Monday, November 30, 2009

Monday and my first Flute Circle

Saturday I took Lary to the plane in good time, he had printed his Boarding Pass down at the office thanks to Brian, the computer guru here in the park. Westjet's website isn't the best at the moment, and we don't have a printer here with our computer.
I wasn't going to eat dinner in the clubhouse, but did, as the company of other people is great when I am on my own. Sat with some nice Canadians, and enjoyed myself a lot. We had eaten breakfast there too, we are so spoiled.
I am enjoying riding my bike around the park, good exercise for me when I have a somewhat sore foot, and it gets worse when I walk. No problem when biking.

Sunday I rode the bike then went up for the Ice Cream social at 2, then stayed for the jam session at 3 PM. I didn't realize what a Christian bunch they were here in the park, most of the songs were hymns, and some folks should have retired from singing a while ago. Some of the musicians are very talented, but it's very organized/structured, with a program of who goes next, for a couple of hours. Sat with a very nice lady from last year, from Sicamous, her hubby's name is Dave. Wendy knows her apparently, and they have a mutual friend.

5 PM is sirloin burger time on Sundays, so I had no choice, I ate one, yum yum. Met Bonnie and her hubbie from the Lower Mainland, also John. Bonnie and her hubbie were here at Catspa, but have bought at Quail Valley park, just around the corner from us here. They are delighted with that park. They sold all their campsite memberships online, and told me some horror stories about Indian Waters park which we have just bought into. Ah me.

It had turned quite chilly over the weekend, with rain and wind, so I didn't swim at all. In between showers I tried to bike all around the park. The rain down here landed as snow up in Idyllwild high up behind Palm Springs in the mountains. I talked to a nice lady at the hospital snack bar from there today, we chatted about Subarus. In fact they live up above Idyllwild, and have snow on the ground at the moment.

The lady next door here is disabled with MS, but she likes me practicing my flute outside the rig, she opens her window. Poor lady, to inflict my novice tootings on her!! She is very nice. Moya. She says she'd like a daily concert!!
I have been practicing playing Christmas Carols, they are so familiar, and that way I know if I am making mistakes or not.

I had seen an ad in the newspaper for a flute circle at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, so I enrolled online, and turned up at 10:30 AM to find there was no class til 2:30, and that one was Intermediate/Advanced, yoicks. And me, with only 3 lessons!!!! A lady who talked to me there encouraged me to come back, so I did.

First of all I went looking for a good bead shop I remembered from last year, but they had moved. They are now on El Paseo, the swanky shopping street, and I finally found the shop but it's closed Mon and Tues, open the other 5 days of the week. Boo hoo. The Christmas decorations there along El Paseo are so pretty, we need to rush back and explore more at length, what an interesting area it is. Kind of gold plated, but what the heck. Fun to explore and enjoy. Also investigated a wonderful yarn shop over there. There is gorgeous statuary/sculptures all along the curving road, and pretty swanky stores, too. Drool. Nice art galleries, too. Must be pretty at night, illuminated.

Then back to Palm Springs City Hall, they have been advertising a Marine Corps Band Holiday Concert, which is free on Dec. 10th, tickets are available at City Hall. So I found it, and got 4 tickets for that event, at 7:30 PM. Hooray.

After that back to Eisenhower Medical Center for the flute circle, it was just incredible. Annie is the instructor, and she plays wonderfully and is so encouraging and generous. Another lady Fran is also incredible, when the two of them jam together it's mind bending. They all seem to have the loveliest collections of flutes, and are very generous about sharing them, and sharing info. Another lady is Estelle, and she lives very near here, at Quail Valley, and also loves it a lot. We exchanged phone numbers. She plays very well, including playing a terra cotta flute with 2 mouthpieces, called a drone I believe. Whew.

For the record, my flutes are Native American wood flutes, 6 hole, one is F sharp, made by Windsong I think it is, and is lacewood. We bought it in Utah when we were there a couple of years ago touring Bryce and Grand Canyon. But I hadn't played it until very recently when I took one starter lesson from Ed Peekeekoot in Lake Cowichan, and then 2 lessons from Terry Mack in Nanaimo. The other flute is made by Stellar, and is the key of C and is made of cedar I believe. I only took the small flute to the flute circle, pity as the bigger one is so much nicer to listen to.

