Thursday, 14 July 2016
As we weren't being picked up for our 10.30pm flight home until 6pm we had plenty of time to fill in before we needed to pack and leave. Gary continued work on the lawn strimmer - apparently strimmers aren't allowed in Pete's office and have to be left at the door:
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| Park your strimmers at the door |
Once the strimmer was fixed we headed out for a breakfast-at-lunchtime at a local diner, with a detour to see an open home nearby with an asking price of US$3.3 million. It was a lovely house, completely rebuilt, with a great view. Some of my favourite bits were the desk / study area in the child's bedroom:
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| Desk area in the child's bedroom |
The bedroom also had its own bathroom, and a a super play loft that would have been just the thing to deck out as a reading nook.
This was the view from upstairs:
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| The view |
And the pool - in the shadows (middle right) you can just make out the start of the water slide that takes bathers down from the warmer upper pool to the cooler main pool below:
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| The pool |
I can honestly say it was a house I'd be happy to live in, though if I really had 3.3 million dollars I might buy a more ordinary house and use my money for other things!
After lunch we went off to Laguna Beach for the traditional walk (Pete, Marilynne, and Gary) and sit-in-the-shade-and-read (me). I checked out the shops I like in the main street and then settled down on the nautilus shell seat under the tree to read and people-watch. At one time I was surrounded by half a dozen or more police officers on a mission to take photos of the main street. They left their very weather-appropriate vehicle parked beside me while they went off in search of the perfect spot for the photo.
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| Police vehicle |
When we got home I was glad to find my two pairs of sandals had been delivered as promised. If they had been a day late the whole convenience of having them delivered to Pete's (not to mention the US$50 saving on postage) would have been negated. I am very pleased with the colours (agave green and brick dust) which will go with my others pairs (eggplant, chocolate chip, and dark citron). I know FIVE PAIRS might seem to be tending a little toward hoarding but since they're all different colours I prefer to call it collecting. (Actually, the company, Ahnu, seemed to be running down the stock in both colours and sizes and, since the sandals were my everyday wear for the whole trip, I felt they had more than proved themselves so it would be worthwhile having a few pairs on-hand for next season, and the one after that ...)
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| Sandals |
Gary was very pleased to find that the huge box which had arrived (itself containing two full sized shoe boxes) ended up to be a very small addition to his bag of two pairs of light sandals.
Eventually it was time to say goodbye to Pete and Marilynne for another year and leap aboard the shuttle to the airport. I have to say we had the most interesting shuttle driver ever, a gentleman from northern Iran who had a very mellow approach to life, possible something of an asset when driving the roads around LA all the time. The traffic was quite heavy in places but finally we arrived at the airport, catching sight through the traffic of the LAX sign ahead of us:
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| LAX sign |
There have been times when I would have commented that LAX can be quite appropriately read 'lax' but this trip we had no problem with the airport personnel or facilities. It's still chaotic as far as traffic is concerned but arriving by shuttle makes all that somebody else's problem.
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| Terminal B: Tom Bradley International |
The plane was packed and again we were in a 'Sky Couch' row which I will avoid at all costs in the future. The portion of the seat which, when raised, forms the 'couch' does not fold down to 90 degrees when not in use but sticks out into the foot well. It's uncomfortable and makes it very difficult to get in and out of the seats as it reduces the space to step into. Added to this, the 777-300s on which we travelled both legs of the homeward journey had electronic boxes for the in-flight entertainment system under the seats so that the foot and leg room was even more limited. (We don't even want to put our small bags under the seat in front of us - we just want to be able to get both feet in the space at the same time which I wouldn't have thought was unreasonable.) It was a pretty uncomfortable flight.
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