Reawakening the past

It seemed like the right time to close the chapter of my life in Bakersfield. It is time to give up the self-storage unit after all these years.

Everything has a place to go now: the furniture have a new home, the clothes go to Goodwill, and I will bring home what will always be a part of me. The rest can be junked.

Everything was as I left them - in cartons and suitcases- when I fled the town. Now, two inches of desert sand covered all flat surfaces. I could just about hear a whisper of reproach for abandonment carried on the cool breeze of this quiet winter morning.

I started to sort out the inventory. By the third day, I knew I underestimated what has been kept in storage all this time.

These are not just things. These are everything of my life up to when I left Bakersfield. And it was a full life, complete with good and bad times.

There were the pictures: of friends, of my number one and number two dogs, of a much younger me with my sports car, my home, my garden that I had lovingly tended. The crochet afghan throw made by a very special woman. The love letters. The certificates of commendation for civic work done for the local government. So many memories, long suppressed and almost forgotten, stared me in the face, daring me to damn them to oblivion.

I did the only thing I could do. I cleared what I could in the short few days I gave myself in Bakersfield. The rest will stay until my next visit. I know I will be back. Again and again. This place too, was home, for a big part of my life.

Now that the past has been reawakened, it will join me in the present.

Eating orgy

One of the great adventures in travel is to eat at places that one has heard about, or read rave reviews, or seen on food and travel channels.

We did our research on New York City and was looking forward to a marathon of eating orgy such as we have never experienced before.

Unfortunately, we never made any of them because of uncooperative weather. We even braved the pelting snow one night to get to this quirky restaurant only to find its doors tightly shut against the relentless weather.

But still we ate well. Too well in fact. Because the fallback was to duck into any diner that was conveniently close by.

I got reacquainted with the comfort food of Middle America - the burger, the reuben sandwich, the patty melt. The man happily tucked into steaks and barbeque babyback ribs. Always accompanied with a generous side of fries. And when we had enough of the oh-so-good greasy stuff at the greasy spoons, we did the Asian restaurants for Chinese dim sum, Korean BBQ, Vietnamese pho, Indian tandoori, Middle-Eastern shawarma.

And of course, the week in Bakersfield, the friends treated us to the best of all dining experience - home cooked fare.

We had our eating orgy after all in the good old USA...

The Cowboy Store in Microsoft Country

Redmond, Washington. Home to Microsoft Corporation which employs 39,000 of the small city's population of 50,000.

It is nestled between the Cascade mountain range to the east and Puget Sound to the west. It boasts 34 parks and more than 25 miles of trails and is known as the Bicycle Capital of the Pacific North West.

So the last thing I expect to find in this quiet, hilly, wooded enclave of smart business and green ecological haven is a Country and Western store. Walk through its doors, and one is transported to a whole other world, a whole different time.

I spent an afternoon poking around the shop, totally rapt in the array of cowboy necessities and accessories while songs lamenting unrequited love and cheating hearts played.

Out in the west we wear our hats
for a whole lot of different reasons
Some for work, and some for show
but mostly we follow the seasons

Rusty Calhoun

New York New York

There is much to do and more to see in New York City. And we would have loved to do and see them all in the city that never sleeps.

Unfortunately, we were in the right place at the wrong time. The snow blizzard made every attempt to get anywhere too daunting an expedition.

We were parked in midtown Manhattan. We restricted ourselves to places that were either within walking or short cabbing distance.

And happily for us, it was still plenty to take in:

Main picture above: Times Square
Pictures starting from top left:
1. Broadway 2.somewhere in Koreatown 3.Chinatown @ Canal 4.a street fruit stall in Chinatown 5.Macy's on Broadway 6.another view of Times Square.

Main picture above: Central park at dusk.
Pictures starting from top right:
1. Lincoln Center 2.yours truly post performance Rogers and Hammerstein South Pacific 3.street hot dog stand 4.soul brothers acapella 5.Metropolitan Museum of Art 6.yours truly enjoying Met Museum

Snow, snow everywhere

New York in late January/early February can only be described as c-o-l-d. Bitterly, relentlessly, mercilessly cold.

I have been known to say I'd sooner freeze than wear puffy puffy coats and beanies. I had to compromise this time: I wore the beanie (with desperate but futile effort to glam it up with a fashionable scarf), and pulled on a decidedly unglam poncho to protect my trench coat from the wind-driven snow.

Two more days and a couple of degrees colder, and I would probably eat my words and bundle up in a puffy puffy coat.

Happy Days

gong xi fa cai and happy valentine's day!

Had a fun time in New York City in spite of the snow blizzard and freezing minus degrees C. Am now in drizzly seattle with temperatures in the mid teens C.

Will be home in a week's time. I'm ready for that too.