The varnish is coming off the bigger one near the fetish, or bridge, it doesn't look very nice, but I should have taken it as the group can help me with what to do to condition it. There was a flute maker in our class, he arrived a little later as he has a 'day job', his name is Brian and his flutes look just superb. He was showing the group how to play that theme music from 'the Good, the Bad and the Ugly', that neat theme music with the haunting flute music, and weird rattling sounds.

The instructor Annie brought her flutes, she is a wonderful player, and she brings drums, rattles, and even a weird stick that rattles, also a rattle that is a gourd with a kind of metal coil underneath it that makes the noise of thunder. Incredible. Basically they chat, share music and resources, and kind of jam together. If I continue in their level I think I will improve by leaps and bounds.
They all laughingly warned me that flutes are addictive, you always want more and more, and they have some beautiful flutes. Some of them are inlaid with turquoise, and other decorative woods, and one I saw had a kind of a tree inlaid into it, and others have different decorations on them, and different leather thongs, etc.

Annie lent me an A flute to try, it had no mouthpiece to speak of but you just kind of put your lips almost inside it, the mouth area is the same diameter as the bottom of the flute, it sounded super once I got the hang of it. I was kind of afraid to play anything, as I have learned (?) to play from music with pictographs on it, called tablature, but I kind of flumfed along anyway.

She handed out sheet music for Kumbaya, in pictographs/tablature and we all toodled about, then she showed us how to improvise and embellish in different ways, like musicians jamming, in fact that's what we were, and it's so exciting.

Then she handed out the music for Happy Trails, the Dale Evans song, to practice for next time. So uplifting.

The conversation was pretty well all about flutes, and drumming, but they offer such a wealth of information, and have interesting and varied styles of playing too.

In the middle of that Lary called me, my phone rang and I raced out into the hall to talk to him calling from Nanaimo. Embarrasing, but nobody seemed disgusted, thankfully. He'll be back in Palm Springs at 11:15 AM tomorrow, and had visited our friend Harold, and sister Jen today.

The flute circle group is a healing group formed for cancer patients/survivors, but I'm not sure how many people there had had cancer. The ad in the paper said it was also for the community, hope it is, as I boldly went there, and wasn't disappointed at all. I will go back on Thursday to see about the Beginners class, but perhaps I am a wee bit beyond that already, Annie seemed to be encouraging me to stay in the Intermediate group. That way I know I will learn a whole lot.

Such a nice day today, it was very interesting trying to drive our big truck in the weekday traffic, and navigate my way around the Coachella Valley at the same time. Sometimes Bitching Betty our GPS is right on the mark directing us to places, at other times she has us going all over the place like crazy fools. Today she told me to do a lot of U turns. Quite the feat with that big truck.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Windy tonight, weather seems to be changing

Had a very nice Thanksgiving dinner at the upper clubhouse here in Catalina Spa or Catspa RV Resort on Thursday, after we watched a gorgeous parade from Macy's in New York in the morning. We had been in the pool after watching the parade. Sat with a whole big group of Canadians, most of us from BC, AB and Saskatchewan. Had very nice chats with them. One couple is going to Mexico, to Puerto Vallarta as they do every year.

Today we went into the Palm Springs area, Lary wants to join a group of men that are carving wooden birds here in the park, so we went to Home Depot and bought a Dremel tool for him, and he had to buy a flexible shaft for it as well. The bird will be a kildeer and the leader of the carving group roughed out the birds from a block of wood, using a band saw for the rough cut, for each of the participants in the group. The wood is tupelo.

After going to Home Depot/ Evil Orange as some people call it, we went on further to the College of the Desert street fair, it's normally held every weekend on Saturday and Sunday, and because it's a holiday weekend here, it was also on today. But it was quite quiet, and not too warm, which was great.

I think that a lot of people were indulging in severe retail therapy, many of the stores were advertising huge sales, and weird early opening hours like 4 AM.

We bought another sun hat for Di, a pretty vinyl carryall bag in black with bright red poppies on it, 2 shirts for Lary, a loaf of bread from a delicious bakery, and that's about it. There are incredible vendors there, socks, upmarket clothing, jewellry, housewares, gadgets, fresh fruit and veg, baked goods, food, entertainment, you name it, free parking, we even took a shuttle trolley from the parking to the shopping tents today.

