Central Coast Senior

We spent 4 nights in Madrid and the city is… frustrating for a celiac.

We arrived late in the day and decided to just walk around a bit to get the lay of the land. After walking for a while we decided to get ourselves something to eat, so we found a nice outdoor restaurant in the square we were in and went up to get a table. Well the gentleman that greeted us spoke very little English. So we let him know that I was “celiacos” and did they have anything I could eat, a look of horror came over his face and he tells us no they have nothing we can eat. We ask for a menu and lo and behold we quickly find a few items we can enjoy so we ask for a table. He now gets a look of disgust and tells us to sit over there, pointing off in the general direction of an empty table and says he will get someone else to wait on us. Maybe he thought celiac was contagious. So we had a pitcher of sangria (good) and a couple different dishes (just okay), paid our bill and then headed back to the hotel. Not a good start.

We tried to see all the big touristy things beginning with the park across from our hotel. Retiro Park is a large Central Park style of park. The park is massive and fortunately we were able to walk through it on a Sunny Saturday. The park is amazing, lots to see and do, from museums to street performers, but the best of all is the people watching.

We entered from near our hotel and after a short walk we found ourselves by a lake that you could easily walk around. The large walkway next to it was lined with street performers. Their were musicians, puppeteers, jugglers, and everything you could think of. The highlight for me was the old puppeteer siting on the ground with his puppets in front of him and a cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth. I had to snap a picture.

We went to one of the free museums and checked out the modern art exhibits. I can now safely say I am not a cultured guy. Most of the exhibits I would have filed under “WTF?” as I had no clue what the point of them was. I think my old co-worker from my gas station days, art major Chuck, would have been happy here.  I didn’t get it. We did see one interesting exhibit inside a large glass building. It was a trailer that held an odd assortment of miniatures and full size items depicting…something, Didn’t understand it but I enjoyed looking at it.

The park had lots of pathways, which we walked, including a rose garden, that we strolled through. This led to us becoming very thirsty and hungry. Which is where the food fun continued. We walked up to one of the kiosks and when the lady behind the counter asked us what we liked, we once again explained about our need for gluten free, and the smile that was on her face immediately turns to disgust and then she points to the tables outside and says she will get someone else to help us. Obviously we weren’t her kind of customers. This time we left and went and had an ice cream by the lake and called it a day. For dinner we just hid in the hotel and ate at their restaurant.

The next day we went to El Prado museum. What an incredible collection of art, again not for me, although I tried. We walked for hours looking at hundreds of pictures of basically some famous or infamous person standing or sitting in period attire. Before long they all began to look the same and I became quite numb to the whole thing. After several hours of this I finally turned to Helen and said “Okay the museum wins, I can’t take any more lets get out of here”. Thankfully she agreed. We went back to the hotel and relaxed for a bit, while there we tried to hunt up some gluten free options for food. I was dying to try Tapas. Helen ended up finding us a place that ended up being a bit of a hike from the hotel. This place turned out to be fantastic.

Taberno La Concha in Madrid turned in to the best meal we had in the city. It was a bit of a walk from our hotel but well worth it. They set us in their basement, probably to keep us away from all the locals that would be coming in later. And handed us a menu. And the best part was the page of gluten free Tapas that they had, we didn’t know where ot begin. I don’t remember what we ordered. But I loved all of it. And the best part was that they didn’t look at us in disugust when we asked for the gluten free menu!!

We also toured the Royal Palace of Madrid, which was nice and was a great way to wind up our time in Madrid. The next morning we headed to the airport to fly to Rome in preparation for our first cruise aboard the Norwegian Jade.

Yesterday we flew to St Louis so that Helen and my sister Bobbi could attend their Younique convention. I hadn’t really given our flight out much thought, thinking we would just fly there and after her convention begin a 3 1/2 week roadtrip up through New England.

All was fine on our first leg from San Luis Obispo to Phoenix, except for the having to get up at 4 in the morning to catch a 6:15 flight. We made it to Phoenix and our 8:54 flight had been delayed until 9:30, then 10:30, and finally 11:30. So our 50 minute layover was extended to 3 hours. That in and of itself wasn’t too bad, but when I realized that a significant portion of the passenger manifest was filled with Younique conventioneers, it made the layover a little more disturbing as they all began talking about ther uplines and yada, yada, yada. Fortunately I was so tired I fell asleep and when I woke up the youniquers around us had moved on. Also being in first class, I was nowhere near them as we flew to St. Louis. So a rather peaceful flight once we took off in our really old A320 aircraft.

