Over & Out

Well, this time next week we will be home! We are so lucky to have had this amazing three month odyssey, but home & hearth are calling. As I write, Owen is out having his last meeting with a choral director at his home which happens to be a boat in Sausalito, across the bay from San Francisco. Choirs AND boats. He will be in heaven. It is another beautiful warm, blue California day here.

Since I last wrote in Charlotte, North Carolina, we have sung our way through the country roads of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia & West Virginia & met a mountain man in a truck stop who spoke to us in a dialect we could barely understand. We have taken an architectural walk around Chicago to learn about the rise of the skyscraper & loved the whole buzz of the place. While Owen was in a meeting at the Latin School, I went to a free lunchtime jazz concert at the Culture Center. The audience was an interesting mix, from nicely dressed middle class ladies who lunch, to the homeless seeking a warm place to sit for a couple of hours.

In San Francisco we picked up a car at the airport & drove north across the Golden Gate Bridge & on to lovely Mendecino on the Pacific coast. We drove on through the redwoods & into Oregon. We tried to go up Mt St Helens but the rain had set in [as it tends to as soon as you hit the northern Pacific coast states] & there was fresh snow on the ground. Instead we pressed on to Tacoma on the southern end of Puget Sound and full of wonderful glass courtesy of Dale Chihuly. Then two nights across the border in Vancouver. There are lots of little things that make Canada feel different from the States. Architecture more English, more British television…Our first two days were rainy, as we were told to expect in November, but the day we left the leaden sky turned to blue & all around snowy peaks miraculously appeared. We have a friend in HK who had worked at the Anthropology museum, & because I too am an anthropology graduate, we thought we should spend some time there & very interesting it was too.

Our drive down the Washington & Oregon coasts was more leisurely. So many stunning vistas, so many warming cups of seafood chowder. Then back into California. It is uncanny how warm & dry the weather becomes just a few miles from the coast & over the hills. We stayed with friends in Kelseyville on Clear Lake then drove through the beautiful Napa Valley & then through the not-so-lovely feed lots of the San Joaquin Valley. Poor sad cows! After a night in historic gold-rush Jamestown, it was into Yosemite for two perfect days of R & R. What a heavenly place!

And now San Francisco. We love it. We have caught the ferry to Sausalito & walked back over the Golden Gate Bridge in the sunshine with the Bay studded with white sails. We have enjoyed the musical “Wicked” because someone on the bridge said it is what one did in SF. We have caught up with friends. But… I don’t find myself sleeping easy here. Maybe it is because the homeless can be seen & heard right outside our window, pricking the conscience, leaving us wondering why the world is so unfair. Well, it IS a lovely warm California day for the homeless too, & that is something we can all be thankful for. Tomorrow we fly to Honolulu for Thanksgiving with more old friends & then in mid-air Friday will become Saturday & we will be home!