Came home and Lary wanted to go and print out his boarding pass for Westjet, as he flies via Calgary to Vancouver tomorrownext day, and comes back here on Tuesday. We have the computer here, but no printer with it.

But the library was closed, so no joy on that score. Then we returned home, and he tried to choose his seats, but no joy there either. Westjet's computer system seems to be having some kind of teething trouble with a new system they have just put in.

Tomorrow he will have to do it all right at the airport, which may be very busy as it's a holiday weekend. Ouch, we hate to leave things to the last minute, but this one snuck up and bit us. He only has the flight confirmations, and that not even printed very well.

He'll renew his drivers license while he is at home, that's the purpose of the short trip, but due to Westjet's hub being in Calgary, he'll spend Saturday night in Calgary airport, then on to Vancouver on Sunday, and then he needs to catch the 5 PM ferry Monday to return to Vancouver, and stay in the airport there, to catch the early flight out on Tuesday morning back here. Luckily he can stay in our house, and use our car because the insurance doesn't expire til Nov.30th at midnight.

Wind has come up a bit here, the sunset was very pretty with pink clouds, but now at 9:30 PM it's a bit windy.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Not much to report, just warm weather here & sunshine

Today there was a yard sale at the sites, so we walked around, and Di bought some stationery, and a pretty cut glass starfish necklace.

We swam yesterday after dark, and met more nice folks from Maple Ridge, we chatted in the pool and hot tub.

When we checked in on Monday there was a warning about a swarm of angry bees, and one man got over 60 stings. Apparently they were honey bees living under somebody's trailer, and they were being removed, but didn't want to cooperate. Erg. The location was over against one fence of the park, so we were all warned to stay away, which we did.

Things look pretty good here, we shopped for groceries, and heard about free tickets to a Marine Corps Christmas concert, we went over today to City Hall in Palm Springs, but they are shut Weds Thurs and Friday for American Thanksgiving. We were surprised about that. It's a big deal down here, and Staters was selling turkeys for 33 cents a pound when you bought $25 of groceries. Another notable deal was Baileys, 750 ml for $10.95. We had to get in on the Baileys special, at least!!!!!

The temps are forecast to go down into the low 70s, I'm not sure how we'll like that, but it continues sunny and bright in the daytime. Last night we got up about 6 AM and pulled on another blanket, and went back to sleep again.

After all it is winter.

There is a Macy's Thanksgiving parade in New York that will be on tv tomorrow, starting at 9 AM here I believe. From here on I guess it will be full on Christmas shopping for Americans, apparently Friday after Thanksgiving is called Black Friday, if retailers haven't been "in the black" before this, they will be after Friday. Some stores open at 4 AM on Friday, yes, that's 4 AM.

So far we haven't contributed to the bettering of the US economy that much.

Lary leaves Saturday to return to Nanaimo and renew his drivers license, I will renew mine at a later date.

We spilled a large quantity of diesel additive inside the truck in a bin, it was dreadfully stinky, so we added a bunch of clay cat litter to absorb it, and try to absorb the rank smell too. Haven't scooped it out as yet, but the smell has subsided a whole lot already. Guess that the scoop out will be my job. (Di).

That's about it for now.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Hooray, In Desert Hot Springs at last-High 70s daily

Well, we spent 2 nights in Hesperia, CA just south of Victorville, and about a couple hours northwest of Desert Hot Springs. Found a nice campsite called Desert Willow, near lots of stores and just barely off US 395. They have pull through sites which makes it easier for us to park and camp. Lots of permanent folks living there in the campsite.

Spent a couple of lazy days there, cruising stores and putzing around. They had an International House of Pancakes and Marie Callendars, both restaurants that we enjoy. Highlight of our visit was 2 trips to Walmart and a trip to Super Target. We don't get out much!!!!! Too cool to use the pool though. It's kind of high desert there.

Only took us a couple of hours today to get to Desert Hot Springs, to Catalina Spa Resort where we are members. Didn't take us long at all to hit the pool and hot tub. Temps in the high 70s during the daytime, gotta like that, but at sunset, around 4:45 PM or so, the temps go down very quickly once the sun disappears.