When we arrived we collected our bags in the normal fashion, 2 bags showed up immediatley and 1 bag took forever, and headed off to pick up the rental car. I thought it was great that I had just gotten notice that Avis had upgraded me to a Cadillac XTS, what a great way for us to road trip! So we took the shuttle bus over to avis and the driver kindly dropped us off right in front of our car. We put the bags at the trunk  and I popped open the door to get the keys and release the trunk. So I looked in the cupholder, the glovebox and the armrest storage, no key. I did find the Avis sheet that said it was my car, I guess they just didn’t want me driving it. Fortunately as a Presidents club member I was able to just pick a different car and change it as I drove off. So now we will be roadtripping in a Lincold MKS, Mathew McConaughey would be pleased.

This is my second trip to the city, with time to sightsee,  so there isn’t much I want to see. Although we did go to the Gateway arch and rode to the top. Went at night which was pretty cool. Unfortunately there is a lot of construction going on which sort of ruins the visual effect at ground level.

The Younique Crew – Bobbi, Jacki, and Helen

Today is the first day of their convention so I chose to just hide out in the concierge lounge and type. Felt good.

Well after a week in Alaska for work it was time to head home. The plan was to leave work on Friday at 10:30 am Alaskan Time and drive through the countryside during the next 15 hours before Dawn, a member of my team, and I caught our flight home at 1:30 AM. We were ready to see the natural majesty and wildlife of Alaska. The vistas were incredible, a normal photograph couldn’t do it justice so I ended up taking nothing but panoramas. And while the vistas were magnificent, the wildlife didn’t come through. Or more accurately the large wildlife failed to materialize. Awesome plan, went like clockwork for the first 10 hours. Leaving the base we headed south along the Richardson Highway, and through the Alaskan Mountain Range.

We turned right at the Denali Highway and head across the state heading towards Denali National Park. It was 133 miles of road, which doesn’t sound too bad until you realize that most of it is unpaved. Now before we started this adventure I heard from several of the local people that 20 miles of it was paved on both sides which left only 93 miles of gravel. Not a problem. Also one of my coworkers suggested that we take his home phone number so that we could call him if we had car trouble during the gravel road trip. Now we thought that was awfully cool and nice of him. Little did we know…

It was during this drive we learned a very unnerving fact. Alaskans lie to us Southerners and let’s face it to Alaskans we are all Southerners. It turns out that the Denali Highway is 20 miles paved on the Eastern side and only 2 miles on the Western side. Which left me with 111 miles of gravel and when you are looking forward to getting off the gravel those extra 18 miles can take forever. I guess we should have figured it out ahead of time, when we were checking the map and noticed that the town of Cantwell was at the western end of the Denali Highway. Problem was we didn’t know that on the map that Cantwell stood for can’t well tell them Southerners the truth….

But meanwhile back at the drive. The Denali Highway is worth the time in the summer. The views were amazing and you can see a glacier at the distance. It’s Amazing.  There is very little traffic on that Highway and some of it isn’t too bright. Like the guy pulling a camping trailer with a shredded tire. A gas station with some services was 5 miles behind him but instead he continued going forward at about 25 miles an hour to the next services which was a hundred miles away. Or the guy with the camper who for about 10 miles didn’t bother to pull over and let the string of cars behind him pass. Or that you need to watch your step for behind every tree and bush you could be stepping into some ones toilet and from my brief experience many people did.

Now as to the wildlife, we saw a baby and mama moose on the base, so we figured our chances of seeing more moose or elk was pretty good when we were off the main roads. Turns out not to be the case, we drove about 300miles and the only wildlife we saw were mosquitos. Should you make the mistake and pull off at the wrong spot, you will be surrounded by those little buggers in a heartbeat. When this happened to us I fortunately had brought along some mosquito bait. So I was able to walk out a bit to try and take a great  picture, unfortunately it was at that moment my bait failed me, Dawn jumped back in the car to get away from them. So the second she climbed in the car I swear I heard NEXT, and they attacked me in mass. Before I knew it I was running for the car, without my super photo, swatting like a crazy man.  When I made it to the car, I hopped in, started the engine, rolled down all the windows, and in about 5 seconds I was doing 60 on the gravel road, praying that the hitchhikers would be sucked out of the car and we would be left in peace. No luck, we ended up having to hunt down about a dozen of them on our own. Needless to say, we stopped pulling off the road at that point and declared enough! So we didn’t stop again until we bought gas in Cantwell.

Needless to say from now on I am bringing mosquito repellent (or Dawn) with me from now on in the summer months. So from Cantwell we went to Denali National Park and managed to get there just before the park office closed, which we didn’t go into instead we went on a 3 mile hike back into the woods and if you like trees and rivers, this is definitely the spot. We never found  spot to see Mt McKinley and discovered only after we left that when we hit Cantwell we should have turned left to go to a viewing location. Oh well, next time. The Hike was at least fun, except for the last little bit that felt like it was straight up.

