order to be sure of hitting the passes through into California before the snows.

Edwin Bryant, whose memoirs I have quoted on a regular basis, arrived here on 8th July. He had complained bitterly about the leisurely way in which the Donner Party (with whom he was travelling) was advancing, and at Fort Laramie had traded in his waggon for a string of pack mules and pushed on with more dynamic company to make up the time.

The Donners and their party continued on their leisurely route, did not arrive until 17th July, far too late, and of course they were marooned in the snow at the end of OCtober at Truckee Lake, where they ate each other over the course of the winter.

Just down the road is the “Devil’s Gate”, a cleft in the rock through which flows the Sweetwater River. I’ve seen plenty of drawings of this and I do have to say that it resembles so much in real life every drawing that I have seen.

Being rather low on fuel I put some more in at Muddy Gap. And I wish that I had filled up in Casper as fuel is $1:00 per gallon dearer than anywhere else. Admittedly it’s a very isolated and lonely spot but there’s still no excuse for any of that.

Pushing on west I eventually arrive at South Pass and I can see a few traces of what might be waggon tracks in the vicinity.

On the way back I take a little detour. First to the ghost town of South Pass City, a former gold-mining town now long-abandoned, and the rather peculiar town of Atlantic City, well-lost in the mountains and looking wilder than any other town in the Wild West ever did.

Back down to the nearest town, Lander, where I find the last room in the place. And I’m not surprised that it was free either. But needs must when the devil drives.

But I’m going to have to go back to South Pass tomorrow morning. After much binding in the marsh, I have finally enabled my new sat-nav to take the geographical co-ordinates of any location that I need, and I find that I’m about 2 miles out of my calculations as to where the Oregon and California Trail crossed the pass.

There’s a dirt road in the vicinity that seems to be accessible and it’s a shame to be so near and yet so far.

So I had better have an early night. It’s an early start in the morning.

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