Big wrinkle in our plans was that we had to show Lary's drivers license when we arrived here and checked in, OH OH!!!!!! both his and Di's licenses expire this year on our birthdays, that means, in December!!!!!. We hadn't even checked them before leaving home. Of course we checked the passports for expiry dates, but not the drivers licenses. Drat.

So Lary has made plans to fly home via Westjet this weekend, into Vancouver, and then renew the license on Monday, and fly back. Thankfully Westjet flies into Palm Springs, though on the way to Nanaimo he has to go from P.Springs to Calgary, sleep overnight in the airport, then leave Calgary early the following AM for Vancouver, then catch the rapid transit train, then the bus and then the ferry to get home to the island. Ah me, island living.

Di will renew her license later, it's not quite so critical. When he comes back, the timings work better, and he flies direct from Vancouver to Palm Springs, though he may end up spending an overnight in Vancouver airport, due to a somewhat early departure that Tuesday morning. How daft can we be?

This is the Thanksgiving week, I think kids may be off school in the U.S., and we have already booked our Thanksgiving Dinner here in the campground at the upper clubhouse, $10 each for turkey and all the trimmings, hope it is nice. The early dinner is way too early, the late sitting is 4 PM. Hmmm.

The campsite seems to be about 1/2 empty at the moment, it may fill up later after Thanksgiving, we're not sure. We want to extend here once our first 2 weeks are up, and pay for our "out week", so that in the end we will be here 5 weeks consecutively, and not leave til Dec. 28th or so. Being members it costs us $5 per night, and it's really a nice campground, for us both it feels like home with tons of stuff to do.

That's about it for now, Lary is happy because he will be able to watch the Grey Cup now at home or in Canada. It might not be shown down here on t.v.
He said he would have watched it on our computer, we have WiFi here in the park, and the external antenna, G-Sky that we bought last winter is serving us well this trip, too. We have WiFi in our trailer, and the external antenna makes it much faster.

That's it for now.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Bakersfield, CA in Orange Grove campsite

Well, we have arrived in Bakersfield, CA and we had some challenges along our way. Lary had to put in a new battery even before we left home, and then we spent a very chilly windy night in Walmart Nanaimo parking lot Saturday night.

We wanted to head out early, but then found that the first Duke Point ferry off the island wasn't until 10:15 AM. Thank heaven that sister Jen knew that so we made a reservation on the Saturday evening.



Sunday morning we got the ferry we wanted, in fact we arrived ages ahead of time, so we were off. Ferry cost $228. ouch.



US Customs loves us so much that they pulled us over to inspect, and took away some Chinese snow peas and some Green onions, most of the allium family is forbidden at the moment.



Spent the first night in Centralia WA, furnace worked well and we needed it.



Next day off at 8 AM and in rain until southern Oregon when the sun came out. Drove right through to Redding CA and even there it was chilly, but clear, and there were roses in the campground. We enjoy JGW RV Park on Riverland Drive, they have tons of drive through sites, and very easy access off the highway.



Next morning the battery wouldn't pull in the slides, it kind of died so we called a mobile mechanic, he came pretty promptly, and found a circuit breaker near our battery had tripped, so they reset it, and we were off again.



He suggested that with 3 slides we should really have a pair of batteries working together, so that we something we planned to do soon.



We reached Loomis in CA and it is near our friends Corky and Cynthia Guenter, who we had met in Budapest this past autumn. They live in Folsom, outside Sacramento. Set up in the Loomis campsite, and made an appt with Camping World very nearby for the next morning.



Spent a very enjoyable evening with the Guenters at their house, and stayed the night with them. They fed us monster steaks, and tons of win



Next day we took the trailer to Camping World, they put in a second battery and then tested our electric system. The tech found that our 30 amp extension cord was badly frayed both ends, hmmm, and that we could use a change of circuit breaker to our converter. It had been tripping a lot ever since we got the new trailer, so we made an appt for them to do that the following morning. Cynthia cut Di's hair, and did a great job. We took Cynthia and Corky out to dinner, and spent the night in the trailer in the parking lot of Camping World.



Up and into their shop at 8 AM, the same tech changed the circuit breaker as mentioned above, and we had them mount a carrying tube for the sewer hose, under the body of the trailer. Di also bought a carrying tube for one of her flutes there, we won't tell anyone that it's really a carrying tube for sewer hose!!!