From Denali we drove back to Fairbanks where we filled the car and decided we were done so we headed for the airport where we checked in, made it through security and at 8:00 PM we waited for our 1:30 am flight. So after a little drinking even less eating and a lot of waiting it was time to board the plane. And this was when Freddy Krueger joined the party.

So we are all loaded everyone is ready to go and then the pilot comes on and tells us that the center tank fuel pumps aren’t working so it will be a bit while they investigate. It’s at this point I take my short nap, me thinking a quick 30 minute nap will set me up for a nice for the rest of the trip home. So 90 .to worry we are poaching the 6:00 am flights plane. Cool at least we will be getting out of here. So after we all trudge off the plane and start to stand in line to get ourselves rebooked the pilot comes on and says “oh by the way, this crew is at the end of their light window and they can’t get us to Seattle so we will be stopping in Anchorage for a crew change, but don’t worry it won’t be long. We will get off and they will get right on and then you will be back in the air on your way to Seattle”

Okay this kind of stuff happens. And then I notice the board it says we will land in Anchorage a little at 5:50 am and we will land in Seattle at 10:10 am. Wait a minute, 4:00 am Alaskan time until 10:10 Pacific Time is 7 hours and Seattle is about 4 hours from Fairbanks. So what are we doing with all the extra time? WE are sitting on the ground in Anchorage!! Our short 30 – 40 minute sounding layover is actually 2 hours!! But then Alaska Airlines steps up and saves the day, they hand all of us passengers these sweet little postcards that say, “Gee we are sorry about really screwing up your trip, and we feel really, really bad about it, so here if you join our rewards program, we will give a free 2000 miles.”

So we are waiting in line for like 40 minutes waiting to get reticketed when they start boarding the plane.  So 10 minutes later everyone that has been reticketed or just going to Seattle is on the plane and the hostess goes on the PA and tells all us folks who are still in line to get on the plane now so they can leave. Second time she tells us that she adds “you are all being reticketed already in Seattle so we don’t need to wait in line. What!! Are you freaking kidding me!! Where was this little message 50 minutes ago! So now we are back on the plane and heading to Anchorage and the crew comes through with a better offer instead of 2000 miles we will give you a voucher, of unspecified amount, for use on a later flight or more miles. I took the voucher.

So after a wonderful layover in Anchorage, stuck in the plane, we get to Seattle and we are off to get our new tickets for the balance of the trip. So the agent calls us up and tells us great news we have you on flights through Portland that get you back to Santa Barbara, the only slight glitch is the little 5 hour layover in Seattle you will have to endure. CRAP. After lots of struggling we end up with no other options so we begin our day in SeaTac, which will always be remembered for some of the most gawd awful on the planet. Instead of Salsa they used barbecue sauce. I couldn’t finish em, guess they were at least good for my diet, quantity wise. So after doing our best Eric Snowden imitation, we managed to get on our flight to Portland where we endured a reasonable layover before our final flight.

Interesting thing about Portland; outside of its large number of Strip Clubs, this was not personal experience but a Mark and Brian radio fact, was a sign that told you that in Portland there were possibilities in every direction. Seems pretty optimistic, until you realize that they put it on a do not enter sign…

So the last bit of fun we had is that we were originally going to land in Santa Barbara at around 1:00 PM and we were going to pick up a rental car from Avis. So like a good customer I called the Avis desk at Santa Barbara airport to let them know that we were going to be in after 10:00 pm and could they be sure we still had a car. Unfortunately I ended up with the automated message that told me the agent was serving other customers where I was transferred to the Customer Service Center, who told us to contact the counter at the airport. So after our 13^th attempt and getting the exact same message each and every time, I finally made the customer service center take my information and update my reservation information with my current flight number, and the said we should still contact the Airport Avis counter. So 12 calls later we talk to customer service again and they look at my updated record and discover that nothing has been updated and it still had all the old flight information. Needless to say I was not a happy camper. So they updated it again and because Dawn and I had such faith in the Avis system, she talked with her husband and made arrangements for him to meet us at the airport, just in case.

Fortunately we landed in Santa Barbara, 25 hours after our flight was scheduled to start, and the agent was still there and I picked up a car to get me home. So while Dawn is a wonderful travelling companion, being funny, articulate and easy to get along with. I think I can do without the 25 hour flights so from here on out she is on her own and if I find we are on the same flights to the same destination again, I am getting off and taking the train…..