Another quick trip from the Bay Area to LA over the past few days of the Christmas Holiday, constrained as usual by work schedules.
It’s a 370 mile trip, from our place in Oakland to the West LA area where we stayed. We had good fortune in that our drives there and back slipped between the series of rainstorms that have hit Northern California over the past couple weeks. We drove to LA on Christmas Day, a par drive of 6 hours including an hour lunch break at Harris Ranch. Returning today, it was also 6 hours but with only a 20 minute fast food lunch break. Traffic was a bit heavier; it moved steadily at ~80 mph up the I5, but with occasional clumps of cars pogo-sticking abrupt slowing and resuming, along with the irritation of folks who jump into the right lane (since given that all the big trucks sit in the right lane at a steady 65 mph while the cars glide by in the left lane, most of us very steadily) to gain a few car-lengths before cutting back into the left lane to avoid one of those trucks. They’re like line jumpers while waiting for a movie, and they seem completely shameless about it. (I confess I will go around on the right if the car in front of me is moving slower than I like *and* has nothing in front of them for a quarter mile or more. That’s another kind of driver: the ones who are clueless about who’s behind them, or (an increasingly small I think) those drivers who are certain that 70 mph, say, is the safest speed and no one should be allowed to drive any faster.)
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We stayed at the Luskin Hotel, part of a conference center right in the middle of the UCLA campus that just opening 3 or 4 years ago; it certainly wasn’t there when I attended UCLA back in the 1970s. (What was in that position in the ’70s? I’m not sure. The hotel staff wasn’t sure.) Anyway, a beautiful, minimalist contemporary complex.
We had lunch and dinner plans for the 25th, 26th and 27th. Christmas Day dinner was at Mastro’s Ocean Club in Malibu, a beautiful place right on the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) at Topanga Canyon Boulevard. We had been there before, years ago, before it was acquired by Mastro’s. High-end seafood place, the kind of place to visit once a year. Food very good, but alas, too noisy for my increasingly fragile sensibilities as I grow older. (Though I’ve never liked crowded, noisy venues.)
On the 26th we had lunch with Alan Podmore, my old work friend from Rocketdyne over several decades. He’s about to retire himself, next month. We went to a Blu Jam Cafe on Wilshire Blvd. (It’s a chain.) Casual. Sandwiches.
Dinner on the 26th was at a restaurant way out in Brea, Old Brea Chop House. It was a family event, with a reserved menu; the 12 or 13 of us were served Chinese-restaurant-style, with platters of food placed on the big table, and each diner left to fend for themselves, to grab whatever they wanted from the plates of chops and steaks and branzino and veggies passed up and down the table. We sat on stools.
Lunch on the 27th was with my sister and her husband, who live in Simi Valley. We met at a small diner called Greystoke Grill, in … Tarzana. Get it? I had to explain this a couple times. Alas, food very ordinary, and our waitress confused. The “Greystoke Burger” we ordered was nothing special; the “Graystoke Sandwhich” (sic) might have been more interesting, if the waitress’s description was accurate.
And then dinner on the 27th was at a small Italian place on Ventura Blvd in Sherman Oaks, Trattoria Del Sole, with my partner’s friends from Baxter, his workplace until a decade or so ago. Food fine but ordinary. It wasn’t busy, on a Friday night.
And this afternoon we’re back home and the kitties are happy to see us.
Will catch up on other subjects tomorrow.