Off just after 10 AM that morning, and drove right through to Bakersfield that day, long but clear without much wind or weather to speak of.



We are in a lovely park here, it's an orange grove as its name says, and there are tons of trees, all covered with oranges not quite ready to be picked yet. So very pretty. We can't pick the oranges on the trees inside the park, but it's OK to pick them at the edges of the park so we will likely do that tomorrow AM before we leave.



Today we went into Buck Owen's Crystal Palace, a music venue and dining room, full of his memorabilia, he died in 2006, but won a ton of awards and had a very successful career. It was fun to see his clothing, guitars, and tons of photos of him with many recording and giants of the screen and music industries. Then we went to a couple of antique malls, it is cold overnight, but warm during the day, the campsite has morning coffee and donuts on offer, and this morning there was a craft show put on by the Elks who are camping here at the moment. The park is enormous, gravel sites, but very wide, long and mostly pull throughs. It must be very popular in warmer weather, the orange trees dividing each site make it very pretty indeed. The office people are super friendly too. We shopped for groceries at Albertsons.



Forgot to add that we finally broke down and bought an AT & T pay and talk phone, and we called June Carlson who is in our house for 2 weeks, all well there, and weather sucks as it's rainy and windy, and will be for some time to come up there. June had a conversation with Dyson vacuum cleaners tech support as our vac wasn't working when we left home, but it seems to be working now. Thank you June.

Off tomorrow toward Desert Hot Springs, it's again chilly tonight down here, but hey, it's not raining or windy. And it's winter here too, after all.



We are already appreciating the bright blue skies down here.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Departure Day 2009 Looms Large

Well it's nearly time to roll on out of here, toward the sunny south. How the time has flown by since we got home from London, Budapest and Prague in early September.

There is fresh snow on our nearby mountain, Mt. Benson, and we have been watching it descend down toward the base of the mountain, and our town.

Today there is a real chill in the air, and we don't have antifreeze in our trailer system, though the water lines have all been blown out.

In fact Lary had a terrible time getting the water filter reinstalled, he has to take the trailer down to Duncan tomorrow Saturday to have a bit of help from the dealer, seems that a kitchen drawer has to come out for access to the water heater, located under the kitchen sink. Ah the joys of a new rig.

Meanwhile we are still thinking about getting a motorhome, a Class A or bus, as it doesn't have a bend in it, and should be easier to back into a campsite space.

We are very disappointed as our friends Dave and Wendy from Nelson won't be joining us right away in Desert Hot Springs, their house sprung another water leak which Dave just detected, and their daughter in law has a medical concern that has yet to be addressed.

A first for me, Di this year is trying to learn to play the Native American Flute. I now have 2, one in the key of F sharp, and a second one in the key of C. But what I do is blow each note instead of just blowing a steady stream of air, and playing the needed keys for each melody.

Last night found me hurriedly making fleece bags for each of my new flutes, they turned out alright, and temporarily satisfied my need for "crafting".

I will miss my new flute teacher Terry Mack from Nanaimo, she is such an inspiration. At my last lesson she offered to give me their 3rd cat, Napolean, he is a big ginger cat, a real lap cat. But I declined, graciously. Having an animal complicates our travelling lifestyle, though I think Napolean is really nice.

Last night we went to the Port Theatre and watched Ed Peekeekoot, he's a tall Cree native man who was the first to teach me the basic notes of the flute at Rommy Verlaan's workshop, what an entertainer he is.

He plays guitar, banjo, fiddle, native drum and of course Native American flute. He is so entertaining, a favourite moment of mine was when he played both the guitar held between his knees, and a banjo at the same time, for a dueling banjo type of song.

And his jokes and song writing are just marvellous, he had us all in stitches, and what was supposed to be a half hour of music from him turned into 1.5 hours. He's 6 ft 5 inches, 6 ft 6 inches in cowboy boots, with a long grey pony tail, and the type of craggy looks that really suit him. It was Random Acts at the Port Theatre, and we were all seated right up on the stage, it was such a nice atmosphere.

Tomorrow I have to clean the house to prepare for our housesitter Tara, who will be here most of the winter. And gather up the last of my stuff to go into the trailer, it's always such a temptation to take too much, and overload the trailer.

Bye for now.